What It Is, Why It's cool, and How To Build It

"Under peaceful conditions
a warlike man sets upon himself."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

article assembled by
LiveReal Agent "Blake the Clean" and "Magnellyn"

 

A few ideas that would make
a lot of uptight scientists mad:

Man Carving His Own Destiny

You are not a bag of genes.

You are not a bundle of conditioned reflexes.

You are not a two-legged animal with an overgrown intellect.

You are not your car, your job, your clothes, income, house, watch, or savings account.

You are not a large blob of hormones.

You are not a slave of brain chemicals.

You are not a cluster of instincts.

You are not a bucket of flaws.

You are not a puppet of television, music,video games, pop culture, or peer pressure.

You are not a self in desperate need of esteem.

You are not the end-product of events that happened when you were two.

You are not measured by the size of your salary,expense account, or stock options. . . . unless you let yourself be.

 

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Talk to us: info@livereal.com.

"Are you really you
or are you
what people have told you
you are?"
- Leo Buscaglia

"CHARACTER."

We hear the word a lot.

We hear and talk about someone having "lots of it" or a "lack of it" . . .
we hear how we're supposed to build it, change it, or develop it, etc etc . . .
we hear how we are supposed to get rid of some parts of it, keep other parts of it . . . we hear how we "reveal" it or "discover" it . . .

. . . But what is it?

One might think that all the fuss we all hear about "character" nowadays is more than just empty hype and posing.

"We say we want a renewal of character in our day
but we don't really know what we ask for.
To have a renewal of character is to have a renewal of
a creedal order that constrains, limits, binds, obligates and compels.
This price is too high for us to pay.
We want character but without conviction;
we want strong morality but without
the emotional burden of guilt or shame;
we want virtue but without particular moral justifications
that invariably offend;
we want good without having to name evil;
we want decency without the authority to insist upon it;
we want moral community without any limitations to personal freedom.
In short, we want what we cannot possibly have
on the terms that we want it."
- James Davison Hunter

And so, while digging through this complex, immense, awe-inspiring task, have your trusty and valiant LiveReal Agents completely figured it all out?

Well . . . no.

But at the same time, we figure it is worth looking into.

But, being the noble, valiant, magnan . . . magnanim . . . um, the swell characters we are, we figured we'd better do whatever we can to get the bottom of it . . . or at least, maybe make a little progress.

(OK, so maybe we didn't succeed, but hey, don't blame us for it. It was our genes' fault.)

 

So, first stop . . . What IS Character?

It's The LiveReal Quiz,

. . . can you take it?

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