Chivalry Of A Bygone Era?

"Early on he (Moltke) tried to convince the Nazis to abide by the Geneva Convention, but Keitel dismissed it as a “notion of chivalry of a bygone era.""

(Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke, legendary military genius and Christian who plotted with Bonhoeffer for Hitler's Assination)

- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Forcing Nothing Good?

"An act that is compelled is not virtuous." 

- Stephen Molyneux

Moral Back Alleys

"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov 

Implanting Evil - Foul Deeds Are Never Punished

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evil-doers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of Justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the "weakness of indoctrinational work", that they are growing up "indifferent". Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

 It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL. #1

A Humble Virtue

"And just as farmers behold with greater pleasure those ears of corn which bend and bow down to the ground, while they look upon those that from their lightness stand straight upright as empty pretenders, so also among those young men who wish to be philosophers those that are most empty and without any solidity show the greatest amount of assurance in their appearance and walk, and a face full of haughtiness and contempt that looks down on everybody, but when they begin to grow full and get some fruit from study they lay aside their proud and vain 277 bearing. And just as in vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard and threadbare cloak, 278 and transfer their training to the mind, and are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in their intercourse with everybody else;.... "

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.

Ideologies Rose Coloured Glasses

" Ideology - that is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the Agents of the Inquisition fortified their wheels by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the Grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. 

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroy these millions? Without evil doers there would have been Archipelago."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.

Virtue Sits In The Corner Silent

"From the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept: virtue triumphs, and vice is punished. 

We have been fortunate enough to live in a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1

When Morality Was Not Relative

"At that time the provincial University we attended the could not promise us anything more than chance to teach in a rural school in a remote area for miserly wages. The NKVD school dangled before us special rations and double or triple pay..... People can shout at you from all sides: "You must!" And your own head can be saying also: "You must!" But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don't want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without with me; I want no part of it. 

This came from very far back, ......

at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Passing From Flattering and Artificial Discourses

"..... so those who go in for philosophy, when they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and modest progress in virtue.

Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful." 

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher

A Delayed Frozen Mind

"Antiphanes said playfully that in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of mind, ....."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher

Are We Progressing In Virtue? How To Tell!

1st Century Greek Philosopher Plutarch.

"HOW ONE MAY BE AWARE OF ONE'S PROGRESS IN VIRTUE.  What amount of argument, Sossius Senecio, will make a man know that he is improving in respect to virtue, if his advances in it do not bring about some diminution in folly, but vice, weighing equally with all his good intentions, "acts like the lead that makes the net go down?" For neither in music nor grammatical knowledge could anyone recognize any improvement, if he remained as unskilful in them as before, and had not lost some of his old ignorance."

- Plutarch.  Plutarch's Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

You Are Better Than Stalin As a Marxist

"..... it's all socially constructed, which is really convenient if what to be the author of an entirely social constructed Utopia that you can run. And, then, when the Marxists say, "Well, that wasn't real Marxism", what it really means, and I thought about this for a long time, it's the most arrogant possible statement anyone could ever make. It means, "If I would have been in Stalins position, I would have ushered in the damn utopia instead of the genocidal massacres. Because, I understand the doctrine of Marxism and everything about me is good."

 Well, think again sunshine! You don't undetstand it. You don't undstand it, and you are not that good. 

And, if the power was in your hands, assuming you had the competence, which you don't, you wouldn't have done any better, and even if you had, there would have been someone else waiting right behind you to shoot you the first time you actually tried to do anything good. And that is what happened to all the old guard who ran the damn Revolution.  Stalin rounded them all up and shot them, along with their families and millions of other people. 

So, even if you do happen to be that Avatar of motal purity that you claim implicitly, the probability that you'd act out your goodness in relationshio to those possessed by your ideology is zero."

- Jordan Peterson. But That Wasn't Real Communism, Socialism, or Marxism".  Lecture.  Available on YouTube. 

Those Who Avoid Philosophy Wear Themselves Out In Useless Pursuits

"Next our freeborn lad ought to go in for a course of what is called general knowledge, but a smattering of this will be sufficient, a taste as it were (for perfect knowledge of all subjects would be impossible); but he must seriously cultivate philosophy. I borrow an illustration to show my meaning: it is well to sail round many cities, but advantageous to live in the best. It was a witty remark of the philosopher Bion, that, as those suitors who could not seduce Penelope took up with her maids as a pis aller, so those who cannot attain philosophy wear themselves out in useless pursuits. Philosophy, therefore, ought to be regarded as the most important branch of study. For as regards the cure of the body, men have found two branches, medicine and exercise: the former of which gives health, and the latter good condition of body; but philosophy is the only cure for the maladies and disorders of the soul. For with her as ruler and guide we can know what is honourable, what is disgraceful; what is just, what unjust; generally speaking, what is to be sought after, what to be avoided; how we ought to behave to the gods, to parents, to elders, to the laws, to foreigners, to rulers, to friends, to women, to children,......  that we ought to worship the gods, honour parents, reverence elders, obey the laws, submit ourselves to rulers, love our friends, be chaste in our relations with women, kind to our children, and not to treat our slaves badly; and, what is of the greatest importance, to be neither over elated in prosperity nor over depressed in adversity,  nor to be dissolute in pleasures, nor fierce and brutish in anger. These I regard as the principal blessings that philosophy teaches. For to enjoy prosperity nobly shows a man; and to enjoy it without exciting envy shows a moderate man; and to conquer the passions by reason argues a wise man; and it is not everybody who can keep his temper in control."

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher, Roman Citizens, and Priest of Apollo and Guardian of the Oracle of Delphi,