I’m certain I’m not alone when I say, I want to be a better person. But that’s not easy. There are certain faults I have, that I know I have, that I just can’t seem to get past. One being a lack of self-motivation to write these reviews.

But how do you know what is a fault, and what is a virtue? My favourite example of this being: ‘faith.’ A lot of people think ‘faith’ is a virtue, and I could not disagree more. To believe in something when there’s no evidence for it, and even when there’s evidence to contradict it, is in no way a good thing. In fact, it might even be a sign of insanity.

To give you an example, let’s say a friend of yours swears that he did not brutally murder his girlfriend with a chef’s knife. He’s your friend, you trust him, and so you believe him. I can understand that. Now, lets say he swears this as he’s holding a chef’s knife, dripping with fresh blood, and standing over his girlfriend’s mangled corpse. If you still believe him at that stage, you need psychiatric care.

So I guess it’s good in moderation. Trust a friend, sure… until he proves you can’t.

But are there any absolute virtues? Traits that are always good, in all cases?

Tenacity’s a good one; the desire to never give up. It’s what got me through high school, and my first attempt at college. And most of the major advancements our society has gone through was only possible because of people who refused to give up when things got tough. The suffragettes, the civil rights movement, NASA…

But on the other side of the coin, you have those people who are trying to build perpetual motion machines. People who think that if they work hard, and keep at it, they can defy the fundamental laws of the universe. I imagine if they ever do succeed, it’ll just cause a system error and our entire universe would blink out and be replaced by a blue screen with white text on it.

What about honesty? Well, sometimes you have to lie. Take all those people in Nazi Germany who sheltered Jewish families during the holocaust. Honesty there would’ve gotten innocent people killed.

So, these traits are good in moderation. But too much of them can cause insanity, or just being downright evil. But there is one virtue which I think is absolute. One you can never have too much of: Integrity.

Integrity is basically being honest to yourself. Having a solid moral code you live up to, don’t compromise on, and don’t back down from. Of course, being completely immovable on basic issues isn’t good. But that’s not integrity, that’s just being stubborn. Take gay marriage for instance. Let’s say a politician who was against gay marriage suddenly 180s because he met a gay couple who seemed really nice, and were very much in love, and it made him realize that these people have as much a right to get married as the next couple. That displays a profound amount of honesty and integrity. On the flip side, if he changes his mind because a gay advocacy group promised him a million in campaign dollars, that would do the opposite.

So yes, integrity is most certainly a virtue. And such a virtue seemed to be the theme of a recent episode of Littlest Pet Shop. Continue reading →