All right, welcome back to Young Hertics Conversations. This is our Friday interview series, kind of goes along with the Tuesday episodes where I talk through the history and traditions of the West some of the great works of the canon and most recently the

Virtues the Cardinal Virt virtues actually just finished our series on the

cardinal virtues if you listen to the episode what justice ain't you'll hear the

concluding reflection that I give on justice which is the last of the four that we tackled and what I love

about talking through that kind of stuff about focusing on virtue as a concept

as a tradition as a history of thought, is that it has a positive shape to it, a positive

direction.

In other words, when you look and think about virtue, you're not actually just saying no no no you're not saying

this is bad this is bad to do of course thinking ethically thinking about virtue

does end you up saying well certain things are wrong but ultimately what I've been

arguing throughout this whole series is that virtue is fundamentally has the

character of love it's about aiming at some good.

And I think this is so urgent when everything is falling apart as it seems to be

and when you log on and you see like example after example of people behaving badly

stuff that you know is destructive and wrong

ways that you don't want to be and we have these algorithms designed

to serve that up to us because people know that it gets us riled up

but what it does is it creates this negative ethic this ethic that we have where

we know exactly what we hate what we don't't want, what we want to move away from.

And all that time, Satan is rubbing his hands and laughing because the diabolical scheme

at work here is to keep you from thinking about what's good.

Thinking about what's evil and wrong is one way for you to never turn your attention to what

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