Virtue ethics in a time of crisis

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In a stable and unified society, there is a shared sense of what constitutes the good life, and a person of good character.

The world is now in crisis, we all know that. Yet we often fail to discuss the consequences on our sense of self.

Faced with all sorts of systemic risks, far beyond our scope of action, we no longer know what the good life is, what’s ethical behaviour, or what a good person looks like. We’re therefore at risk of moral collapse.

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Virtue ethics is based on a belief that, in order to live a good life, we must cultivate certain positive habits, or virtues. We must develop a readiness to do the right thing. We must also nurture the wisdom to discern what the right thing is. By doing this, we become a person of good character, who therefore acts ethically.

This ethical stance is generally contrasted with two other models. Deontology sees ethical action as respecting a set of firm rules that we should never break, no matter how painful or costly. Consequentialism – effective altruism its latest popular incarnation – sees an ethical life as one devoted to minimising harm and maximising pleasure, for the largest number, whichever way measured. Meanwhile, virtue ethics places emphasis on the agent. Ethical actions are what an ethical character would do, with tradition as a guide.

Each tradition has its own framework articulating key virtues: Buddhism, Confucianism, Catholicism, Islam, etc. Beside a large amount of overlap – gentleness, courage, benevolence – virtue-ethical traditions have three fundamental traits in common.

The first is a belief in human perfectibility: we can change our default settings through deliberate effort.

The second is a commitment to education: societies should put systems in place so that people do develop virtues.

The third is an aspiration to effortlessness: we should build virtuous habits, so that we will do the right thing without having to fight against ourselves.  

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I’m the child of a divorce. One of the hardest thing I had to do growing up was reconcile the worlds of two parents who drifted apart, and inhabited widely different ethical worlds, with no communication between them. Navigating intercultural virtue ethics was a matter of existential importance. At times, it placed me on the brink of madness – but it also built a muscle that has proven highly valuable.

Inspired by a childhood spent in the European capital, languages and cultures were my way forward. Through philology and hermeneutics, I trained to question the relationship between words on the one hand, and thought, behaviours or emotions on the other. Through language practice, reading and international friendships, I learned to stretch my own ethical sense of self.

Later in life, marriage with an Australian and migration to Melbourne put all this to the test, quite successfully. I delved deeper into my own Catholic tradition – including by pursuing Ignatian spiritual exercises – while exploring Confucianism, and Buddhism. I also started working on ‘change-the-world’ type projects – global governance, engagement with China, regenerative finance, etc – all of which needed a good stomach to resist ethical sea-sickness. Meanwhile, I continued reflecting on virtue, and sharing my reflections on this blog.

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All virtue traditions involve a shared sense of ‘what humans are’ and ‘how the world works’. Without basic agreement on those points, how could you decide what positive habits we must nurture?

Today, with a world in deep crisis, we flounder.

Learning to perform better within existing systems and structures has become irrelevant. It’s unlikely that the world will be made better by me getting a job at Google. I should certainly not have a stake in maintaining existing structures of power in place. Yet alternative paths are unclear.

This blog is in part about exploring those paths. What can we and what should we do to shift the system? What virtuous habits should we nurture?

It is also – and mainly – proposing to do something more fundamental. That is, train a form of lucid detachment. Patriarchy, colonialism, neoliberalism, and a whole catalogue of obsolete mental models, hide behind self-evident truths. If we want a real chance to build something new, we need to defuse the cliches scattered across our shared mental landscape.

But even that is not enough. When we get rid of a cliche, nothing will immediately take its place. So we need to cultivate a form of intellectual calm, while we patiently wait for new connections to form, and new, better model to take shape. This virtuous habit we need, to stay calm in the face of mental chaos.

This is what I hope my blog can achieve, or at least go some way towards.

I encourage you to explore the various sequences listed under the header. Or if you want a place to start, check out The Seven Deadly Sins, Confucian Virtues, or this series on My Practice.

On Embodiment

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A few months back, a task popped up on my company goals page: ‘learn something new that gives you joy’. Three weeks later, I was attending a TRE workshop.

I first encountered Tension Release Exercises, or TRE, in the Philippines. In short, it’s about initiating a natural shaking reflex, as a way to recalibrate the nervous system after stress. The method derives from observing other mammals. Zebras famously do that, as do dogs.

Our culture identifies shaking as a symptom of anxiety. So we learn to suppress it. TRE takes a different approach. It’s not a symptom, but a coping mechanism. Why should we suppress self-regulation? Let’s trigger it instead, and feel better. So goes the wisdom of this practice.

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In June 2019, I was invited to join a pop up retreat called ‘Camp Creative’ in northern Bali. My friends Samuel and Ai from the School of Slow Media were organising it. They gathered a bunch of oddballs from around the region. We spent three days together, working on a creative project of our choice. 

The retreat began with a constellation mapping exercise. It was my first encounter with the practice. ‘What will you give yourself permission to focus on?’ was our leading question. To find our answer, we were invited to write down our name, and three to five possible projects, on separate pieces of paper.

We placed the papers on the ground, forming a pattern. Then we stood on them in turn, and paid attention to our physiological reactions: what was tense, what was exciting, what felt inert or boring. Other external inputs came up. We would face an open window, a pond or a brick wall. All this contributed to make meaning. We used our bodies as a sensing tool to track our deep intention.

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Back in 2015, I enrolled in a life-changing leadership program with the THNK School of Creative Leadership. That’s where I met one of my most impactful teachers: a body-mind mentor called Andra Perrin. She trained as a dancer, choreographer, and martial artist – with Qi Gong at the core of her practice. As a brainy boy, I had a lot to learn from her.

Each day started with her, loosening joints and slowly moving to feel our own bodies as a space of possibility. More impressive were optional sessions in the late afternoon. During those, she trained out capacity to bring people along simply by walking in front of them, or tested our own reactions to confrontation.

One memorable exercise came close to Jedi Mind Tricks. We would walk towards another participant, shake hands, and aim to ‘take centre’. That is, so to speak, bring the other person within our gravitational orbit. Andra taught us various ways to do that: anchor deep in the ground, focus and breathe, stay calm. The most effective technique, however, was to project images behind the other person. ‘Julien will take over,’ she predicted as I approached a CEO, 15 years older than me. ‘He’s got a stronger imagination.’ Smile on my face, I projected rainbow-coloured butterflies in the background, and took over.

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When you reach a certain age, and a certain level of education, it becomes rare to come across original thought. ‘La chair est triste, hélas, et j’ai lu tous les livres.’ Fresh voices are all the more precious. I originally discovered Jean Francois Billeter through my interest in China. He’s a sinologist, and wrote remarkable essays on the art of translation and the work of Zhuangzi.

At about the same time I was training with Andra, I came across his philosophical opuscule, ‘A Paradigm’. The book articulates a bottom-up model for human action, stemming from the body. One core concept is that of integration: the development of new gestures opening new possibilities of acting on the world.  

As our lives are increasingly digitised, it’s all too easy to forget our own embodiment. We look to the mind for problem solving, and our sense of self. Occasionally, we might acknowledge emotions. Unlike AI’s, though, humans are beings-with-bodies. Our intelligence is an emerging phenomenon, arising from our bodies.

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At the TRE class, I met a movement therapist called Mary-Claude. She’s a Swiss woman based in Melbourne, with a background in dance and choreography. She runs group classes, and one on one body-mind sessions. In April, I started training with her.

Every two weeks, we get together in a studio space in Cheltenham. The session begins with ‘shaking it off’, loose dancing around the space. Then she’ll ask me what I want to focus on. I’ll voice a problem I’m struggling with, and start moving around to feel it in my body. We let the gestures evolve, then pause to consider what those spontaneous movements might reveal about my way to frame the problem. From this, we look for further movements that might open original solution spaces. At the end of the hour, I know what to do.

I’m a brainy boy with and arts background. I love language, and I’m good with it. Still, I also know the limits of language for problem solving. It’s our default mode of being in the world. We use it on automatic pilot, most of the time. Break the cycle – tap into bodily wisdom – and fresh vistas open.  Every time I do this, I remember this quote from Billeter. That nobody knows for sure the limits of what a human body can do.

On questioning myths

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Reason must resist religion. It’s the pathway to liberation. This is a basic premise of modern rationality. Except, all too often, this principle is used to replace traditional with secular religion. Instead of questioning form – the blind acceptance of just-so stories driving norms and behaviour – we question content, e.g. whatever myths, norms or rituals have been put forward as truthful or important by religious leaders. As if the problem lay not in our relationship to stories and inherited frameworks, but only their origin.

With this comes danger that we fall prey to different myths. At worst, that we join cults and conspiracy theories. More insidiously, that we believe the truth of modern mythologies, engineered in states and corporations. That value derives from the bold initiative of genius entrepreneurs. That Europeans brought civilisation to barbarian shores. And a range of other just-so stories.

Resisting those myths is a needed effort. We need to clear fabricated truths from our brains, through constant attention to facts, and the structure of narratives. Some books provide precious help in doing this. Howard French, David Graeber, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Amitav Ghosh. One step further, we might even apply the form of rational freedom to the content of religion – as enlightened spiritual masters from across traditions encourage us to do.

In a world that pushes unquestioned lies down our ears, maintaining rational thinking demands active resistance. We must make the time and effort. Failing this, we will tumble into folly.

On the transformative power of love

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Who we are, what we do: both are inseparable. We guide our actions based a certain model of who we are, and how that person behaves. In turn, the sum of our past actions, reflected back to us from others – or contemplated in isolation – defines our sense of identity. And so we live, conscious pebbles hurtling along by force of inertia.

But wait! One thing can shift us out the rut. Love can. Not in a woo woo kind of way, no. There is a logic to spiritual madness.

Love is desire to bond with a person or a group. It’s an aspiration to be part of a new collective. And if we welcome love – as long as that love is not unrequited – we gain a new layer of identity. I’m no longer that person I’ve been up until then, defined by the series of my past actions. I’m someone else too, part of that couple, that team, that neighbourhood, or that family. The moment I receive and accept the possibility to be that new person, my actions follow. Inertia no longer equals fate. The course of my entire life changes.

Nothing else, that I know of, has similar power.

On containers

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I’m sitting on the terrace of WeWork, on Elizabeth Street. It’s a hollow space in the middle of the buildings. On the terrace, chairs and tables create further hollows. Members come and go, alone or in small groups, using those chairs and tables for focus and connection.   

Facilitators talk about ‘containers’. We create and hold a hollow space, so that new thoughts can manifest, or new groups of people bond. This requires a certain lay out of the room – chairs, tables, whiteboards. It also requires a structuring of the time spent together. Instructions, like a game, and time boundaries. It requires physical presence, keeping the boundaries to contain the flow.

Tool making comes in two forms. We sharpen the knife and the spear, true – but we also shape hollows, by molding the clay, bending the wood, or weaving the thread. Shields and walls define a safe internal space, where we can evolve. Birds know that, who weave nests. The home is a primordial tool, before the sword and arrow. This is where new life emerges.

On dissolving identity

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During a short trip to Sydney, I met up with an old friend for lunch. Inspired by the sensual delights of Double Bay, maybe, our conversation drifted to modes of eroticism. My friend expressed frustration with a partner. She was missing the pleasures of role-play: ‘the brain is the biggest sexual organ,’ she said. I paused and reflected. ‘This is so interesting. I realise, I have a very different erotic experience. For me, the biggest sexual organ is the body. Roleplay distracts me. I like to get out of my head, into pure physicality.’

Both modalities involve a dissolution of identity. The rigid form of ‘who I am’ must disappear for erotic pleasure to be possible, whether it’s in a flight of fantasy, or in a tide of sensations.

Later in the same trip, the thought came up again as I discussed creativity with another friend. ‘The biggest obstacle to divergent thinking,’ she proposed, ‘is attachment to identity, limiting the range of what is possible.’ She looked to the theatre for ways of loosening this attachment.

As we discussed further, I realised the same two poles emerged. It’s the door open to another world through roleplay, acting a character and becoming someone else. It’s physical presence on the stage, leaving the self to become resonant flesh. Good creative workshops involve both.

Is it the case, I wonder now, that in order to solve complex problems, we can tap into the resources of our preferred erotic mode. Two pathways to radical change: kinky role-play, or the vanilla pleasures of touch.

Walking the labyrinth

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This week-end, I went on a walk with a friend around Clifton Hill. There, we stumbled upon the Merri Creek labyrinth.

As I start a new role with a new organisation – both atypical – I find myself looking for clarity, both on my function and our collective goals. It’s easy to fret when things are emerging. The labyrinth offered a grounding experience. It’s an old spiritual tool, inviting us on a long meandering path to find centre. It reminded me physically that it takes time to reach the beating heart of anything – and the profound joy of arriving there.

In a world obsessed by movement, goals, and paths of least resistance, the labyrinth is a tremendous reminder that other models are possible. That the slower we move, the more we perceive. That shortcuts will get us faster to the end, but yield little self-awareness, or understanding of the surrounding system. And that the path to wisdom is never linear.

On hope

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I used to run design thinking events with international students. I would take them through a guided process, to find new ways of building intercultural connections in their environment. In the divergent phase, I saw radical ideas emerge – real original stuff. Then time came to select one idea and pitch. It was just a pitch, low stakes, not a lifetime commitment. Yet students would always pick the safest cliché – ‘Food brings people together.’  

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We commonly confuse two types of strategy. The first identifies the best way to reach a goal, given a set of constraints. I call this shallow strategy. The second – which I call deep strategy – questions and refines the goal itself, and the constraints.

For-profit organisations, in their immense majority, never reach the level of deep strategy. The goal is a given – make money. Corporate Social Responsibility, B-Corp charters and other ESG frameworks are only stricter sets of constraints. We’re still in shallow strategy. Make money while meeting a few sustainability criteria.

In my experience, not-for-profits and charities are the only structures that engage in deep strategy. Yet even there, even on the board, discussions often get stuck in the shallows. You know, those tedious discussions, where the goal is far from clear, and someone raves at length about the best software to use.  

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Apollo, God of oracles, was known as loxios, ‘oblique’. He revealed truth indirectly. The same applies to the Christian God. We have not a revealed book of truth, but the Gospels – four elliptic narratives about the life of Christ.

If we seriously believe in a God creator of Heaven and Earth, maker of all things seen and unseen, could that God not have chosen to engrave his commands in letters of fire, and held them floating in the sky above Jerusalem, for all to see? No, God decided that he would reveal himself indirectly – and let us free to believe – as a matter of deliberate design.

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This may be the most valuable insight I got from my two years in preparatory class. My French teacher was having a rant. ‘People speak of literature, and schools, and the Humanities, as if all this was ‘not the real world’. You hear that all the time. It’s not the real world. And yet here we are,’ he said, pointing his finger to the ceiling, then out the window, ‘I’m paid good money to teach you, we’ve got a huge library full of books on top of us, and this is prime real estate in the heart of Paris. I call this the real world.’

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There are two main forms of charity work.

One is remedial. It aims to reduce suffering, right here right now. It’s homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and blood donations. It’s firefighters and emergency room doctors.

The other is preventative. It aims to prevent suffering, at some point in the future. It’s public health, social work, and education design. It’s risk management, culture, and governance.  

The second is impossible, unless faith and hope complement pure charity.

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From the age of 18, I’ve had a Greek quote from Heraclitus on my desk: ‘ἐὰν µὴ ἔλπηται, ἀνέλπιστον οὐκ ἐξευρήσει, ἀνεξερεύνητον ἐὸν καὶ ἄπορον.’ In my translation: ‘As for what is beyond hope, it will not manifest unless you hope for it. It’s not something you just stumble upon already made. It has no shape of its own.’

On decentering

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When I was in Year 10, I was part of an exchange program with a school in Connecticut. Our pen pals came for two weeks in late Spring. One of my school-friends took his on a visit to Prague. I was surprised. It was the mid-90s, the fall of the Berlin Wall was still fresh, and Prague felt like a distant exotic place. ‘It’s not’, said my friend. I checked on the map, and indeed, from Strasbourg where we lived, it was only slightly further than Paris.

Growing up on a border, I had a distorted sense of geography. Everywhere, I was exposed to the French map – in history books, on TV, or on the jigsaw puzzles I enjoyed making. I lived somewhere on the top right corner of the Hexagon, with Paris as my off-centre capital. Beyond the borders, ‘there be dragons’.

That perception was based on linguistic, political and infrastructure reality. TV was made in Paris, transport systems converged on Paris, decisions were made in Paris, affecting the entire country. Also, there were other realities. Strasbourg was a European capital. It was midway through the Blue banana. Street names, food and architecture made Vienna familiar, Paris foreign. Sometimes, on my way to school, I would cross a few visiting dragons.

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My professional life has always been chaotic. I’ve always worn multiple hat. More: there is no clear vocabulary to describe the work I do. What has the most value may not bring the most money. Neither may be connected to my primary job title or affiliation.

This is hugely frustrating in standard networking events. ‘So what do you do?’ They ask, and I mumble a long-winded answer. Quickly, my reply triggers confusion, impatience, dismissiveness. Which in turn brings up dark emotions: agitation, frustration, embarrassment. And the conversation dies.

Earlier this year, I did a little exercise. I tried reflecting on what happened in those situations, using non-violent communication as a heuristic framework. Surely, those negative feelings on both parts were just about unmet needs.

Starting with my own experience, this is what I uncovered. I’m agitated when I see that, in spite of my efforts, I’m not coming across clearly. I’m frustrated that I can’t connect with the other person. Then comes embarrassment: as a professional communicator, I’m ineffective.

I didn’t have reliable input about my interlocutors, but in a flash I wondered – is it possible that our needs match? They’re confused, because I’m not giving them clarity. There’s too many threads, or unconventional words. They’re impatient because we don’t connect. I don’t have a one-word label they can recognise, why should they bother with a weirdo? Finally, they’re dismissive because they’ve got a certain number of people to talk to, I’m taking too much time for basics, and it’s not efficient.

Here was common ground then, and from this, I was able to go one step further in self-awareness. We all want effectiveness – but for me, busy work towards undesirable or vague goals is the opposite of effective. We all want clarity – which is why I question vague terms, cliches and arbitrary categories. We all want connection – but shared belief in neoliberal propaganda just doesn’t cut it for me. My sense of alienation was gone, I finally saw my interlocutors as human – and my desire to attend networking events faded.

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In 2007, when I started learning Chinese, a friend introduced me to PPstream. It was one of those sites where you could watch all sorts of movies and TV series for free. This was my first introduction to mainstream East Asian drama.

I remember watching this film. The protagonist was a Chinese man, who went on a trip to Japan. It rocked my world. I had never considered inter-Asian relations. Surely, Japanese people, and Chinese people, and Korean people, would have complex relationships with Europe. They would think about it, talk about it, and travel there. I never thought they would travel around Asia.

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A few weeks ago, I was at an event in the Collingwood yards. It was a bunch of environmentalists coming together to celebrate spring. There was craft beer, canapes, and music making. Yet I was frustrated. I invested hope in the event, and it felt a bit flat.

Looking back, I noted an ambiguity. The vibe indicated an event for individual change-maker to meet and bond. Yet when the organiser spoke, the goal was framed as facilitating new collaborations between organisations. So were we there as people, or as representatives?

I reflected further. Maybe the missing element was not clear focus, orgs or people, but rather, tension between the two. My sense of wasted opportunity came from that event not meeting my needs. I’m well aligned with myself, but I work in a shapeless in-between space. It’s lonely, and I was looking for connection. My first two conversations were with people in large organisations – government and university. Their emotional experience was very different, not lonely, but frustrated at inefficiencies and misalignments. Then I had a chat with a woman from a smaller org – well aligned, but overwhelmed. Her challenge was letting go.

What if this was a recurring pattern? What if people attempting system change had different emotions depending on the context of their work. Could this, then, be the right conversation starter: are you lonely, frustrated, or overwhelmed?

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The Internet is a global infrastructure, with no centre. This applies on multiple levels: connected cables and machines, common standards and protocols, then a shared set of global platforms.

Except, a few locations have disproportionate influence. New York, London and Los Angeles, media capitals of the global English language. Sillicon Valley, where global platforms are designed and headquartered.

In a talk I gave once about the Chinese Internet – back in 2014 – I ventured the word diversity. There’s censorship and control, for sure – but also, here’s a different system, with different platforms, different norms, and a different language. Based on the same shared infrastructure, it’s a whole parallel universe.

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We listen religiously to those people who discovered late in life how much happiness and meaning are more important than success and numbers. Meanwhile, we neglect those who spent their life in the pursuit of meaning and happiness.

On the pandemic

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Most of our lives unfold in controlled environments. We make plans. Our pride attaches to them. We fail to see the background work to make all this possible.

Mammals use most of our energy to maintain homeostasy. Same with human civilisation. It’s an effort to keep things in balance. We control temperature. We store food. We set norms.

Then war, nature, or the system’s internal chaos, tip things over. Plans fail. Our sense of self is damaged. We feel shame. We feel grief. We feel anger.

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Is a virus alive? It’s just a short strand of DNA, with extra protein and fat. Yet, it’s able to hack the cells of a living organism, and reproduce itself.

Each virus normally matches one species. If it crosses by accident – say when a pig eats a banana covered in bat saliva – the virus can’t reproduce. It eventually decomposes.

Except, sometimes, by chance, it works. Because living things have a lot in common. Poodles are very big amoebas, with a twist. More: viruses mutate randomly when they reproduce. Versions most compatible with a new host multiply. They spread. It repeats.

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Illness is loss of balance. The resources of the body go towards containing a foreign organism, or helping it multiply. Immune system goes haywire. Vital organs stifle and fail. Too much at the same time, and the body collapses into death. Or it rebalances itself, but on a lower plane, some functions lost. Or it heals.

Past experience will tell us how each illness runs its course. We know when to let the body fight alone, or when to intervene. In the case of a new virus, it’s all educated guesswork.  

We look for symptoms. Fever. Cough. Short breath. Fatigue. Rashes. Brain fog. Nausea. Pains. We test how early they start, how strong they manifest, how long they last. We list affected organs and tissues. Lungs. Brain. Blood. Skin. Muscles. Intestines. We count how many people die. We track long-term effects on survivors. We seek patterns.

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When the body goes out of balance, medical intervention can restore function. Painkillers and syrups relieve symptoms. Threats to vital organs can be warded off by various interventions. But no treatment has guaranteed success for all. Many come with danger.

The goal is to keep minimal homeostasy. As long as a person is alive, there is hope for recovery. When the system collapses into death, it’s too late for a cure. When one organ fails, others tend to follow. Time is of the essence. Better play safe, rest up and isolate.

Except, we’re not bodies only. We strive to keep physical homeostasy, yes, but also mental and social. We take pills to reduce pains and fevers, so we can play, care, work, and keep the systems around us functioning.

Except, we’re not in this alone. Medicine is not just about this person, and this person, and this person. It’s working with a certain amount of supplies, and hospital beds, and doctors, and nurses, and entire supply chains. Too much pressure, and the whole system collapses.

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How do you compare the preventable death of a son, sister, mother, friend, or grand-parent, to the collapse of a business, the loss of free spirit, or dreams never manifested, at population scale? How do you weigh the grief of crushed aspirations, versus the grief of early death? How do you balance inflation with trauma?

It’s hard enough to find answers. Factor uncertainty, preferences will shift. Some willingly gamble for a career, others for a loved one. Some want safety, some want agency, some want accountability, for themselves, or for all. It’s a maelstrom of passionate confusion.

To stop the chaos, we throw figures around. It’s unclear exactly where those figures come from, how accurate, or what’s left uncounted. Numbers have an air of self-evidence.

Lucky we trained in critical thought. We question the source. Mainstream media. Random dude on YouTube. Big pharma. Fame-seeking scientist. Lying official. Deranged nurse. Sprinkle a spoonful of deep fakes, leave it in the dark, and see the bubbles appear.  

When I was in grade 12 philosophy, I was warned off mathematics. Power likes to deploy them as a form of sophisticated puppetry, to distract or impress. Later, I studied formal logic. It confirmed this early suspicion. Most formulas are nothing but symbolic chiaroscuro, dramatizing platitudes.

In my experience, however, storytelling trumps data. When it’s all too chaotic, and we need a course of action, we follow plot, and we trust character.