16.7 — Character: Becoming Somebody You Would Respect

Ask people what they want to be and they answer with achievements. Ask them what they want said about them at the end and the answer is entirely different — and it is always about character.

That gap is the subject of this page, and it is the last practical thing before the programme.

What character is, given everything in this volume

Not a fixed essence. From 9.1 and 11.2: behaviour is driven substantially by situation, and the belief that you have a stable good character that will hold under pressure is exactly the belief that makes people vulnerable.

And not nothing either. People do differ consistently, and the differences predict things.

The working definition that survives the evidence: character is the set of behaviours you reliably produce, in the situations you actually encounter, including when it costs you something.

Three consequences.

It is domain-specific. Somebody scrupulously honest about money can be unreliable about time. Global verdicts throw away the useful detail (10.8).

It is built by repetition (8.7), not by decision.

And it is partly a property of your arrangements. A person who never puts themselves in situations where the wrong thing is easy will have better character than an equally virtuous person who does — which sounds like cheating and is actually most of practical ethics (11.2).

The virtues worth working on

Aristotle's framing is still the most useful: a virtue is a disposition sitting between two failures, and either extreme is a vice.

Courage — between cowardice and recklessness. Doing the thing that frightens you when it matters, which in an ordinary life means saying the unwelcome thing far more often than anything physical (11.2).

Honesty — between deceit and cruelty. Not saying everything you think. Not saying what is untrue.

Kindness — between callousness and being unable to hold a boundary (13.4).

Justice — between indifference and self-righteousness.

Temperance — between excess and joylessness.

Humility — between arrogance and self-abasement. The accurate version, which is knowing what you do and do not know (1.7).

Reliability — between unreliability and rigidity.

And patience — between reactivity and passivity (5.9).

The Aristotelian point that matters practically: you become these by doing them. You become courageous by doing frightening things, not by deciding to be brave. Which is 9.8's mechanism, stated two and a half thousand years earlier.

The four that do the most work in an ordinary life

If you are choosing, these have the highest return.

Doing what you said you would. The most underrated. It builds self-respect (5.7), it builds prestige (11.7), and it builds trust (11.8) — three separate returns from one behaviour.

Being able to say "I was wrong." From 5.7, the clearest single marker distinguishing self-respect from ego, and it is trainable by practice in small settings.

Treating people who can do nothing for you well (10.8). The purest test there is, and it is available a dozen times a day.

And going towards the difficult conversation rather than away from it (17.11). Most damage in an ordinary life is done by things not said, and this is the behaviour that prevents most of it.

How character is actually built

Not by resolution. By four things.

Repetition, in small instances. The character is the accumulation (8.7). Twenty small honest acts build more than one dramatic one.

Arranged conditions. From above, and from 11.2. Do not rely on being good under pressure — arrange to face less of the pressure, and where you cannot, decide your line in advance.

Someone who will tell you. The single most useful external input (4.5), and the thing most people quietly remove from their lives.

And a record. From 1.7: cleverness is visible immediately and character is only visible in retrospect, and without a record you will remember yourself as having been better than you were.

The three questions to ask yourself, periodically

What did I do this year that cost me something? If the answer is nothing, nothing was tested, and you do not yet know what your character is.

Where did I know the right thing and not do it? Everybody has instances. The pattern in them is the useful part — most people's failures cluster in one area, usually conflict avoidance or self-interest.

And would the person I was at twenty be pleased? Not impressed — pleased. Different question, and frequently uncomfortable.

What this is not

Not moralism. Judging other people's character is mostly entertainment and it is 10.8's condemnation.

Not perfectionism. Everybody fails at all of these regularly. The measure is the pattern and the repair (4.8), not the absence of failure.

And not incompatible with self-interest. Almost everything on this page pays — in trust, in relationships, in standing, in how you feel about yourself (11.8). The fact that it pays does not make it less genuine, and pretending that virtue must be costly to count is a good way of doing less of it.

What to do

Pick one of the four high-return behaviours and work on it for three months. Keeping small promises. Saying "I was wrong". Treating people who can do nothing for you well. Going towards the difficult conversation.

Choose one, not four.

Set up the conditions rather than relying on resolve — decide your lines in advance, and avoid the situations where the wrong thing is easy.

Keep one person who will tell you the truth, and ask them once a year.

And answer the first question honestly: what did I do this year that cost me something? That question, asked annually, does more for character than any amount of reflection about what kind of person you are.

Next: 16.8 puts the whole volume into a programme, and closes it.