Michael Schur

What the hell am I supposed to do?
This question—how can we live a more ethical life?—has plagued people for thousands of years

here’s some good news: Philosophers have been thinking about those exact questions for a very long time. They have answers for us—or, at least, they have ideas that may help us formulate our own answers

four simple questions

Nearly every single thing we do has some ethical component to it, whether we realize it or not. That means we owe it to ourselves to learn what the hell ethics is and how it works, so we don’t screw everything up all the time

learning to accept failure—or really, to embrace it—as a necessary and beneficial by-product of our efforts to try, learn, and improve

Try again. Fail again. Fail better

Virtue ethicists define good people as those who have certain qualities, or “virtues,” that they’ve cultivated and honed over time, so that they not only have these qualities but have them in the exact right amount

We are all highly individualized products of both nature and nurture

His most important work on the subject is called the Nicomachean Ethics, named either in honor of his father, Nicomachus, or his son, Nicomachus, or I suppose possibly a different guy named Nicomachus that he liked better than either his dad or his kid

He first defines our ultimate goal—the very purpose of being alive, the thing we’re shooting for—the same way a young swimmer might identify “Olympic gold medal” as a target that would mean “maximum success.” Aristotle says that thing is: happiness