Virtue or Impact?
On Goodness as a Merit Good
The ancients, particularly Plato, seem biased towards cultivating good character and good habits; towards saving one’s own soul. Focusing on social impact is a distraction as it’s a matter of luck, pride and/or hubris. A good soul doesn’t worry about making the world better, but about doing one’s part; if others benefit, that’s incidental. It doesn’t matter too much whether a good soul reaches 10 or 10,000 souls.
Moderns seem biased in the opposite direction, at least those who come out of Western universities. Whether its maximizing profits or social good, there’s an assumption that if you’ve discovered something it’s best to be missionize on its behalf, to reach vast quantities of people. Something something Moore’s Law.
Here’s an odd idea: what if being good in the virtue sense is a merit good? A merit good is something that is good, but that is under-appreciated. Not everyone excels at being virtuous, and so for those people who are mediocre at being good (pardon the expression), a focus on impact makes sense. But just as Tiger Woods shouldn’t mow his own lawn, says Econ 101, so the truly virtuous, the saints, etc. should outsource questions of impact to others. Let the sales people worry about things like growth.
Ok, this is sounding kind of Machiavellian, and also rather like the distinction between church (virtue/soul) and state (impact/system).
You might say that it’s a false choice and that one should be virtuous and also care about impact; or that it is virtuous to care about impact, etc. But provided it’s an either/or and that there are tradeoffs between virtue-focus and impact-focus, how do you decide where to situate yourself? Is it just a matter of temperament?
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