Morals and ethics are standards of behaviour. What is right and wrong. What is good and bad. What is light and dark.
Morals are standards of behaviour decided by you as an individual.
Ethics are standards of behaviour decided by a social group, a community.
Virtues are those behaviours that are deemed to be good.
Vices are those behaviours that are deemed to be bad.
Habits build behaviours. Behaviours turn into your character. If we could choose our behaviours, what behaviours would we choose?
To help, it might be worth looking at someone else’s. Let’s look at Aristotle. The example is: when you are faced with fear and you need to combat it with confidence.
The virtue would be the good behaviour. The good behaviour would include the right amount of confidence to combat the fear. We will call this virtue ‘courage’.
The vice would be bad behaviour. Aristotle suggests there are two vices. When you have too much confidence, you can behave with ‘rashness’. If you have too little confidence, you can behave with ‘cowardice’.
We could do this with all our behaviours.
Aristotle argues in Book II of Nicomachean Ethics, the man who possesses character excellence, does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.
And this character is built from our behaviours. And our behaviours are built from our habits.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle
Doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way is a habit that needs to be built.
Let’s start with building the habit of doing the right thing.
Let’s start to build our virtues.
Virtues
If we are not sure where to start with virtues, it might be worth looking at someone else’s.
Aristotle had 11 virtues. Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnificence, Magnanimity, proper Ambition, Truthfulness, Wittiness, Friendliness, Modesty, Righteous Indignation.
Benjamin Franklin had 13 virtues. Temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, humility.
Remember virtues are good behaviours. The above behaviours are those that Aristotle and Benjamin Franklin believed we’re good. Good for their lives.
That is something to note. Perhaps we need to choose our own virtues. The behaviours that we believe will make us who we want to be. The best version of ourselves.
For example, I know I struggle to be assertive. I am plagued with self-doubt. But when I am assertive, I tend to bring the best out of myself. So assertiveness would be on my list of virtues. The behaviour I would want to encourage in my life. It is the person who I would want to be.
Personally, I would also want the following virtues (behaviours) in my life: courage, authentic-pride, patience with others, minimalism, vitality.
These are what I work toward. These are the behaviours that will make me the best version of myself.
Vices
Remember, vices are bad behaviours. It might be worth looking at someone else’s again to help us think about our bad behaviours.
Let’s bring back Aristotle. For every one of his virtues, he has two vices. When he had an excess of what was needed and when he was deficient in what was needed. For example, if he needed confidence to combat fear. An excess of confidence would lead to rashness. A deficient amount of confidence would lead to cowardice.
For each of us personally, we could look at the bad behaviours we find ourselves falling into. It could be drinking alcohol, smoking, stealing, fighting, getting angry, putting people down, gambling, social media, over eating, under eating etc etc.
There will be a few that stand out for each of us. For myself, I don’t smoke, I don’t steal and don’t gamble, so these don’t really apply to me. If I get overly stressed or depressed I might drink more alcohol than I should. If I get frustrated, I can get angry and end up shouting. If I get bored, I spend too much time on social media, watching videos and surfing the internet.
These bad behaviours take us away from being the person we want to be. From being the best version of ourselves. When we feel stressed, depressed, frustrated or bored, we need to find different behaviours or habits to replace them.
We also need to remember that drinking alcohol, getting angry, frustrated or bored is not all bad, they do have their place and their uses. Drinking alcohol in moderation has been shown to reduce heart disease. It is a great accompaniment in celebrating life. Getting angry can be a great motivator to do difficult things. If you get angry with someone, it can highlight how important this subject is to you. Getting bored can force us to be more creative. To see things from a different perspective.
The obstacle is the way
Perhaps the vices we are trying to avoid can dictate the virtues we need to move towards.
If we find we avoid doing a lot of things because we are afraid, perhaps we need to practice courage.
If we find we don’t do certain things because of self-doubt, perhaps we need to practice being assertive.
If we find we get easily angry with others, perhaps we need to practice patience.
We should also recognise those good behaviours that are important to us and that we find easy to do.
If we like keeping things clean and tidy, we enjoy practicing orderliness.
If we enjoy committing to something and seeing it through, we enjoy practising perseverance.
If we enjoy doing difficult things, we enjoy practicing self-pride.
Takeaways
Morals are those standards of behaviours that you as an individual decide are good or bad. The good ones are called virtues. The bad ones are vices.
By figuring out who we want to be or what our best-self looks like, we can decide what virtues will lead us there.
We can choose the virtues that lead us away from our greatest vices. These vices are our big pitfalls. These are the behaviours than can stop us from getting where we want to go.
There are other virtues that are important to us and we enjoy doing them. We need to celebrate these virtues. It is easy to gloss over them, as they come to us easily. Especially if they are leading us to where we want to go.
We should then monitor our virtues. Make sure we are practicing them on a daily basis. They are the path to our destination. The path to becoming who we want to be, the best version of ourselves. We need to make sure we are following the path.
Footnotes
Aristotles Virtues
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics
Benjamin Franklin’s virtues
http://www.thirteenvirtues.com
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