Virtue Pays Also

The philosopher Rachel Lu responds to my Promiscuity Pays with an article on the blessings of her life and the need for virtue to rightly enjoy those blessings. After describing an enjoyable day with her family, she writes in The Virtuous Life Is the Good Life:

I marvel that, in the world as we now know it, this can be a fairly normal day, in the life of a fairly normal person.

I don’t think I’m too naïve about the modern world. I know that it can be lonely and dehumanizing. I know as well that the world is full of temptation and vice and false promises. Also, my life is a little heavier on drudgery than the above would suggest. I can afford exotic teas and museum memberships, but not servants. The time I spend perusing classic literature is unfortunately dwarfed by the time I spend sweeping, scrubbing and wiping sticky hands. For ordinary folk, life will always involve a fair amount of plain, uninspiring work, no matter what tricks and toys technology manages to offer us.

Nevertheless, I don’t think we should forget that our materialistic world really does yield some wonderful gifts. What it doesn’t supply is direction as to how to enjoy these goods appropriately and moderately. We are free to eat and drink and drug ourselves literally to death, and the elevated and ennobling pleasures must be carefully selected from a veritable torrent of garbage. . . .

This is where virtue comes into the picture. It develops our minds and shapes our sensibilities such that we can discern the good from the bad. The virtuous person can enjoy his meat and good wine without destroying his heart or liver.