What Real Virtue Looks Like In Difficult Times

Not how you think.

Patience can be hard. Kindness, humility and abstinence, chastity, liberality and diligence can as well. That is why they call these personal characteristics virtues.

Virtues are virtues because they are considered hard to do constantly and consistently. Because they go against what many consider to be innate human nature.

For those who speak from a purely physical standpoint, life is hard. It could be no other way. They see what their five senses reveal and that is it. That is the entire world to them. Evolution is about the survival of the fittest and whatever it takes to ensure the survival of you and yours is what must be done no matter the psychological or material cost.

This is not the only perspective. It is an industrial perspective, hewn from an expansive, hegemonic, western milieu that has overseen the utter domination of the planet from a material and cultural perspective. An aggressive, fiery, multidimensional assault upon not only the people of the world but the world herself.

An assault that has given us the Internet. Air conditioning. McDonalds. Space flight.

Other, indigenous perspectives see virtues as innate human nature. Being kind, being patient, being loving, as being a natural expression of universal values that transcend humanity and embody characteristics of the natural world as well.

Animals, trees, the planet herself, the sun and stars.

Without denying the aggressive, local effects that native populations have had upon their regions of habitation, it is safe to say that the fundamental orientation of many of the world’s people have seen human nature quite differently than we in the West do today. in those societies, generally speaking, the virtues are expected to be a fundamental human expression and the anti-virtues, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth are eschewed for their psychic and material costs.

For those who subscribe to the materialist viewpoint, the ability to forego virtuous behavior and take on the psychopathic characteristics of the ruling class pays good dividends, literally and figuratively. The anti-virtues appear more commonly in people who have this internal compass heading and personal viewpoint.

For those who instead subscribe to a spiritualist viewpoint, how you treat people matters. Virtues become lived expressions and are found not to be so difficult to inculcate within one’s own, personal life expression if one's internal barometer is so oriented.

Many people choose to take a middling path between the extremes, which often looks like a hybrid personal philosophy whereby one does good in one’s life to the best of their ability, perhaps contributing to charity, the local Good Will or Salvation Army. Maybe even being moderate or liberal in politics, contributing money to global food and medical aid, animal rights organizations and voting for initiatives that proselytize universal values. These folks don’t mind some of their money being taxed and redistributed to the less fortunate and see it as being a contributing member of society to do so.

They are able to sleep at night because they have taken a stand, chosen a side and express higher principles and values in their lives and demonstrably so. It is a virtuous expression at the abstract and material level because their vision has extended beyond their own personal and familial needs to encompass societal needs as well. And this is progress.

In times of extreme political and social expression, though, virtue looks a bit different. When a stratified society has become undeniably and unrepentantly bellicose in its expression, when its inequities have risen out of the morass of collective suppression that willful ignorance demands, virtue becomes a rebellious act.

Virtue then looks like people taking public stances in support of a higher vision of humanity and oneness. It looks like compassionate souls letting their neighbors know that they don’t agree with the program; that they do not support the pogram. It looks like love of the neighbor that looks different from you and understanding of processes that originate beyond what we can touch, see, hear, feel and taste. It looks like long nights studying history and economics, politics and culture and of holistic synthesis of information. Of bringing together seemingly disparate topics and finding the underlying truth that ties them damningly together in one, bloody, xenophobic American — and global — tapestry.

Virtue seems sooo hard.

Especially in these times. What may have been seemingly virtuous two, five years ago, really, was just feeding the voracious machinations of Elite power games and economic slavery expanded beyond race to include a planetary majority. Virtue is recognizing the state of the world and acting within it. Claiming your responsibility and driving all blames into One.

I am responsible, therefore I must act.

Maybe, it’s not so hard. Once you examine your innermost imperatives, burst the bubble that encapsulates your perception and make the choice to truly be what you believe and say that you are, hopefully proving, once and for all, to yourself that you truly do know who you are. That kindness is innate to your character. That humility is as well. That abstinence is a choice you can make and that diligence is likewise. That chastity and liberality contain within them the seeds of patience and understanding and that you can be these things because they are your birthright, suppressed by society and by choice as they may be.

For some, it will be realized that this is indeed a process that comes from their innermost Self and is a personal truth that creates space for the personification of a Greater Truth. For others, it will indeed be difficult and a chore and becomes more of a consciously chosen code, taken on as a shield against inner natures of a more base nature. That is the reality of our world and each to her or his own.

The process itself is both cause and effect. It is impossible to begin or end anything that is infinite and eternal. As science continues to confirm the ancient knowing that All is Mind and that consciousness is the very substratum of reality more and more individuals will embody that understanding in their daily lives and rise to the occasion. The occasion, is changing the world. But not really. Its essence is implicit in its manifestation and as all things that happen seem inevitable and fated once they occur, as the world turns more and more invariably toward higher expression it shall seem as if this cyclical, spiraling elevation was meant to be as well.

Until then, though, knowledge of Self is key. Who you are is your fate, your destiny. What virtues does your individual path call for you to manifest?

How can you effect change in the world? What is it that you and only you can do that you must bring forward and into fruition that will make others’ lives better?

Ask yourself, deeply. And see. Truly.

Then act.