Social Virtues

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the process of letting go of grudges and bitterness.

When someone hurts you, you can hold on to anger, resentment and thoughts of revenge — or embrace forgiveness and move forward.

— Mayo Clinic

Tolerance

Tolerance is the practice of having a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.

— Teaching Tolerance

Sympathy

Sympathy is the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else’s trouble, grief, misfortune, etc.

— Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition

Empathy

Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.

Empathy is known to increase pro-social (helping) behaviors. While American culture might be socializing people into becoming more individualistic rather than empathetic, research has uncovered the existence of “mirror neurons,” which react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.

— Psychology Today

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vanguard3

C.S. Lewis on modesty and societal propriety

“The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of “modesty” (in one sense of that word: i.e. propriety, or decency). The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle.

Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally “modest,” proper, and decent, according to the standards of their own societies; and both, for all we can tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste).”

— Mere Christianity