May 20, 2024
one of the people i hold in highest regard is a man with vast ideological differences from me; he is a staunch conservative, and if one cannot tell by now, i am not. politically, we do not agree on many things – reflecting on it, i cannot recall a single issue on which we are in full agreement. what instead makes him feature so prominently is his unmatched quality of character – there are few others i’ve had the pleasure of meeting who i can say the same about.
the espoused philosophy of conservatism. in a platonic ideal sort of way (rather than how it is practiced), from the post-american revolution view, upholds liberty and the continuance of the american character, this character defined by both “rugged individualism” and the “rights and responsibilities of the individual’’. though i do not believe that conservative actions live up to these and that they are misguided, there is a glimmer in this which deserves respect. the aforementioned man lives up to these virtues in a way that few do; if i were to trust somebody in my stead he’d number chief among the nominees. that which i must respect is his near-unsurpassed commitment to hard work; at one point in time he held three jobs while remaining a full time student and committed to his other duties.
this is all said within the context of thinking of another friend of mine lamenting the fact that english is bereft of the language of virtue. this is terrible for the reason that language shapes the way we think and therefore our actions. it is much more difficult to instruct one to do the indescribable. and so we must retreat to that which we have at hand.
in this i will speak of duty in a very narrow sense before casting a light at its broader concept and the deficiency of it. as a narrow view, all have the duties which are asked of them by others via relation. a small duty which i have is to carry my grandmother’s walker for her when she uses the stairs as she cannot carry it with her. this is an obligation in the smaller sense as she is family and larger as it is a good. no time will be spent defining good and evil – you know it when you see it.
moving outward, duty requires of a person that they do what they can. benefits may exist in return for these duties, but are not a given; rather duty is that which is done because it is good. a critical thinker may call into question the definition of good, arguing that it is relative to the time and place these actions were taken in. to be fair, i would be hard-pressed to mount a defense of slavery, human sacrifice, or the oppression of women in its many forms. frankly, this good is restricted to the stated ideas of an open liberal society, which we have both not yet realized and continually unfolds to the present day. the dual prongs of duty relate to the best one does for others and that for themselves. the beginning friend is an exemplar in the personal and social realms.
the reason why i mention my conservative friend is also because of an issue i take with some groups of people who more frequently than not espouse some form of leftism; this could very well be selection bias due to age, the narcissism of small differences, or that one thousand excuses have always existed in the name of shirking one’s duty. nevertheless, it seems as if certain left groups with lofty ideas avoid the concept of duty. this comes in many forms (think self-care) which prioritize the needs of the individual at the cost of their and others’ long-term wellness. avoiding the pain of helping those less-fortunate, of hard work, and of prioritizing others is not easy and simultaneously necessary. retreating to one’s espoused ideology is a renunciation of these demands. in my more left frame of reference, it would be easy to pin this type of sin on the fact that many espoused leftists are not actually so and instead have happened upon this ideology because it is socially convenient to them or that they gain some benefit from it; furthermore, they have internalized capitalistic demands for atomization under the guise of what they think leftism to be. if “cheating on your spouse is a symptom of adhd” (and therefore permissible) is a belief in genuine relation to leftism, i would like to exist. luckily, it isn’t.
how then are we to move to a culture in which duty is afforded its proper dignity? like everything, this is a problem of collective action. few would like to be a first-mover. to make it expected that people are rewarded for duty would undermine the purpose of it. as well, unanonymized praise serves as a kind of social reward, though this alone would not be altogether terrible. rather, duty must be a must, an absolute unconditional in the face of circumstance. we must hope that by generating more pillars of light, others hope to describe them and emulate their example.