The Virtuous Life

So I came across this very interesting series of articles on one of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness, the articles dealt with Ben Franklin's definition of virtue and the elements of living a virtuous life. I remember reading about this when I read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin, and again the general concept of virtue and what it meant to the Founding Fathers. And how crucial that was to the support for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that the government would only succeed as long as the citizens were virtuous.

So I am going to tag along to this and set up a spreadsheet along these lines, and just for the heck of it see how I do over the space of a week. I like to think that I live pretty close to what Franklin would have liked, but this will be an interesting exercise to see how close (or far off) I truly am.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Temperance
Silence	xx	x				x	x
Order
Resolution		x	x	x	x
Frugality		x
Industry	x	xx	xx	xx	xxx	x	x
Sincerity
Justice
Moderation	x	xx	x	xx	xx
Cleanliness
Tranquility	xx
Chastity
Humility

So clearly my biggest weaknesses are in the area of industry, of course the very fact that I am writing this while I am at work is an example of that. But I prefer to think of that in terms of my strengths versus weaknesses. A couple of year ago I took a Strengths test and determined that my strengths do not lie in the area of focused single task work. And since I work in a call center I am available and ready for a call so it is not like I am not doing anything. My other big weakness is moderation, particularly in the area of food. That is an area I can strive to improve on. It's an interesting self study, and I think a generally worthwhile set of goals to strive for.