On Not Being Inspiring: A Better Way of Being Good

Less Inspiration, More Aspiration and Education

Inspiration is easier than education, but ultimately, has a very short life span when it comes to the moral life. Most of the moral life is boring, and that’s okay. No: it’s good, actually.

It’s been over a year since I began writing this newsletter, and one of the key values that I aspire to here is to resist the clickbait urge. There are a great many things to be concerned about in the world, but by depicting all the world as on fire and in need of heroism does no one any favors. Much ink has been spilled writing against the need for moral saints; no one can live into perfected vision, the argument goes, or meet the maximal need which heroism calls for. But this is too far: to say that perfection is not possible is to say simply that we live moral lives in complexity (with too many factors) and in time (that even our best thought out works will be undone).

We still need inspiring stories, stories of people who’s moral heroism gives us a picture of virtue and goodness. The lives of the saints, the Martyrs’ Mirror, Acts 8: all of these present us with pictures of inspiration, of people we wish to be like. But to indulge in these alone comes at a great cost. ¹

Inspirational writing, I think, is to writing what charisma is to performance: an affective hook which makes you think “I could do that too!”, but without giving you any of the tools to actually do it. It’s a subtle bait-and-switch, for inspiring reading apart from educative reading provides us with a basis for the moral life which is both unstable and impossible.