A Quiet Sunday's Musings

@kevcvs57 said
@philokalia said
“If I judge someone to be good in their heart and esteem them, I am loving my neighbor as myself.”
No your not! Your simply practising judgement and judging individuals as worthy or unworthy depending on how closely their beliefs and lifestyles correlate with yours. You could not be any less self aware.

What is encouragement?

Is it good to encourage others through praising their good qualities with the hope of them perfecting their virtues further, and therefore being more virtuous in other ways?

(All virtue is, after all, connected.)

@philokalia said
I do not think this is an emotion that is dominant among Americans.

I would have guessed that the most American emotion would be one that correlates well with the rugged individualism or high rates of piety that Americans have in the Western world.

I think individualism and piety are contradictory terms.

@philokalia said
Interesting take.

I would not have thought that this would correlate with piety, but moreso something like... gratitude, or humility, but in a sense, I totally now see why loss is there.

Ironically, Suzianne thinks that a huge amount of Americans have a false sense of piety.

I wonder how this would correalte to some universal America ...[text shortened]... ever the number may be) just do not have worth nor do they have to be considered in these questions.

Yes - I don't see "loss" as a particularly American "emotion" - though actually I think the point at issue is loss as an experience, rather than loss as a feeling.

Loss is a universal human experience. The truth of the human condition is that, in the end, we all lose everything - our youth, our hopes, our loved ones, our bodies, our possessions, our lives. Remember the old story about a priest officiating at a millionaire's funeral. "How much did he leave?" asks a member of the congregation; and the priest snapped back, "All of it."

One of the central purposes of religion (whether one believes in the truth of the claims it makes or not) is to provide mechanisms to allow to embrace and accept loss - with such emotions as humility, acceptance, transcendent hope for something beyond this life.

If you ask me, Donald Trump exemplifies the predicament of the peculiarly (perhaps uniquely) selfish Baby Boom generation, of which he is a kind of exaggerated exemplar. To judge by all appearances, he believes in nothing but himself; he loves nothing - not his wife, not his children, not his country, not his God - more than he loves himself; and now he's 76 years old, knows he's going to die soon, and is faced with the crushing existential despair of a man who has literally nothing to comfort him when faced with the prospect of his own personal extinction. On that basis, I guess I almost feel sorry for him.

@philokalia said
What is encouragement?

Is it good to encourage others through praising their good qualities with the hope of them perfecting their virtues further, and therefore being more virtuous in other ways?

(All virtue is, after all, connected.)

But it’s not you loving your neighbour as yourself it’s you judging them based on criteria that has more to do with your subjective worldview rather than any objective ‘virtues’.