Commonplace Virtue?
What does being a virtuous person in today’s world really look like? Is Virtue found in most people, most of the time or it is rare and only the product of intense training and self-renunciation? Is human virtue is even possible?
Obviously, how common virtue is depends on the moral theory used and each theorist does off a description of the moral state of the masses. However, I think there’s a tendency to overlook the value of everyday goodness.
I would suggest that most people operate off a vague morality formed by a mix of cultural norms and inner conscious. They often don’t reflect very deeply and cultural norms provide inconsistent and conflicting messages. I also think the vast majority of people believe themselves to be moral, despite simultaneously suspecting others of immorality. An exception to this would be religious guilt or humility where people openly state and perhaps exaggerate their immoral nature. Yet I think being humble and aware of your faults is key to keeping them in check.
It’s also true there are some few immoral individuals (many are criminals) or blatantly selfish people. Though these are the minority yet aa we often say mess up life for the rest of us.
None of this really answers the question though if this common morality really produces virtuous people. Is it enough to be a loving family member, be honest in your job and obey most of the laws? In short to not be terrible and ruin it for everyone.
Are we called by God or by reason to be of greater virtue? I think of a Rabbi who once said that monkeys love their mates and their children and are kind to their friends and obey stronger monkeys. But this isn’t virtue.
What do you all say?
Obviously, how common virtue is depends on the moral theory used and each theorist does off a description of the moral state of the masses. However, I think there’s a tendency to overlook the value of everyday goodness.
I would suggest that most people operate off a vague morality formed by a mix of cultural norms and inner conscious. They often don’t reflect very deeply and cultural norms provide inconsistent and conflicting messages. I also think the vast majority of people believe themselves to be moral, despite simultaneously suspecting others of immorality. An exception to this would be religious guilt or humility where people openly state and perhaps exaggerate their immoral nature. Yet I think being humble and aware of your faults is key to keeping them in check.
It’s also true there are some few immoral individuals (many are criminals) or blatantly selfish people. Though these are the minority yet aa we often say mess up life for the rest of us.
None of this really answers the question though if this common morality really produces virtuous people. Is it enough to be a loving family member, be honest in your job and obey most of the laws? In short to not be terrible and ruin it for everyone.
Are we called by God or by reason to be of greater virtue? I think of a Rabbi who once said that monkeys love their mates and their children and are kind to their friends and obey stronger monkeys. But this isn’t virtue.
What do you all say?
Comments (52)
What is this virtue you speak of?
Not trying to be pedantic, just getting my head together.
Quoting MysticMonist
When I think of this subject and "most people" I think about something that happened to me in 2009, right after Obama took office here in the US. I was in Alabama at a job site driving around with the contractor's foreman looking at buildings and discussing how to go about working on them. As I tell people I am friendly with in the south - I am everything you've ever been told about people from the northeast - I'm loud, fast-talking, aggressive, and very liberal. I try not to talk politics while I am there.
While driving around, the foreman spontaneously told me that he prays for Obama every morning, even though I know he is a traditional southern conservative. And white. I was really moved. This was not a unique type of experience down there. Even as someone who doesn't think much about god, except when forced to by you guys, one thing I admire about Christians is that they do think about what it means to be good, even if they often fail to live up to their ideals, as do we all.
A virtuous person must have the traits of virtues such as gentleness and self-control. An upright and pure heart, willingness to work hard but the ability to prioritize which things are more valuable. A virtuous person cannot be virtuous on the outside alone but must have a reformation of the mind and even of emotions. And so on.
Virtue remains impossible to develop through training, but rather is more of obedience to the conscience. All people have a conscience, but also all have corrupted it so that no one possesses the ability to be perfectly virtuous. Often, I believe, many rationalize unvirtuous deeds, which leads to a slippery slope on to more deeds of the sort, greatly inhibiting what virtue they possess.
Attempting to live a virtuous life through sheer discipline will lead to a life of misery, as this will merely lead to a state of mind where one only recognizes the depravity of humanity.
Quoting MysticMonist
I very much agree with the statement of many believing themselves to be moral, but not truly being so. Humility is a virtue, so those who profess to be very virtuous but remain proud are not virtuous.
Quoting MysticMonist
No, that will not produce true virtue. It must come from the depth of the soul.
Not only have you set up rigid standards of what people must do to be virtuous, you have set rigid standards about how they must feel inside while they are doing it. You also say that I cannot call myself virtuous without being vain, and thus unvirtuous. So, everyone is either unvirtuous or their virtue is suspect. I say, give people the benefit of the doubt. Judge them by their actions. A truly virtuous person doesn't care what you think anyway.
On the other hand, it is my understanding that many of the worst Nazis were loving family members, honest, and obeyed the laws.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." - Jebus
The problem with morality, is that we're all big fat hypocrites, and we don't know how to change the world, by being the change we want to see in the world, by acting towards the wicked as we wish them to act, to embodying, rather than mouthing our virtues.
I am far from perfect, and I even go further than that and say that no one is even good, but this too is quoting Jesus: "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone."
Another way that truth telling facilitates the undermining of your own wickedness, is that if you don't pretend to be only helpful, only benevolent, only righteous and good, people then may guard against you as well.
Actually I think that’s the real question. Once you establish a concrete understanding of Virtue/morality/ethics then it would be pretty easy to see how widespread it is.
I admit I’ve not yet established a good enough understanding yet. I’ll finish reading Plato’s works and then maybe Aristotle’s Nichomacean Ethics and then the Stoics. If by then I still don’t know what Virtue really is, I’m probably hopeless!
There is another way to determine how widespread Virtue even I I don’t know exactly what it is yet is based off its fruits. The fruit of virtue is abiding contentment. A wise person takes consolation in virtue and has equanimity in all things. I suppose wisdom and virtue are two seperate concepts and you can be virtuous without being wise in the way you can have a healthy diet yet be ignorant of nutrition. Regardless, there seems to be very few content and equanimous people in the world. Though again content people don’t need to brag about their contentment.
I liked both your descriptions. They definitely point to virtue being uncommon.
Even if Virtue is too high of a standard to be fully attainable these descriptions suggest that the majority don’t ever come close.
I hope that by desiring Virtue for its own sake (or at least the contentment and self validation it brings) is a sufficient start. I find I have daily failures to be always kind and even tempered (I’ve got two young kids and am perpetually sleep deprived) and to avoid temptations of sloth. I wonder how significant these small short comings are? I suppose they do signal that I’m far from perfected and still have work to do.
I think you and I have disagreed about this before.
Quoting Wosret
You can be content while you are suffering or identifying with the suffering of others. Contentment is facing suffering head on without flinching. That's not something I can do on a consistent basis, but I believe some can and I may be able to.
That’s a really great thought. I remember dealing with this when praying Zen meditation and reaching content but detached states. I would hardly say this is moral.
I think there is a difference in self centered suffering because of one’s own desires and anxieties and compassionate suffering for the sake of another. Both are unpleasant but there is a nobility that comes from compassion and empathy that outweighs the suffering (otherwise you would be wisest to never have empathy).
I have met a few people who are completely not perfect but I think are good. These are not people whose goodness is obvious. Typically I've seen it when I've come to know them well enough to see into their hearts. I am thinking about the possibility that some people on this forum might even be good.
Don't worry Wosret - I'm not talking about you or me.
I just can't be a cynic, and believe that everything ultimately reduces to prudence, or selfish benefits. Call me averse, but I can't. Goodness is genuinely selfless, and not ultimately in your own best interest. There is more at stake than just me, the world's bigger and older, and will carry on long after I'm gone, and I wish to discover a way that truly benefits it, and is really good, without it being ultimately about me.
So are you saying we gain happiness/contentment/nobility/validation from virtue for its own sake really isn’t for its own sake? Instead it’s just another way to get something?
I don’t know.. I think we have an inherent desire to want to be good and be closer to the Divine. Is this still selfish?
I do think that this holy and pure desire to be good is easily corrupted into wanting to seem good or to be free of nagging guilt regardless of actual goodness.
Or did you mean something else?
I think that one should do good things, because they are good, and not because they are rewarding, ennobling, bring contentment, make one an uncommon jewel or something like that. I'm not like opposed to things that are good, and enjoyable for you, but they aren't necessarily related to the good in my view. You know, it is possible to be tortured horribly, and then crucified if you're good. Plato's notion of the truly just man is one that everyone believes is unjust, in order to set it up so that he isn't personally gaining in any way from it.
I think that there are both benefits and downsides to most everything, even doing the right things. There are also benefits to being wicked, otherwise no one would do it, or would only do it because they were ignorant of something important, but both the Buddha, and Jesus were tempted by the devil, and the temptation couldn't have been tempting unless it was beneficial to them personally and actually desirable things, as it doesn't set up the situations under the pretext that they are deluded, or deceived in any way.
True virtue is not physical, therefore it cannot be something that you do. Rather, virtuous actions are a result of true virtue.
Quoting MysticMonist
The issue is that perfect virtue is impossible to attain by yourself. Of course, you will have short-comings, and that is the case of all humanity. The harder you try to be virtuous, the more you will see that you can never attain it.
What put me on the path to become greater must have been reason. Reason put me here, and reason also tries to convince me daily to leave. Sadly I think it is through selfish desires that we eventually come to even try at what much greater men tried their entire lives. But, if we stay I can only think that it is through selflessness that we stay.
Quoting MysticMonist
I think that's the key difference between those who seek virtue and those who are fine with doing what they normally do. People might even be aware that what they do is wrong or not very nice; but if you don't think about it much, there's no room to feel bad about it.
So I have here:
Feel bad about what you did?
Maybe seek virtue?
Y: Mang, this is hard. Stay cause I like others and I will keep feeling bad if i go back?
N: Mang, this is ez. hard on conscience, but Donald Trump doesn't look like he feels bad soooooo...
It seems to me that the way we are talking about virtue or being good is very simmilar to conversations of “enlightenment” in Buddhism. You run into same problem of if enlightenment is common or uncommon or is any person enlightened at all. Claiming to be enlightened is a clear sign you aren’t.
The way I solved this for myself when studying Zen was to see enlightenment as a verb not as a noun or adjective. So as a Zen practicioner I was able to attain moments of “kensho” the awareness of “satori” or enlightenment that is always around us. I apologize for the Japanese but it’s hard to describe these things simply. But the basic jist that enlightenment is gained thru meditation only in meditation. It’s not a permanent state or one time achievement.
So on a basic level, you are virtous only when you are practicing virtue. No one is always virtuous. Are you virtuous when you sleep? No, not usually.
This can also been seen on a deeper level. If as Wosret states that only God is good, or all goodness comes from God, we are only good in and when we participate in God’s goodness (Kadosh or holiness in Hebrew). This also means that my mystical/contemplative practice and my moral practice are intrinsically linked, which is an intuitive truth.
I now understand the original question of are most people virtuous to be a misunderstanding of virtue. The real answer is obvious. A few people are rarely virtuous, most people are sometimes virtuous, a few people are frequently virtuous.
It makes sense then I feel like a good person when I practice good deeds but don’t feel that way all the time and when I make a mistake I feel rather worthless. It’s a moment by moment, action by action thing.
Up north here we say "you guys."
So we are discussing moral virtue. Though I don’t deny that if there is one Source of goodness and beauty and thus might be related. Creating a skilled and inspired painting might be morally good.
This was clear.
I’m in SW Virginia so I do use y’all. Fun fact: my town of Lynchburg is home to Liberty University a gigantic super conservative Christian college that pretty much runs everything. They just finished this large tower to be higher than anything else in the city to house their theology program. I think they need to reread their Old Testament!
As I see it, it's somewhat "aggressive" to say that "this isn't virtue." How does one not thereby project a non-obvious duty? This ordinary restraint and decency is the basic foundation of freedom. I leave you alone to wrestle with God if you leave me alone. I recognize your freedom. Lots of self-righteous violence and contempt flows from idiosyncratic notions of virtue that transcend this ordinary decency. It's not "innocent" in a certain sense to negate this ordinary virtue. IMV it's often the prologue of a superiority play that wears an angelic mask.
Maybe it's virtuous to remain open about virtue. I think wrestling with this question is arguably philosophy itself. Perhaps we always already act on some possibly blurry notion of virtue. We spend our lives tinkering with or even revolutionizing this concept. Perhaps to "harden" on this matter is to lose something good.
For what it's worth, I'd call it the higher selfishness, the good selfishness. Isn't 'selfishness' usually employed to call out a sort of 'cheating' in interpersonal relationships? Unfortunately 'healthy' self-interest suffers from guilt by association. It feels good to love. By following our profounder pleasures we arguably move closer to God or virtue. So the un-virtuous man is being selfish in the wrong way, inefficiently. If we oppose virtue to enjoyment or good selfishness, how can we avoid framing life as a miserable, guilty duty? Where 'God' is anti-human and we are cut in half by opposing motives?
Loving someone doesn't always make you feel good. It doesn't have to be the opposite extreme, of either ultimately rewarding, or ultimately punishing. It can be both rewarding and punishing, circumstantially, without being relevant at all to the goal.
From my perspective, it generally feels good to love, though I see that there is vulnerability in this. We suffer when they do, to some degree.
Quoting Wosret
I suppose we disagree on something basic. I'm opposed to this opposition of virtue and "higher" self-interest. That makes virtue an "alien" essence. It makes us "sinners" of necessity. In a worst case scenario it's a hatred of humans, since even their higher self-interest must only be a distraction from virtue, not virtue itself.
On the other hand, I understand that goodness may require sacrifice. A person might even sacrifice their life to protect others. But for me this is just an extension of the self to include those others. Love is this expansion of the self, as I see it.
I do think "selfishness" is an abused word. If we use it in the ordinary pejorative sense, then clearly it's a vice. It's the name of a vice. But there's a guilt by association, so that happiness or enjoyment is commonly understood as a sin.
But, yes, in the "higher" sense I think we want and strive for a "higher" fulfillment, expanding the self so that the virtue of others doesn't cause envy or guilt. Or it causes a "good" envy/guilt that inspires us to a joyful sense of moving in the right direction. The closed-up self wants to lay down the law, stamp out freedom. It defends its "crystallizations" of itself.
IMV, We [can] participate in a "flee floating" virtue. So you and I probably agree that "petty" egoism is a low state. But I think that at-homeness and serenity are or at least can be manifestations of virtue. If we never find a sense of gratitude for the world in all its imperfection, then IMV we are doing it wrong. But I don't want to project this as a law.
Happiness is commonly understood to be a sin?
IMV, yes. Two manifestations that come to mind are the understanding of spirituality as essentially political and also pessimism.
For [a certain kind of ] politicized spirituality the individual has an "infinite" duty to fix the world. It is wrong to be 'complacent.' Admittedly excess in this direction is often enough viewed suspiciously. Because beneath our "moral vanity" there is a deep love of health as manifested in happiness. Away from our own "excessive" investments and projections of duty, we are clear-sighted enough to see a morbidity in hand-wringing the-world-is-ending hysteria. So I'm not denying that there is a middle-of-the-road position that looks down on both the idiot as private person and the "crazy" who doesn't know how to laugh and enjoy what is good.
The pessimist implies that there is virtue in the knowledge that life is evil, so that unhappiness becomes (accompanied by the right words) a measure of the higher, intellectual virtue of possessing the truth, of holding onto it virtuously like a hot coal in one's hand.
Can you point out a single person that holds those views?
I went to high school in Martinsville. We moved there when I was 15. I don't really belong in the south.
Surely you read other threads on this forum. I think you're being disingenuous.
Rather than picking on anyone present, I've tracked down some examples for you.
[quote= Barth]
And now to my socialist friends who are here present: I have said that Jesus wanted what you want, that he wanted to help those who are least, that he wanted to establish the kingdom of God upon this earth, that he wanted to abolish self-seeking property, that he wanted to make persons into comrades. Your concerns are in line with the concerns of Jesus. Real socialism is real Christianity in our time.
[/quote]
This is a direct reduction of Jesus to social justice. "Religion is politics."
[quote= Zapffe]
The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.
In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.
The dread of being stares us in the eye, and in a deadly gush we perceive how the minds are dangling in threads of their own spinning, and that a hell is lurking underneath.
But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologico-cosmic terms: He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities. From this moment on, he is in a state of relentless panic.
[/quote]
That Zappfe bothers to speak this terrible "truth" implies that his knowledge is a form of virtue, IMV.
That Schopenhauer guy, like one guy. Russell said that people that are depressed, like people that sleep badly are often proud of the fact, and given under ten percentage of people are actually majorly depressed, and I doubt all of them would characterize happiness as a sin, and depression as a virtue... that's like super liberally 5% of the population, super liberally. One guy that I know of on the forum, hardly common.
I'd be interested in pointing out like a known public figure, not just the one guy on the forum here. Even Shopenhaucer hardly held that happiness was a sin, unattainable, maybe, bad not a bad thing.
That Zapffe can turn a pretty good phrase, that was fairly engaging, though neither of them said that happiness was a sin.
As I said, away from particular "moral vanities," we all respond positively to health and happiness. On the other hand:
[quote=MLK]
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
[/quote]
This is what I have in mind, the accusation of neutrality. I'm not even defending neutrality, or at least not presenting it as a necessity. I'm suggesting that there's something "morbid" in this conflation of doing the evil and standing by, tolerating it. It suggests to me a "making guilty" of the detached mode. He who is not with me is against me. Happiness, from this perspective, is only justified or innocent, if it is accompanied by the fight for social justice. The self is only "correctly" fixed as this same self fixes the world.
Here's the intro to the article:
[quote=article]
On this anniversary of the March On Washington for civil rights, I have been looking for some choice quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. One pattern that I have found is his clarity in speaking out on complacency and inaction. Those who do nothing while witnessing injustice and wrong-doing do worse than those who commit acts of injustice. The privileged have a responsibility to do what they know is right.
[/quote]
The complacent are worse? A self-concerned happiness or complacency is presented as worse "sin" in this context than the active violation of others. I'd analyze this as a manifestation of the resentment the idealist feels toward those who are not persuaded by his particular crystallization of virtue. He hates them more than the "bad guy" who after all makes his virtuous role possible. Cynically speaking, the "real" enemy is the "complacency" that refuses to recognize the idealist's moral authority. To be fair, I think this "dark side" is mixed with genuine empathy and laudable intentions. I don't reduce social justice rhetoric to vanity. It just tempts us toward an "excess" or closing of our minds.
https://paradoxologies.org/2010/08/28/martin-luther-king-jr-on-complacency-mlk/
Sounds like Mill's "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing". You know that MLK was a big time plagiarist? He plagiarized, and took credit for a lot in university, and it wasn't even uncovered until 1991.
Hadn't heard that. I've heard the rumor about womanizing. I never looked into the plausibly of the womanizing rumor.
The FBI gathered wiretaps and information about his infidelities and then sent him a letter threatening to release the information if he didn't "do what he needed to do", which he thought meant kill himself, but they maintain only meant resign. Whether he just liked conversing with a lot of women, and emotional infidelity is disputed, as the tapes never actually were released, gotta wait ten more years until they are to find out the juicy details.
Although there is some dialectal retention of the original plural ye and the original singular thou, most English-speaking groups have lost the original forms. Because of the loss of the original singular-plural distinction, many English dialects belonging to this group have innovated new plural forms of the second person pronoun. Examples of such pronouns sometimes seen and heard include:
I hear "youse" (z sound on 's') in the midwest; whether it is ethnically derived (eastern European) or an affectation of working classness, I do not know.
The better to throw heretics off of...
Are we complaining that the person who, more than any other person, precipitated the most important social change, the best thing that has ever happened, in US history plagiarized other people's work and cheated on his wife? Did you expect perfection? He gave his life for what he believed in. I wonder if he even thought of himself as virtuous.
I assumed it was built to house the language departments.
I think most people are at least reasonably virtuous, though "virtue" might not be a word they would use to describe their own behavior. Parents teach children the basics of virtue, unless they (the parents) are mentally, emotionally, or morally ssdefective. Virtue, for most people, is a behavior rather than a philosophical system. They live lives in which they behave properly (more or less), obey the rules of social interaction, obey the law, put in an honest days' work
Quoting MysticMonist
Quoting MysticMonist
I am happy with that simple definition, even if it not a complex system. I would be even more happy if everyone hewed to being so virtuous as your simple formula.
involves prerequisites:
being able to love others
recognize the great value of loving families (even if many are not)
the ability to be patient and caring
having honesty as a trait in the first place
understanding or exercising the necessity of mutual honesty; (we can't do business if people aren't honest)
being responsible and diligent
understanding civic responsibility
understanding where their own rights end, and someone else's begin
having the capacity to discern very important laws (insuring one's car, obeying the speed limit) from less important laws (not putting enough money in the parking meter)
Are there more heretics in the language departments than the theology department?
I was going back to the irony pointed out in MMs original post on this subject.
At least heresy is more severely punished by English teachers than by theology ones. At least double the risk of defenestration. (I got to use that word in context, so fun).
I have a sister in law who is a middle school English teacher. I thought she would be interested some aspects of philosophy of language or my rejection of standardized grammar (my posts take a brave stand there!) or my criticism of being taught MLA citations only to use APA in my career. I even shared my thoughts on the philosophic undertones of commonly assigned high school literature and the ascetics of literature in general. You’d never guess this, it’s shocking. But instead of being greatful for my insights I was nearly defenestrated and I never bring up language or literature around family gatherings again.
In contrast, after discussing withmy very conservative, evangelical grand father in law about the Gospel of Thomas we politely agreed to disagree. I fear the grammar police more than the inquisition.
I was thinking about some of your points when I posed my question. If everyone in world just avoided being terrible and didn’t commit murder, or significant theft and other very bad things then the world be instantly much better with far less suffering. It wouldn’t require us to be saints just no one to be completely terrible. Just a little bit of decency and morality universally applied would go a long, long way.
I think I’ve mentioned the Jewish teaching about the noahide covenant on the forum before. But it’s 7 laws that as a gentile you can follow and according to the Jews merit life in the “world to come” even without being a Jew.
1. No idolatry
2. No blasphemy
3. No murder
4. No theft
5. No sexual immorality
6. No eating limbs torn from live animals
7. Help establish just laws and courts
If have violated or do in the future violate one of these, repentance and atonement is requried but it’s not one strike and your out. The Rabbis also interpret there pretty narrowly so
Sexual immorality basically means no rape or adultury but doesn’t include many lesser sexual impurities.
Again it would be nice if everyone was a noahide and lived by those laws. But as someone who practiced being by a noahide (Judiasm light) for about a year I quickly found it lacking in greater depth or where to go from there.
is more specific; I would agree that it isn't very 'deep' -- except for #7. #7 has more depth.
Someone who has fulfilled your initial minimum, or 1-6 of the list of 7 is ready to go further. They have learned how to behave themselves. Behaving ourselves is a good share of morality.
Conceiving just laws and courts isn't the only thing remaining. There is nothing proactively positive, forward looking in the list. Someone who is in a loving family has a good start. But (at least to me) one should strive to "love more". Love more actively. Being minimally good doesn't include acts of mercy. One's family, job, and legal compliance doesn't include seeking justice.
At least as I conceive of it, "morality" is more than the minimum. It looks beyond the family; it examines the work place critically, and is prepared to judge the laws to which we are compliant. There is nothing about the good of generosity towards those in need. As Hosea put it, Do justice, love mercy...
It's good that people are in loving families, are good workers, and obey the rules. But the value of the good is diminished when they see injustice and say "Well, that's not my problem." "No, I don't want to get involved." "I gave at the office." "I never sign petitions." "No, I won't give you a dollar for food; you'd just waste it on booze--get a job, you lazy bum." and so on.
It's good to give to beggars: it might be more good for the giver to part with a dollar than for the bigger to get the dollar--or more. Sure. They might spend some of their money on booze -- well, so do I. They might be lazy, just like I am lazy sometimes. But begging all day is rather hard work. I generally assume that they can't stand the constraints of working with other people on the job, so begging is about all that is left. I have quit jobs several times because I just couldn't stand working in the place. Found my coworkers positively loathsome.
So, morality includes discerning the situation in other people and not judging too harshly.
We engineers would rather pitch them out windows or slit their throats.