Wednesday, March 19, 2008

[virtue] the forgotten art

Provocative picture in this day and age


How far are we today from the old Proverbs 31:
"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies."
Have to chuckle running that line - I can feel the apoplexy from here.

In our current days of being ruled by the dollar, the gonads and the ID card, who is actually remembering the old ways, the eternal values? So, in attempting to ascribe modernist meaning to this phrase, some revise the text to mean:

"Who can find a woman of strength?"

... when, of course, it means nothing of the kind. A virtuous woman will have inner strength merely by dint of her own virtuousness. A virtuous woman once [well last evening actually] came out with concerns such as:

I see that people in here are crazy enough to do anything so they can "eat". This is pathetic. And I hate to see greedy people. Anyway, the most concern is on the young people. These are the people that will change this country. But, we're facing the new problem: ideology. Now, young people think it's funny to be a virgin, it's "cool" to attend parties in clubs/bars, etc.

Quite unfashionable in these days to concern oneself with virtue, chivalry and the higher things which is why the more ornery among us would like to concern ourselves with these things. After all, if we're slipping into the new feudalism, why not go the whole hog and slip back to some feudal ideals at the same time?

More than a code of manners in war and love, chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life. That it was about four parts in five illusion made it no less governing for all that. ... With the help of Benedictine thinkers, a code evolved that put the knight's sword arm in the service, theoretically, of justice, right, piety, the church, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed ...

Was it Crosby, Stills and Nash who sang:

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

? :) [Oh dear, James has finally gone off the deep end, poor chap, hankering after days of yore where ladies were ladies and real men had hair on their chest.]

12 comments:

  1. I still think a virtuous woman has a price far above rubies and is rarer than one would wish.
    Of course the same goes for a virtuous man, priceless and equally rare.

    Remember that the good old days were never as good as one remembers them.

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  2. Is virginity synonymous with virtue? I'm not sure it has to be.

    There's a lot to be said about the goodness we perceive in the past. We forget that every generation had it's own struggles. But looking back, it's easy to view through rose tinted glasses.

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  3. james,

    i thought you were trying to convince me that you weren't an old fashioned conservative?!

    i do hope your irony has merely been missed by me, because wanting the 'good ole days of yore' to come back around seems like a naive dream (at best). i suppose if you fancy yourself as a knight or lord then feudalism and chivalry would be great, but for all us peasants i'd rather it didn't and stayed as what it is, a relic from the past.

    you also have to tell us what you mean by virtue beyond the vague ideas of 'goodness'. i'd say, after nietzsche, that "virtue is offensive."

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  4. As they say in these parts 'when men were men and sheep were frightened'

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  5. Well, I'm quite happy we live in times where men can be little fairies like me, and it's OK :)

    Purity is an inner virtue, not an outer virtue.
    It is about total selflessness.

    Galahad acheives the Grail, not because he is a virgin, but because he has no other love than God.

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  6. I was just going to ask you what you thought a virtuous woman was when Crushed distracted me with this comment...

    Purity is an inner virtue, not an outer virtue.
    It is about total selflessness.
    ;-)

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  7. Purity is decency. If a man does not show it, or a woman, it comes from something not right inside.

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  8. I agree with jmb - and with you, James [I think].

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  9. I think we are all agreeing on the purity issue xx

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  10. Our purity or decency is usually measured only by how others see us :-)

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  11. But what is decency?

    We're back to old equation- because it is an equation- the greater good. Do you serve the greater or good, or the details?

    Do you hold a door open for a lady, but defend her continued subjagation, or do you stop seeing her gender as putting her in a different species?

    We have anatomical differences related to reproductive differences.

    Our minds work exactly the same.

    Chivalry was a barbaric code.
    Laws of chivalry condoned the skinning alive of every adult male in Berwick Upon Tweed by Edward I.

    It condoned Richard the Lionheart's vicious genocide of Muslims.

    Just because dead people did it for years, don't make it decent.

    Neanderthals ate eachother for thousands of years.

    Some traditions are stupid. They date from superstitious times. Like marching down roads in orange sashes, heads of state with metal hats, having a month of the year where triple material consumption in an annual global orgy of consumer greed, and giving a damn how many lovers a woman has had.

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