On social media, people are pointing out what is good and what is bad or how others are bad and you’re good, and it gets rewarded. Through social media, we get social virtuous points such as likes and engagements by boasting about a certain thing. Contrasting this using sport as an example, we have rewarded the winners. The people who act, the one who runs the fastest, swims the fastest, scores the most goals. We don’t reward the one who says they run the fastest. On social media, you get rewarded for saying things that make you seem virtuous rather than acting on it. It explains why the site is full of opinions and the people who boast about being virtuous are often revealed to be hiding the fact that through actions they are not.
What is virtu and what makes someone virtuous? This is answered by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The answer is eudaimonia. According to Aristotle, the path that leads to virtue is also the path that leads to happiness or a happy life. In the book Nicomachean ethics by Aristotle, virtue is habit. It means that it can’t be taught. You can’t teach someone how to be a good person or how to act the right way. Instead, it’s something that comes through practice. One good act doesn’t make you a virtuous person, instead it’s something that you have to keep practicing through action and through habit.
If you strip down this idea of right action through habit, you could compare it to machine learning or self taught AI which works similar to how a human functions and learns. For example, if a self-taught AI wants to learn how to walk they need a motivating factor for that to happen. It could be moving from point A to B in the shortest amount of time and that’s the function that they need to maximize. When it learns it tries different behaviors many times over and over until it finds the most satisfying path which achieves that function. Basically developing habits of behavior to achieve their goal.
Looking at us humans, what is our motivating function? What is it that drives us everyday to get out of bed? And the answer according to Aristotle is happiness. Happiness is the root function for all our actions. If you make an example out of this, you could say what if you won $100,000. What would you do with that amount? If you say you want to buy something materialistic like a car, you can then ask again why do you want a car? You may answer to get from point A to point B. Well why do you want to go from point A to point B? You may answer to achieve a certain goal. And why do you want to achieve a certain goal? Well, achieving goals makes you happy. Similarly, if you say well I want to save my money because I hope in the future that it will make you happy.
If happiness is our function, why aren’t we all happy? Why is it so difficult? It’s complicated and difficult to achieve since virtue is achieved through action and habit helps us guide us through those actions. Aristotle points out that there’s an excess and efficiency to each of our actions. He describes this with a couple different examples which shows how many ways you can fail as a human. If you’re too scared of something then you’re a coward. But if you’re too fearless then you’re overconfident. Aristotle put a lot of emphasis on communication. If you get offended by humor too much then that makes you boring. If you make too many jokes then you’re seen as unserious. If you’re too sad or depressed if you are not sad enough you might seem cold or unbothered about certain things. He lists many of these examples on how to fail as a human but he points out that between each of these examples there lies the golden mean. It’s here that the virtuous person acts each time and through habit only can you find this mean in each situation you find yourself in but he puts emphasis on the capacity of each person. Some of us can only act within a certain frame based on who we are. For example, you see a fire in a building and you run in to save someone which is seen as brave and virtuous. But if you’re not strong enough to act on this, you could be trapped in the house along with the person and then causing more harm. You should, therefore, understand your capacity to act and then instead call the fire department as a way to help. Through that way you act virtuously within your own capacity. This leads us back to the word eudaimonia which technically translates to happiness and it’s a state of well-being that you achieve by finding the golden mean through right action and through habit. But what the word really means isn’t happiness, it’s more human flourishing. For many of us, there exists a gap between what we perceive ourselves being capable of and what we have achieved. And this gap creates anxiety for us. For some, there might be the opposite situation where you are able to achieve more but you don’t recognize it yourself. Eudaimonia, therefore, isn’t there for being happy all the time. That would be another extreme to the mean but rather acting virtuous because you enjoy being virtuous and it’s realizing your potential and acting upon it. That is the key to happiness. That is the key to eudaimonia.