Human Actions #9.1

There are two ways for me to practice virtue.  The first is to find people who I believe can reveal it to me. The second is to it myself because my heart is true.  I prefer second approach, the "self-directed virtue" way.  For who can know what good that exists in me if I am unable to accept the truth of it?

We as human beings all have a starting position of a lie.  We lie to ourselves about what we think we can achieve, we lie to ourselves about the meaning of life, we lie to ourselves about...well I don't need to keep finishing these sentences off because if we all have a starting position in life of a lie, then I am not spending any time with my own truth by so continuing.

It is clear to me when truth is all there is left carved out of the block of falsehood, usually that analogy is directed to the sculptor and there are other phrases such as "G-d is in the details" etc. but how can this be my personal truth, if I have not bothered to undertake the arduous and sometimes plain difficult journey that requires patience and true grit.

We often think in terms of dualities, but my life tells me that there is an endless spectrum of possibilities.  So having said that talking in dualities is not a prescribed truth, I shall because of cerebral wants, continue to plough on to outline "TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE"...

1. Decision Making People

2. Calculating People

I view decision making people as those who train their brains and the purposes of this reflection about "self-directed virtue" it is just that, that this is my own cerebal gym work to try to achieve the greater goal, which is living a life of authentic and livable virtue.

Calculators however are those people who invest in being one author or book ahead of everybody else.  These people live a kind of life where the "f" is removed and utilized as a descriptor for their life, and the remaining letters of life, hold their actual truth...in other words, they are not focused on the complexities of decisions but the assembly of calculated actions and living life from a state of imitation, rather than innovation.

The reason I am so pessimistic about "Calculators" is that computers are more efficient at doing calculations than human beings, and that is where "Decision Makers" are different in my view.  Prescience about the future should be noted here - for leading futurists have envisaged an age in the not so distance future where the possibility of huge advances in artificial intelligence will make the "calculator" redundant, an age where we need more "Decision Makers".

So I am not concerned about who is or who is not a "Calculator" but I am trying to figure out how to be a smarter "Decision Maker".  The difference I believe lies in the focus on VIRTUE. In this regard Aristotle is more valid today than he was in the halcyon days of Greek democracy.  I realize that just like compound interest, virtue is something that is accumulated over the long-term, and no amount of thinking or writing my thoughts out here is going to change that fact.  Indeed if I think that I can attain virtue simply by thinking out aloud in an exercise as I conduct with "Freedom Oasis", I will be effect, consuming a lie.  Truth requires the doing to transform virtue into a virtuous life.

So what is my next decision which will add virtue rather than mere value to my life?

Revisit what needs revisiting and open up new opportunities because to live in truth, requires this much and anything less than that is verbal nonsense or at least something that we can refer to as a "lie".

e.g. Self-Directed Virtue

[Em] @ "THE PLATO CAVE"