I’m on my third day of tracking my virtuous troublemaking. While I still don’t think their focus on daily rating your virtuous behavior is the most effective approach, I have enjoyed how using this app enables me to think about what I want in a virtue app and also what the practice of virtue on a regular basis might look like. I did my reflection/evaluation for day three this morning (on day four) because I didn’t have time or energy last night. In the summer–maybe because of the heat?–my brain shuts down around 4 PM. Oh well. I ranked myself at a 3 out of 3, partly because I’m over the ranking system and partly because I did spend a lot of time during the day thinking critically and creatively about the world and my work. I even mapped out an outline for my troublemaking book (next step: find a publisher!). Here are my thoughts from the reflection box: Another somewhat arbitrary ranking here. I put it at a 3 because I did get to write about troublemaking a lot today. Should writing count? Is tmaking just about thinking? Did I challenge anyone else today? Connections with an in relation to others? Still stuck on evaluation here. My reflection here is helpful for me in thinking through how often we should practice tmaking.
One key concern I keep coming up against with this app is its lack of guidance in helping the user figure out what virtuous practice is and whether of not they are engaging in it. What resources does the user have to draw on when developing their own plan for tracking and reflecting on virtue? I suppose the most obvious answer to this question is Ben Franklin. But, what about other sources? The brief quotations that they provide from Franklin don’t offer enough substance for really thinking through virtuous practice. I find this to be a big problem with self-help/self-improvement products (books, apps, etc) in general; they provide quick answers without any larger vision to back them up.
As an aside: for some reason, I seem to be fixated on self-help this summer. I am struck by how self-help can take philosophical/intellectual/dense ideas and makes them more accessible to a wider range of audiences. Unfortunately, this accessibility quite frequently comes at the expense of complexity/deeper vision and is done for the purpose of selling products/ideas/ideologies. What are some other ways to make critical self-reflection and virtue ethics accessible (and compelling) to folks outside of the academy? What about care of the self? I’ve found a couple of sources on Foucault and self-help that I need to check out, including this one:
Rimke, H. M. (2000). Governing citizens through self-help literature. Cultural Studies, Volume 14, pp. 61-78.