I think this would be better with specific examples.
Characters in books often get in extraordinary situations—that’s what makes the books interesting. Are you complaining that you don’t find yourself in extraordinary situations? That should be expected.
Or do you have in mind some virtuous actions done in everyday life, that characters in books do and you don’t? For example, you never help other people, frequently shoplift...?
This is a good comment, thanks! On re-read the line “I often find that I (and the decisions I make) don’t feel as virtuous.” is weak and probably should be removed.
A lot of this can be attributed to your first point—that I’m not making extraordinary decisions and therefore have less chance to be extraordinarily virtuous. Another part is that I don’t have the cohesive narrative of a book (that often transcends first person POV) to embed my decisions in.
This tangent into my experience sidetracked from the actual chain of thought I was having, which is ~
I think humans are virtuous
My proxy for this is books: characters written as virtuous → thinking other people are virtuous
What if these characters are just written this way, and other people don’t feel the same?
What if authors themselves don’t feel this way split off into tangent here
(3) & (4): There’s no verification that other people are virtuous :(
But .. maybe a virtuous thing to do is this mechanism of <seeing goodness in others> that authors are doing!
Right now, you could take $1000 and sent them to an effective charity. That could be extraordinary (in the sense of: the vast majority of people would never do that) and virtuous!
So that is another way how things work differently in books and in real life—you wouldn’t get the emotional satisfaction of observing your impact. A book can also “cheat” by telling you about the impact even if the protagonist does not observe it.
I guess intelligence ruins this, too. You can do a virtuous thing by buying a homeless guy a lunch. But if you are smart, you will immediately realize that this doesn’t remove the source of his problems, and tomorrow he will probably starve again. But feeding him every day would be too expensive. Again, in a book, it would be likely that you only need to feed the starving person once; then they get to the goal of their quest, or find a job, or something; that is, a one-time intervention solves the problem.
I think this would be better with specific examples.
Characters in books often get in extraordinary situations—that’s what makes the books interesting. Are you complaining that you don’t find yourself in extraordinary situations? That should be expected.
Or do you have in mind some virtuous actions done in everyday life, that characters in books do and you don’t? For example, you never help other people, frequently shoplift...?
This is a good comment, thanks! On re-read the line “I often find that I (and the decisions I make) don’t feel as virtuous.” is weak and probably should be removed.
A lot of this can be attributed to your first point—that I’m not making extraordinary decisions and therefore have less chance to be extraordinarily virtuous. Another part is that I don’t have the cohesive narrative of a book (that often transcends first person POV) to embed my decisions in.
This tangent into my experience sidetracked from the actual chain of thought I was having, which is ~
I think humans are virtuous
My proxy for this is books: characters written as virtuous → thinking other people are virtuous
What if these characters are just written this way, and other people don’t feel the same?
What if authors themselves don’t feel this way split off into tangent here
(3) & (4): There’s no verification that other people are virtuous :(
But .. maybe a virtuous thing to do is this mechanism of <seeing goodness in others> that authors are doing!
...
Right now, you could take $1000 and sent them to an effective charity. That could be extraordinary (in the sense of: the vast majority of people would never do that) and virtuous!
So that is another way how things work differently in books and in real life—you wouldn’t get the emotional satisfaction of observing your impact. A book can also “cheat” by telling you about the impact even if the protagonist does not observe it.
I guess intelligence ruins this, too. You can do a virtuous thing by buying a homeless guy a lunch. But if you are smart, you will immediately realize that this doesn’t remove the source of his problems, and tomorrow he will probably starve again. But feeding him every day would be too expensive. Again, in a book, it would be likely that you only need to feed the starving person once; then they get to the goal of their quest, or find a job, or something; that is, a one-time intervention solves the problem.