THE JOY OF VIRTUE

Alexander McCall Smith says that a moderation of individualism and a return to traditional values could turn out to be the pandemic’s unexpected silver lining

It's not all doom and gloom as Alexander McCall Smith points out the silver linings of the pandemic

It’s tempting in times of disaster to write about disaster – after all, it’s staring us in the face every way we turn. But after a while, we become tired of reading about the bleak, and yearn for something different. And that’s where Pollyanna comes along, skipping cheerfully and finding silver linings; or even Voltaire’s creation, the great Dr Pangloss, who, infected with Leibniz’s optimism, found everything to be the best of all possible worlds.

We have been bombarded with bad news and dire predictions, and yet it is possible to think of other things without being Pollyanna or Pangloss. There are positive things coming out of the eighty-four horse-power, six-cylinder train wreck we’re currently living through, and one of these is a realisation that there still are such things as virtues, and these are worth cultivating.

Many of us, I suspect, are keen to turn over a new leaf now the public health emergency is over, and are thinking about the lessons we might take from our recent experience. We don’t want to be lectured or condescended to by the chattering classes; but we do want to think about who we are and what we might get out of life. In other words, we want to do what philosophers have always encouraged us to do: we want to lead the examined life.

The traditional virtues are those you see emblazoned on Victorian tea cups, embodied in transfers of high-minded young women helping the weak and extending a hand to the needy. Other traditional virtues include modesty and patience, both of which have their place in the list of qualities to which we aspire. Or used to aspire to, perhaps, because encouraging the virtues became distinctly old hat in the second half of the twentieth century, when philosophers stopped talking about them.

The focus was now on the individual, on the self, and the pursuit of authenticity. What mattered now was the autonomy of the individual. It did not matter so much what you were like; what was important was you were able to express yourself freely. Liberal individualism was the prevailing current and any idea that we should encourage others to realise the virtues within themselves was seen as old-fashioned, intrusive, and even objectionable.

So many of us entered the uncharted waters of the recent past without having given much thought to the traditional virtues. We had, in this country and indeed in others, spent the last few years fighting amongst ourselves. Our political discourse had become bitter, divisive, and recriminatory. We all witnessed the hurling of insults, the failure to seek common ground, the flourishing of crude identity politics. We all saw the atomising of society, at national and international level, into mutually distrustful groupings.

And then, quite suddenly, in an immediate and local crisis – one that touched just about every part of humanity – we witnessed a sudden and moving flowering of the human spirit. This did not happen on a grand stage – it happened right under our noses in the very ordinary context of human sickness and need.

People fell ill and needed help. They got it. At every turn brave and selfless people risked themselves to help others. Not only were there begowned and masked doctors and nurses, there were police officers and bus drivers and the crews who came to take the rubbish away. There were those who did their neighbour’s shopping for them, waiting long hours in queues.

There were people who greeted strangers on the street as they took their prescribed exercise. Courtesies that had been lost seemed to return naturally as if they had always been there. They probably were; it was just that we have forgotten the days when it was polite to greet others even if you did not know them. That habit has survived in the remoter parts of rural Scotland, but in towns and cities it has long been forgotten. Until now.

Kindness and hospitality are both virtues that our changed circumstances have made us think about once again. There have been opportunities for kindness that people seem to have seized wholeheartedly. People are speaking kindly to one another. They are thanking one another. They are giving gifts. They are responding generously to appeals to support hardship funds.

Hospitality is returning too. That particular virtue was on life-support during the emergency; how much more pleasure we now get from the giving and receiving of hospitality having endured that experience being removed.

Scotland was closed at every level for over two months, and it was not always an edifying spectacle. The rejection of unwelcome visitors at times seemed vindictive and nasty, giving rise to unattractive I’m all right Jack-ism. People were justifiably worried about the spread of infection, but encouraging people to shun and report those breaking rules can leave an unpleasant taste. Ultimately, we needed to remind ourselves that we were all in this together, and that frightened and perhaps irrational others needed sympathy alongside censure.

But that has passed, and the new selves we want to be will, we hope, embrace trust and hospitality as everyday virtues. Roll on virtue ethics. Goodbye liberal individualism and all its selfishness and divisiveness. Welcome back to community, courtesy, and care for others. Perhaps these things never entirely disappeared. We hope.

“There are still such things as virtues, and these are worth cultivating