Virtue vs. Vice: Purity and Lust

"If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be
enslav'd. This will be their great Security." - Samuel Adams,
letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779

As promised, here is the first in a series on virtue versus vice. As mentioned below, for America to return to greatness, we need to once again be a virtuous people. But, what does that mean? I'm hoping to go through each of the Seven Deadly Sins and their corresponding virtues, and show you how far we've fallen from the virtue and given in to the vice.

The first virtue on my list is Purity, and the vice is Lust. Not because I value this over the others, but because on the list I took it from, it was listed first.

We'll begin with the virtue. Purity is also known as Chastity. It's essentially living a morally wholesome life, free from the temptations of the flesh and, well, carnal desires. Going further, expressing this virtue is more than just not surfing adult sites or PPV, or faithfulness to your spouse - although these are key parts of it. It can also be extended to respectfulness towards the opposite sex, to not treating them as mere objects there for your personal use/abuse for pleasure.

If you;re reading this blog, and agreeing with a lot of what we've been saying, then you probably know you don't have to look too hard to see how far we've strayed from Purity and Chastity and given in to Lust. Many of us are guilty to varying degrees. I won't say all, I am sure some have managed to avoid it - I'm not one of them. Sex is pervasive in American culture. You can't even go to teh supermarket without running into it. Waiting on line at the checkout, you can't help but see the scantily-clad women on the magazines. You see it on billboards, catalogs. You get it thrown at you on television constantly. I try to avoid watching much TV but most of the prime time shows have revealing outfits or innuendo.

Why? It sells - the people running the networks aren't concerned with your well-being, or that of the country. They're there to make money. I don't fault them for that; it's capitalism and if they can make money on it, it's their right. They should use more ethical weights, but since the demand isn't there, they simply give the consumers what they clamor for. And people clamor to be titillated and teased.

What happens then? Well, people tend to view others as objects more than people. To a guy, a beautiful woman in a bikini isn't a beautiful woman - she becomes an 'it' - something there to make a man feel like a man. And the smae holds true for women, although I think they have better control over their base emotions than we do.

But turning a person into an object makes them less human, and when you view a person as a thing then treating them as a thing becomes easy. IN the case of a person, you lead to harassment, rape, murder. Callous acts caused by callous people who no longer see people as living, breathing equals, but as something there to give them pleasure.

So, how do we stop this? I think it's simple enough to say - stop giving in to the stuff being put out there. Remove the demand for it. Turn away from the vice.

And yes. It's easy to say it. Doing it tends to prove a lot tougher. People are addicted to pornography, in many cases they want to turn away but find themselves sucked back in. It's no different from drug addiction or alcoholism. The rush is the motivating force. People want to feel good, and that's the easy way to feel good. Turning from vice to virtue is HARD. As a friend once commented, "if it were all good times, every jackass would do it." It takes inner strength to turn away from the vice. I'm no expert on HOW to do it successfully. I just know WHAT is involved. The HOW is up to the individual.

I will continue with the others as I get time. And hopefully soon.

- F.D. for Two Joe Schmoes