![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/1\/1c\/Banksy's_graffiti_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1448438.jpg\")
We become more particular in our virtues and more general in our vices; unique in our good dispositions and crowd-like in our evil ones. <\/span>The adulterer moves with a predictability ready-made for cheap comedy: Now he cheats, now he feels a shallow penitence, now he buys guilt-presents, now he professes his love, now he retracts it, now he hides in a closet, now he erases his texts\u2026and so it goes. Everyone \u201cgets\u201d jokes about adultery because everyone \u201cgets\u201d the adulterous man at a glance \u2014 there he is, under the bed with no clothes and a bad excuse. We do not \u201cget\u201d the faithful man at glance \u2014 and so there are no easy jokes about fidelity.\u00a0Adultery is as repeatable as a bad pun. Fidelity is as unrepeatable as a wedding vow.<\/span><\/p>\n Love knows no color. Envy blossoms in predictable\u00a0shades of green. <\/span>Love \u2014 by which we desire the good of the other \u2014 is unique as the people it loves. Envy \u2014 by which we <\/span>hate<\/span><\/i> the good of the other and whine when he attains it \u2014 type-casts its subject into a sour-sneering, lemon-sucking, side-glancing, all-belittling ball of resentment forever downplaying the successes of its neighbors. Love can be stern, gentle, comic, and tragic;\u00a0now buying one man\u2019s beer, now smashing another\u2019s Bud Light on the kitchen tile with a righteous shout: \u201cFriends don\u2019t let friends drink water flavored with the sweat of wage-slavery!\u201d Love has no type, but envy does \u2014 the slavish, self-centered egoist incapable of rejoicing in any\u00a0greatness besides his own.<\/span><\/p>\n Evil recommends the lowest common denominator, but t<\/span>he problem with the lowest common denominator is that it really does make one common, just as the problem with the path of least resistance is that every one takes it in the same manner \u2014 by not resisting. Chesterton famously said \u201ca dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.\u201d To this I would only add that dead things rot, and as they rot, become more and more like the next rotting thing \u2014 mushy, indistinguishable lumps.\u00a0<\/span>All evil is a kind of laziness, a choice for something less than a due good \u2014 something easier than the acts of love, patience, magnanimity, and humility that are demanded of us. It is the tool of the tired, the weapon of the weak, and the gospel of the impotent. And though there are as many ways of striving to attain a good as there are goods and men to attain them, there is no uniqueness is the moral laziness of not<\/em> trying to attain a good \u2014 one need only\u00a0cease trying, to acquiesce to temptation, and become\u00a0the repeatable type that evil would have him be.<\/span><\/p>\n The game\u00a0continues:\u00a0If I get any donation<\/a>, no matter how small, I will regard it as a challenge, and post again within the next 33 hours. Follow my\u00a0Facebook page<\/a> to see if someone has already challenged me to post! <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Peace can show itself in a trillion ways, like beekeeping or re-reading Tintin comics without distraction. Anger, infinitely easier, shows itself in cliches \u2014 the threatening voice, the clenched fist, the malicious gaze. Wisdom is manifested according to unique situation that it confronts \u2014 now it penetrates this mystery, now that; now it offers counsel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtue-ethics-that-dont-suck"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ielon.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mancrying.jpg\")