I once wrote:

Weakness Transcends the Weak and Corrupts the Whole

 

I was too narrow.

I should have written:

“Vice spreads and corrupts the rest”

or maybe simply:

“Corruption spreads”

 

See there are two paths:

1) You’re already mediocre and complacent, and complacently let yourself gradually sour, corrupt, rot

2) You’re doing quite well, driven by well-meaning, noble, ambitious purpose, honorable and serious… but perhaps you let ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS

 

The trap in the first one is merely underestimating complacency

The problem with NOT settings standards for yourself is not that you fail to “become” some respectable, VALUABLE human being

You’re generally just a sack of fucking meat trying to go through life by minimising suffering and maximising pleasure. Don’t take yourself too seriously

The problem is that it’s a bit of a slippery slope

Where every compromise yields to more compromise

And every moment of weakness makes you weaker

And every time you lower the bar — your high goes down, your baseline goes down, and your low goes down. And then you lower it again

 

It’s insidious

It can happen abruptly, or it can happen slowly

Then you have the usual:

“Oh how fast the time flew by”

“I didn’t realise that was the last time I had that opportunity”

“How did I end up in this mess?”

“I don’t know why but lately I have so little energy”

“The world is unfair and life sucks”

you know the drill

 

The second is perhaps even worse

I already asserted that the end is not your GLORIOUS, pompous arrival at some ELEVATED place of triumph, where you shall reside for the rest of your CORPOREAL fucking existence

The real gain from being AMBITIOUS and DRIVEN and ENERGISED is that you’re fucking ALIVE, right here, right now,

And don’t live in regret

but

The second is perhaps even worse for it can give you justification for your vice,

Your own striving and ambition and WILL may have you eventually seek to impose your will even over the virtuous you used to hold dear

 

Indeed I don’t actually believe VICE is predominately the domain of the ambitious,

I believe shortcuts are mostly an attribute of the weak

I believe most of ambition is just delusional desire to BECOME someone, so as to feel a bit less feeble and therefore less… impermanent, mortal

The true ambition, CREATIVE ambition, the true EXCELLENCE — is is not interested in shortcuts and tricks and appearances and cheats

It’s not truly creative if you destroyed something else, is it?

Instead driven people cultivate virtues to facilitate the realisation of their vision

AND the act of realising their vision is what bolsters their virtues

It’s mostly weak who — at first occasion — take the shortcut, to acquire that which the strong have WILLED

 

But yes,

I concede that even the strong and virtuous, in the moment of weakness, are then at the risk of corruption

What started from a place of inspiration, creativity, will, vitality, and values — can become a struggle that tests them to the limits

And at that point, after endless time of struggle, uprightness — MUCH unlike everyone else they know — they NOW choose to cash out, to compromise

 

…and THEN, that, of course, becomes a very precipitous slippery slope indeed,

Where VICE is now concealed behind the veneer of virtue,

which used to be there for so long, it has now been taken for granted

and concealed behind all the glory that was attained up to that point,

even if it is now dissipating and devolving

 

The conclusion is that VIRTUE ETHICS is the superior foundation on top of which to build everything else

It’s a simple system and very powerful

 

I have no delusions that given high enough stakes, you and I would compromise

And I have no illusion that many life choices really are grey: the gain requires a sacrifice, sometimes ugly

But virtue ethics protects and grounds us the rest of the time