Impostor Syndrome in Ethics
On Virtues, Vices & Anti-Virtues
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Defining your terms helps illuminate your values and positions in any situation where the points of discussion rely on words that
may be new to your audience, or
may have more than one customary meaning.
Generally, the earlier you can do this, the better; you don’t want to risk losing your chance to make this important “first impression” with your key ideas!
I led the most recent Sunday Buffet with a passage from an article last year in which I called patriotism an anti-virtue rather than a virtue.
And while I described patriotism in good detail, it occurs to me that I’ve never explained in writing what a virtue is. Let’s fix that oversight!
A virtue is a good moral habit. Its opposite is a vice: a bad moral habit.
Oops! Looks like I have to push this back even farther. What’s a habit? What makes a habit different from mere action?
From ‘do’ to ‘have’
Habit: a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance (Merriam-Webster)
A habit is not an isolated incident. Something becomes a habit the more you practice it. You strengthen the neural pathways involved in beginning and completing the action. This decreases your resistance to doing this action; it requires less deliberate effort to get started.
The origin of the word “habit” goes all the way back to the Latin habere, meaning “to have or hold.” This makes sense when we consider that habits become part of us; an action goes from being merely something you do, to something you have/hold about yourself.
This is why habits, once formed, are difficult to break. Both our minds and bodies have ingrained the pattern!
Not all habits have a clear, moral aspect. Whenever I open my kitchen drawer to fetch my spatula, my mind automatically sings the “Spatula City, we sell spatulas, and that’s all!” jingle from Weird Al Yankovic’s movie, UHF (don’t judge me!). It’s a habit, but it’s neither a virtue nor a vice.
For those habits that do have a moral/ethical component, there are almost always corresponding virtues and vices that battle for a person’s attention. The best way to break a bad habit is to develop a good habit that fills the void. The reverse is also, sadly, true: Vices can crowd out virtues.
This connection between virtues and vices was discovered thousands of years before scientists understood neural pathways. You don’t need to probe the brain and nervous system to know that some behaviors are mutually exclusive, and a person experiences turmoil when trying to hold these rivals in some sort of harmony.
The “Tree of Virtues and Tree of Vices” is one description from the Middle Ages of the opposition between good and bad habits.
The four classical virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, date back to the ancient Greeks. They appear in Christian literature, usually with faith, hope, and charity, to form the seven cardinal virtues; each virtue has a vice that can topple it.
And the “Seven Deadly Sins” are all vices with corresponding virtues to counter them.
Impostor syndrome
While a vice is often considered the enemy of a virtue, there’s something even more sinister that can poison good behavior.
A vice, after all, is a known enemy of virtue. But there are what I call impostor virtues: the cover looks like a virtue, but the enclosed book tells a different story.
Impostor virtues wear the mask and outer garments of goodness, but the actor’s deeper motivations don’t match the surface presentation.
These impostors are the anti-virtues. And they can be worse than obvious contra-virtues (vices), analogous to the Contra-Christ and the Anti-Christ I’ve written about.
Patriotism is an anti-virtue, because the thin film of loyalty and believing in something bigger than oneself, hides a foundation of in-group/out-group status seeking and its attendant double standards of human dignity.
Virtues are part of a well-developed conscience — a person’s inner sense of behavioral values — so patriotism’s prioritizing of the body-politic’s external validation furthers its anti-virtue quality. Letting an imposed, hierarchical social order do your critical, moral thinking for you, is a vice-like pattern of behavior. It indicates an underdeveloped conscience.
Which brings us to another famous anti-virtue: obedience.
Obedience, if you follow a good instructor, can result in good action. But the outsourced ethics of obedience mean it’s not a true virtue; virtues are always insourced ethics! The obedient person can commit evil as easily as good. In some contexts, disobedience is the mark of true virtue.
Young children are taught obedience precisely because they haven’t developed virtue yet. They act on emotion and imitation. Mimicking a good instructor can help build patterns of good action while the child’s cognitive structures are growing, so when the child reaches the ability to reason, he/she will have some known examples.
The problem is when people remain in obedience mode, never properly developing their conscience. Obedience is meme-level morality, which is woefully insufficient for a Christian, and likely detrimental to consent-based associations that anarchists/voluntarists seek to establish.
Nurturing good habits isn’t always easy. Reality isn’t always pleasant. And life is littered with impostors of well-developed ethics.
Take heart, though! As I wrote in my book:
But for those who persevere, it is worth all the effort, even if not immediately evident. It takes courage — then and now — to realize it.
Be a good neighbor and grow in virtues, especially if you have some vices and anti-virtues in need of replacing!
Develop good Comments
What good habits have you nurtured in your life?
Ever break a bad habit? How did you do it?
Can you think of more examples of anti-virtues (like patriotism and obedience)?
Got any neutral habits, like my Weird Al song involving spatulas? (was that too much information?)
Anything else on your mind pertaining to this article’s themes?
Let me know your thoughts below …
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And, as always: Be a good neighbor, even if it makes you a bad citizen.
" Disobedience is the true foundation of Liberty." Henry David Thoreau
Great article. I tried to think of other anti-viritues but they seemed to be related to pride or anger. Such as fighting for one's "honor" or "reputation" or creating division over a minor technicalities and calling it a "matter of principle" (no, you're just looking for an excuse to be angry).
I might suggest that family loyalty is an anti-virtue, as it may protect dangerous individuals or tolerate intolerable behavior. In some cultures, the pull of family is stronger than nationality.
Perhaps conformity is also an anti-virtue - doing what everyone else is doing for fear of being judged, condemned, or laughed at.