Virtue

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I'm AJ Hook, the author of Effortless English. Learn to speak English like a native. I train you to speak English fluently. You speak English powerfully. When you join my VIP program at effortless English club.com effortlessenglishclub.com go to effortlessenglishclub.com join commit to my VIP program. Virtue. We're going to about virtue today. It's the Christmas season. Merry Christmas, by the way, to all of you. And in the modern Christmas, you know, we've talked about this a bit. How Christmas was has been corrupted to some extent, but taken over by companies, marketing, consumerism, all of that. So I think it's good to discuss something a little deeper because Christmas used to be, and it still is, of course, in many families, in many places, about certain virtues. Certain virtues, which are good qualities, good human qualities, right? Virtues. And you know, traditionally the virtue of generosity, for example, the idea of gift giving at Christmas, it wasn't about receiving a lot of gifts. That's greed, right? Desiring lots of gifts. And we kind of create this greed in children now by giving them so many gifts and focusing too much on the presents and the gifts and the new toys that it actually is anti virtue, right? Unvirtuous, we're encouraging greed in them. Where traditionally the gift giving idea was about encouraging the virtue of generosity, right? It was the person giving the gift was the focus. The focus was on giving the gift with a spirit of generosity, with an attitude of generosity, and also receiving a gift at Christmas with a mindset of gratitude. Not more, more, more, more, more, but rather appreciating even small gifts, appreciating the thought, appreciating the generosity, the action of generosity from someone. So the idea was more to give a thoughtful gift as an expression of generosity. So that was one virtue, you know, Christmas virtue, you know, another one was just kind of a general, you know, cheerfulness, sort of an openness of spirit, a kindness, right? The idea that at Christmas time, it's a time to remember to be kind and warm and understanding and forgiving again, all of these great positive virtues. So these are the things we should focus on at Christmas time. Not buying and selling. Right now, it's just become shopping, become shopping. And of Course, I'm talking about the media in the media culture, and therefore, so many people are programmed by media. So you're going to see this among a lot of people, too, where the. They're so focused on shopping. Some people get really stressed out at Christmas time because they feel. They feel all of this pressure about shopping and buying, and they. I have to. There's a. There's a mindset. I see it in my family. I see it in my family in the United States. There's a mindset of, like, an attitude that, you know, they have to buy gifts. Oh, I. I have to buy gifts for everybody. I have to go shopping. Like this obligation, this feeling of stress and pressure and obligation to buy a lot of gifts for children and for adults. And that's completely against the virtue of generosity. If it's an obligation, it's not generosity. If you're doing it because you have to, because you feel a social pressure, then it's not coming from your heart. It's not spirit of giving. It's just. It's just something you have to do. You're following the rules like everybody else, right? So you can see it's a big difference, the act of giving a gift. Much of it depends on your attitude, your feeling and your heart, right? And Christmas, traditionally, Christmas would emphasize, right? You would hear in the songs in the. The stories that the emphasis, the stress, the focus was on the spirit of generosity, the spirit of forgiveness, the spirit of kindness, of goodness. You'll see this in A Christmas Carol, right? I'm sure all of you know the story, the Christmas Carol. It's super famous by Dickens, and it's the story of Scrooge, right? And what is that story? Is the story about Scrooge Bo buying a lot of gifts because he has to, oh, it's Christmas time. I have to buy everybody gifts. And so he goes shopping and he buys a lot of gifts and he gives them to people. Yay. No, that's not at all what the story's about. The story's about, first of all, he's not generous, right? He's greedy. He's greedy. And not just greedy for money, but he's just. He's not a very kind or open person. He doesn't care about other people very much, right? And because of this, he's also a very unhappy person. He's extremely unhappy. He's a miserable person. And so the story of A Christmas Carol is about his transformation, right? He's visited by these ghosts, the spirits of Christmas angels, you could say, who show him the result of his. Of his greed, the bad results. And he awake. He wakes up. They help him to wake up and to see that, you know, what a bad path he is on and how terrible it is. And he sees the truth. Like his employee Bob Cratchit, you know, is suffering a lot and his family is suffering. And he finally. And so he wakes up to this great. Not just buying a lot of stuff, right? But he. It's his spirit, the spirit of kindness and generosity. And so when Scrooge wakes up that next morning, finally, he's transformed and it's his heart that's transformed. He becomes this very loving, kind and generous person. You know, he runs out and he feels this great happiness. He feels a great happiness giving. You know, he buys a turkey. He buys, you know, maybe not a turkey. Buys some kind of big meal for. For his employee Bob's family. They're kind of poor. And he just gives gifts to everybody. But the important part is what's coming from his heart. That great happiness and joyfulness. And he feels so happy to give and to help others. That's a great message. That's a great traditional Christmas story about what it's that. That virtue. There were those virtues at the heart of Christmas time. What do you see now in most. In a lot of modern, like recent Christmas stories, sometimes they're just love stories. That's all they're about is romance. But a lot of it's just about Santa Claus and getting a lot of gifts. And maybe there's some comedy in there. Maybe there's not much of a deep message. There's certainly nothing about virtue. So I think we should remind ourselves about this virtue. I would like to talk again about. I've mentioned. I've talked about this topic before, but let's talk about the cardinal virtues because these have a very long. An old tradition. What are called the cardinal virtues. I'm going to show you on Infogalactic. Info Galactic is a alternative to Wikipedia. Wikipedia sucks. They're another leftist organization, so you can't trust anything on Wikipedia. A lot of it's just lies. A lot of the crazy Marxists edit everything and it's just propaganda. Now Wikipedia. So if you use Infogalactic instead, they're better anyway. The cardinal virtues. The cardinal virtues. First of all, Plato. They come as far as we know. The first we know about this idea of cardinal virtues. It comes from Plato. Plato, so long time ago, 435 BC, something like that, I think. And Plato wrote about cardinal kind of means central import Very important. The four cardinal virtues that he wrote about are prudence, justice, temperance and courage. Of course, these are the English translations you could use possibly other words in English. He wrote in Greek, of course, in Latin. Prudentia, lusticia. Is it lustitia? I can't pronounce Latin. I don't know. Temperentia and fortitudo. Fortitude. Fortitude might be a better translation for courage. So the idea was that these were the most important virtues, good qualities of a human. And what is a virtue? What is a virtue? So Cicero, Cicero, Roman philosopher, he had a good definition of virtue. He said, virtue is. Is a habit of your mind. Right? It's a habit of mind, a habit of thinking and doing in harmony with reason and nature. In other words, in harmony with natural law, in harmony with God's law, in harmony with reason and goodness, in harmony with dharma. And to use an Eastern word, in harmony with dharma, a habit of your mind, a habit of thinking and feeling and doing that's in harmony with meaning. It follows truth and goodness, dharma, natural law, God's law. And there are many, many, many. You can find many lists of traditional, you know, virtues. But what the idea of the cardinal virtues is these are the kind of central ones and other ones are connected to these. So for example, courage is a cardinal virtue. Well, also, of course, courage is a kind of strength. It's a mental strength. Right? Mental and emotional strength. So, you know, there's also strength, there's endurance, there's fortitude, the ability to keep going and going. All of these are kind of connected to this one of courage. They're all different kinds of courage, you could say. Or they're all different kinds of fortitude. So courage kind of comes with this idea of that we need to be strong. That even if you're a good person, if you're weak, well, then if you're weak, you're likely to do bad things or to become a victim. So we need some kind of strength and specifically mental and emotional strength. Courage. Courage. And then temperance. Temperance is basically self control, self discipline. So the ability to control yourself, discipline yourself. Right? To be moderate. Moderate. So it means you avoid, you know, you don't eat too much. Right. Gluttony, one of the cardinal. One of the cardinal deadly, one of the deadly sins, Cardinal gluttony means eating too much. Eating, eating, eating, becoming fat and unhealthy. Right. That's not good. But of course, you have to eat something eventually. So temperance is this idea of self control. You eat enough, but not too much. You drink enough but not too much, you exercise enough, but not too much that you get injured and you hurt yourself, right? You don't, you don't do too much. You have self control, you can control yourself. Self discipline, self control, temperance. Another of the cardinal virtues, justice, justice, you could also just say, is fairness. Fairness, right. This is kind of more of a social, A social one where that everybody follows these same rules of goodness, right? And if somebody doesn't, if someone's a bad person, well, then they get punished, they get punished, or they get bad consequences socially. And that we try to apply this fairly to everybody, this idea of fairness. Fairness. Justice and fairness are real virtues, right? Equality is a lie. Equality is bullshit. The Marxists and others try to use this. They try to substitute, you know, they try to use this word equality instead of justice or fairness. Why? Because, you know, Marxism, basically, and socialism and leftism is basically fake religion, false religion. It's a. They're trying to create a religion without God. And that is always going to be evil. But the real virtue, you know, there's no equality in the world. There never is and there never will be. It's impossible, it's a lie, it's evil. But on the other hand, there is justice, justice. The idea of fairness, fairness, justice. The idea that in a group, in a society, we agree that we have good laws, good rules, and everybody follows the rules equally. If you're rich, you still must follow the rules. If you're rich, you can't kill people. If you're poor, you can't kill people, right? Murder is bad. And in a good society, if someone kills somebody, murder, they are punished the same. It doesn't matter if they're a billionaire or if they're poor, they get the same punishment, right? That's real justice. Of course, we don't have that now in the world. We all know that billionaires are more likely to avoid being punished and that poor people are more likely to be punished worse, right? But ideally, according to Plato and also later the Christian church, the idea is justice, fairness in society, not equality. Not equality. Nobody's equal, right? No one will ever be equal. Some people are stronger, some people are weaker, some people are taller, some people are shorter, some people are more intelligent, some people are less intelligent. We all know that. But fairness and justice means we all follow the same rules of goodness. To have a good society, a good family, good groups. That's what justice means. And then finally, prudence, or sometimes it's listed as the first one, prudence, also described as wisdom as another word, wisdom or prudence, what is it? It's the ability to judge. So sometimes you'll see it's also called judgment. Judgment, prudence, wisdom, similar ideas. It's the ability to judge between actions and to decide what is the best action at the best time. Right. So it's kind of the ability to make good decisions, to make wise and good decisions. Right. And so we all know this is important. It's the ability to know when, when to be strong and when to be soft and compassionate. Right. When to fight, when to run away, when to forgive and when to attack and all of these things. Right. This is wisdom, also called judgment. It's also the ability to judge what is good and what is evil, what is bad and what is good, what is true and what is false. We must do this again. This is something we see in our modern world. They're trying to destroy this idea of judgment. They say, no judgment, no judgment. That's also evil. Because what they want is they want to be able to do evil. And nobody criticizes them. They want to lie and nobody criticizes them. And nobody says you're lying, but you must do this. You must. When you see a lie, you say, that's a lie. Right? If something's evil and bad, you say, that's evil, that's bad, and you fight it. So this is part of prudence or just. Or judgment or wisdom also. So again, these started kind of first introduced by Plato, as far as we know. And then you'll find some. You find elements of these within the Bible as well, Right. So it says, you know, the cardinal virtues are listed in the Bible in the wisdom of Solomon. Solomon, it reads, wisdom teaches temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life. So it's saying that these are the most important things in life. Are these virtues more important than money? So again, and then like I said, these cardinal virtues were also celebrated by and taught by Christian, the Christian church and then later Christian churches, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, etc. So the point is, the message is, let's remember virtue during Christmas time. Not just buying stuff, right? There's a tremendous pressure about buying and it's become a consumer, right? Because again, the marketers and the big companies, they just want it. They just see for them Christmas is just the time to sell stuff. That's all they care about. It's just the time to sell a lot of stuff and make a lot of money. And the media also follows this where they want to show that same message, buy a lot of stuff, you know, shopping, shopping, shopping. That's what they focus on. But it's important that we focus on things that are deeper and then you'll, I think you also find it happier. I, I find that, you know, when I, when I was young, I enjoyed Christmas much more. Not only because I was a child, of course it was magical then, but, but because it was more of the focus was on family and love. This is another important virtue to focus on at Christmas time is, you know, the love of family, devotion to family. And that was very strong for me when I was young, a child and even as a teenager. And so it was a very happy time. Later, more recently, I haven't enjoyed Christmas at all, honestly. You know, this is before I had my own children and kind of living far away from my family. But also just all the, over the years, culturally in America at least, Christmas really became very commercial, right? Very focused on money and a bunch of nonsense and kind of sucked the good, the deeper virtues and goodness out of the traditions. And that's why I think you'll. Again, while you see a lot of people find Christmas to be stressful. Why is that? Well, it's because of the pressure on buying and money and all that kind of stuff. So let's remember that even if you're not a Christian, it's still a good thing to remember. These virtues are good. You know, Plato was not a Christian either, but he still was the one who introduced these powerful virtues. And the Christian church later of course also adopted them. So good to remember for all of us, because it's these virtues that lead to our long term happiness. Just from a very, very looking at it in a very small way, just at you, your individual life, your individual, your individual feeling that these virtues will bring you greater happiness in your life. The more virtuous you become, the more happiness you will have. Again, not always short term, but long term, at a deeper level. In the short term they require discipline and they require effort. And sometimes it feels difficult, just like exercising your body, just like many other things. But in the long term, these virtues will bring you much, much, much greater happiness. And the opposite is true also that people who are not virtuous, people who lack these virtues, who never develop them at all, who do the opposite, they become less and less happy. They become quite miserable. Evil people are miserable guys, they're not happy. They're miserable, miserable, miserable. Very, very, very unhappy. Yeah, they have pleasure, right? So they may be, not be temperate, right. They have no self Control. So they just, they drink and they party and they eat lots of food and have lots, tons of sex with lots and lots of people and lots of drugs. And it all feels great. In the short term, it all seems fun and a big party for a while. But we all know what happens to these people long term. After a few years of that, they become very unhealthy physically. They become very unhealthy mentally. They become very, very unhappy and miserable. Some of them kill themselves directly, some of them indirectly kill themselves because their health is so bad. They die very young. And some of them just become very, very, very lonely, miserable, unhappy people. So this idea of self control, it seems in the beginning, the short term, oh, this is hard, right? Like you want to eat a lot of sugary fun cakes all the time. Seems like that would that should be fun. Like kids want to do that. But we all know long term, you'll become fat and you'll be unhealthy, you'll become diabetic, they'll cut off your feet eventually and other terrible things. And it's a very, very horrible life, right? So an unvirtuous life becomes horrible, starts really fun and becomes horrible. And a virtuous life starts difficult. The beginning is difficult, right? It's hard to do these things. It's hard to become a better person. But grows and grows and grows better and better and better, happier and happier. Happier in your life. That's just you individually, your life, of course. Then as you become more virtuous, you make other people happier too. Your family life becomes better and happier, right? And even as we, when we get enough people who are virtuous, we create better communities, better towns, whole nations can become more virtuous and therefore happier, healthier. So remember virtue at this Christmas time, very important. All right, let's get into the comments and questions. Vong says my girlfriend argued a lot about the idea of being equal. She became angry, pissed off when I said everyone is different. Of course everyone's different. She's completely wrong and illogical. Just show her two people who are a different height. Ask her if everybody just show. We're on sports, right? Is every basketball player equal? Like the NBA, something famous, something easy. Is every basketball player equal? Is LeBron James equal to some new guy who's not very good? They're clearly not equal. That's why LeBron James gets huge amount of money and the other guy doesn't. Equality is a complete lie. You cannot find it in nature. You cannot find equality in nature. Nothing's equal it's just. It's just propaganda. It's just bullshit. Propaganda doesn't exist. That's the truth, and it's quite obvious. All you got to do is look around. You can't find anything that's equal. You can't find any people who are equal. Nobody's the same. Even twins, even identical twins are not the same because they have, you know, they still grow up and they develop different interests, different personalities, different strong points and weak points. Even identical twins are not equal. So if they're not equal, what about everyone else? Definitely not. Nobody's equal. Equality is a lie. Anytime you hear the word equality, you know there's evil coming. It will result in evil. Because the only way you can create equality is by murdering and killing people and putting them in prison and all kinds of horrible, horrible evil. Because it's not natural. It can only be done in these evil, terrible ways, which is what you see in every single communist revolution, mass murder. And we still see it today. And that's what they will always do. Like if Elvira said, well, and this is true, it's not just kids. I'm not a kid anymore, but I still want to eat sugar all day. So today I'm fasting. Super nice topic again. Yeah, right. I'm kind of a sugar. You know, we have. We say a sweet tooth in English. It's an idiom. I have a sweet tooth means you like sweet things. I have a sweet tooth. I do. I like it. I like sweet stuff. And it's of kind. Kind of a pattern with me that if I start eating too many carbs, not just sugar, but just carbs. Even pasta and stuff, if I start doing that, I'll start with a little. And then, you know, and then after a few weeks, I'll be eating more, more, more, more, more. And then it gets too much. And then I notice I'm gaining a little weight. And then I also do the same thing. I fast to break it again. So I understand it. But we just have to. We have to find a way, you know, to have some self discipline. And fasting is a great way to create that self discipline and to break those addictions. Really good. Really good way. Yeah. Anderson, with an excellent point, says, the media constantly shows us the idea that being good means to be naive, Right? To be naive, to be foolish. Because of that, people are becoming step by step, more selfish. Exactly. They do indeed show us that. Why? Because they don't teach these virtues, right? They don't talk about the virtue of judgment, of prudence. And that's why that virtue is important in the cardinal virtues taught by the Church, taught by Plato. Prudence means not to be naive, not to be a fool, right? So it means that to be good, but not a fool. Being good does not mean being a fool. Being good does not mean being a victim. Being good does not mean being weak. Another one of the virtues is courage, strength, right? So if you have strength and you have prudence, judgment, you're not going to be naive, you're not going to be a fool, you're not going to be weak. You're, in fact, quite the opposite. But you also have fairness to balance it out. Right? You have that, the fairness, so that you're going to be good and kind to people when the time is right, when they deserve it, right. When they need it. So it's well said, because you're definitely right about that with the media. I'm going to just back up a little bit at the comments because I may have missed a few. Let me just read through a few of the. Okay. Lots of people saying hello. I'm just trying. Let's see. Now, here's Juan living in Tampa, Florida. Near where. Let's see. I'm Colombian from Tampa, Florida. Tampa, Florida, is on the western coast of Florida. First time live, I saw almost all of your shows on YouTube. I did your program reference English. You're one of my favorite mentors. Thanks for your generosity. Thank you, Juan. It's Juan Carlos Garces Ortiz, living in Tampa, Florida. Ah, let's see. Sarge says, is it better to not bother or to be forced? The spirit of virtue upon you. Scrooge had three ghosts yanking him into places he didn't want to be. Is there a better way for this? Well, yeah, there's a better way that we do it ourselves, ideally. Right. So the story is about a man who is lost. Right. And he's. It's sort of. He. It's, you know, kind of God or. Or the angels intervene to help him in this story. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future in that story about Scrooge. So, yeah, right. There is a. There's a point. There's a. There's a good point. Sarge is making that Scrooge didn't do it himself alone. He actually had some help. Right. And, you know, again, traditionally, this is called grace. This is where there is some kind of supernatural spiritual help, you know, ultimately from God that helps you, even though you don't deserve it. This is kind of the idea of grace, it's a gift from God. It's some kind of blessing from God that you don't really deserve. You didn't do anything to deserve it, but somehow you receive it anyway. And I would say that's what that story of Christmas Carol certainly is true, that Scrooge doesn't really deserve it. He doesn't do anything nice, right? He doesn't make any effort. It's really these, they almost force him to see, to wake up. But you know, you could think even in non religious terms, Sarge, what does happen in life is that sometimes we get shocked into becoming more virtuous, right? And maybe it's not ghosts, but it's some crisis in our life that makes us wake up and see the bad consequences of being unvirtuous, right? So for example, someone who is, let's say someone who's gluttonous, they have no self control, they eat and they eat and they eat. They become fat, fat, fat, fat, fat. They start getting health problems, but they just keep going anyway, right? Everyone's telling them, what are you doing? What are you doing? Stop. What are you doing? And their life, they can't move very much and they're having all these problems. They still don't do anything. And then finally they have a heart attack. They have a heart attack and by luck, by grace, they survive. Somehow. Somehow they live, but they come very close to death. And sometimes those people will finally wake up. Sometimes they will wake up and realize, oh my God, I'm killing myself early. And not always. Some of them will go back and they'll eat badly again. But some do wake up at that point. The shock, the fear of it, of that event causes them to wake up and suddenly they become very focused on health. They completely change their eating, they start exercising and they completely change their life. And they develop a lot of self discipline. So we can, if that's another way you could think about that story, you can think of it spiritually, religiously, but you could also think of it psychologically and that sometimes some kind of shock, right? Because what are those ghosts in the story? They're a shock. They scare him. They scare him. They scare him a lot, right? He sees how miserable and unhappy his life was and is. And in some ways Scrooge didn't realize it, right? He's an unhappy guy, but he's not trying to. The one thing about Scrooge in that story, even when, when he's not being nice, is he's not trying to hurt people, that he's not his. He's. He lacks virtue. He's not generous, he's not kind, but, but he's not evil. He's not, he's not thinking, I want to hurt them. Ah, right. In fact, part of the story with, like when he goes to the Christmas past and the Christmas present, he's. He finally sees some of the suffering he has, he has caused. He didn't realize he was causing that suffering in other people. And when he sees it, he feels bad. This helps him to start waking up. So he does have. There's some good in him still. There is some good in him that and the ghosts kind of wake it up. And sometimes it's not a ghost, sometimes it's not a dream, sometimes it's some life crisis, some event maybe like again, like someone gets a divorce and this causes them to think about their life differently and oh, maybe I'm not such a good person. Right. Or it could be many different things that can happen to shock people to wake up and become more virtuous. Yeah. On the other hand, like Vanu Rodriguez says, Aristotle, who came after Plato, considered temperance the most important virtue because it means balance, rationality, self control. Right. Control, mastery of yourself. I would say another way to describe temperance is that you master yourself, you become the master of yourself. You're not controlled by desires and emotions. So that's a good point where Aristotle did kind of famously focus on that. Yeah. See, this is very nice, Slavica. See, I think that in, you know, in other countries there is still more of a tradition and virtue, religious traditions, all of these things. So when I'm taught, when I'm sort of criticizing or saying these kind of negative things about Christmas, I'm talking about American culture. Okay. I only really know American traditions. I've noticed this. This is so true in America. And you all can see this because you see American movies, right? American culture now is easy. You know, you see it in TV and movies and these things. So I'm sure you've noticed it. But I'm happy to hear some countries still have deeper traditions. She says, in my country, and I can't remember Klevika, I don't remember which country you're from, but it says, we say Christmas, peace of God, Christ is born in the tradition. It's not about buying gifts, it's about keeping the family together. Amen. Keeping the family together. And that's what it used to be in America. It used to be that also. And Vanu Rodriguez, with a follow up point, and she's right about this. The virtues are connected. Absolutely. They're connected. They support each other. You need all of them. Just one is not enough. For example, justice without temperance and intelligence. That's right. You can't have. You can't possess justice if you don't have some temperance and intelligence. Right. They all connect to each other and you need to have them all. At some degree, some level. We need to develop all of those virtues. And of course, there are other virtues too, we could describe, but the idea is that these are the central ones and the other ones grow out of them. Okay, we caught up. Jump back to the bottom. Serbia. Slavica's from serbia. Cool. Great. All right, let me just find where I was on the. Lots of good comments today. Yeah, like med. I mean, there's no equality in appearance, but equality in rights. Right. But that's why it's. I think I don't like the word equality. It confuses things. Just say. We should say. I like better the traditional justice. Justice in rights. Justice and rights. That's right. It means we all follow the same rules. Right. It's just like a sports game. If you have a soccer game, both teams have to follow the same rules. Right. Can't use your hands unless you're the goalkeeper. Right. You don't have one rule for one team and different rules for the other team. That's not justice. Right. It's not, quote, equal rights. It's not justice, it's not fairness. But it doesn't mean both teams are equal. Both teams are not equal. One is better, probably. Right. One's going to win the game. So they're not equal, the teams are not equal, but the rules are applied equally. At least if the referees are good. Yeah. Like Ibrahim Ali is right about this. Not only Christmas, it's happening in every holiday. I see advertisements and discounts on almost everything, especially clothes. Nowadays, most people are overspending and buying unnecessary stuff. Well, indeed. Because these big companies, to them, they don't care. They don't care about. It doesn't matter. Pick any. Any. You're right. Any holiday, it doesn't matter. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas in the United States, Fourth of July, Independence Day, Easter. They don't care about the meaning of these holidays. It's. For them, it's just another time to try to sell more stuff. And I'm. Yeah, it's something that does happen internationally also. It's a good point, but we just have to turn that stuff off. Turn it off and focus on the traditional virtues and values and meaning of these holidays. Because they do have more important messages for us. And they can be. These holidays can be wonderful for us and our families if we focus on those virtues instead. Okay, people, see here. My baby. Yeah. Oh, this is nice. See, Lisa kind of describing some of the things she's done for during Christmas. I invited my meditation group to my house. I baked Christmas cookies. Yep. That's a very nice tradition that we would do in my family. Make tea and light some candles. This is how we celebrate and meditate together. Looking forward to the evening today. That's great. Very nice. Thanks, Lisa. Yeah. And like Slavica says, Christmas carol. There are a lot of different movie versions of this. It's a great book, you know, story, but it's. It's very, very popular. So there have. There have been. There's one with. One of my favorites, I think, is George C. Scott plays. It's kind of an older one. And let's see, there's one. He plays Scrooge. There's one where. What's his name, Captain Picard from Star Trek plays Scrooge. Anyway, there are many versions. There's some very old ones, some more recent ones. They're all nice. Hey, Jay Preeti says you'll give Christmas party for all the people. That's not a bad idea. An online Christmas party. We could do that. Oh, this is a good point, Gloria. Gavin says we have to be careful with people who have fake virtue. This is something. I'll teach you another idiom, Virtue signaling. Virtue signaling. I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll teach it again. Virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is the action of, like, very publicly, very publicly trying to tell everybody or show everybody that you are virtuous. Right. And it's a lie, it's a fake, it's a pretending. It's very common. So, for example, you'll see this with celebrities do it all the time. Like, Leonardo DiCaprio is talking about climate change, and I care so much about the environment. He's virtue signaling. He's trying to show everybody, oh, I'm such a good guy, but it's complete bullshit. The guy flies in a private jet everywhere. He's burning far more gas and carbon and, you know, than any of us. Far, far, far, far, far more. All right, his actions show that he's not virtuous, that he doesn't really care about that, even if it is bullshit anyway. But we won't forget that part. Just that his, you know, his actions and his words are completely different. So a lot of it's easy to talk about Virtue, very easy. It's easy to pretend to be virtuous. Lots of people do that. It's very hard to actually be virtuous in your actions. That's hard. And people who are actually virtuous, who really are virtuous, they tend to be more quiet about it. They don't talk about it constantly and tell everybody, I am so generous, I'm so wise, I care so much. I'm such a kind person. People who do that, you immediately, you have to think it's probably bullshit, it's probably a lie, right? So this is why, you know, like the Hollywood celebrities are so disgusting. They're always criticizing other people. They're always talking about how great they are, how much they care. But you look at their actions, it's all, it's all lies. They're terrible people. They're terrible people, most of them. Horrible, horrible people. So. But it's called virtue signaling. Virtue signaling. And you see this on the Internet all the time. We, right, people who post, you know, post something. Oh, pray for this group or oh, they think they're just by posting something online, some picture or something, that this makes them virtuous. It doesn't. That's not an action. That's you're not doing anything. You want to be virtuous. Be kind and patient with your. Someone in your family who's difficult. That's not easy. Okay? That's not easy. Control your, you know, your appetites show. Have self control and self discipline in your life. That's hard, very hard sometimes. You know, these, these cardinal virtues, try to practice those in your life and many times in life, it's hard to do it. It's not easy, right? Not easy. Real virtue is tough for most of us. Even for the saints, right? If you look at different saints and Buddhas and bodhisattvas and Rishis from all different religions, we think, oh, well, they were these super people, right? And it was all easy for them. But when you actually read about it, it was hard for them too, right? It's just that they kept working and tried so hard, right? It wasn't easy for them, You know? Do you think it wasn't easy for Jesus to fast in the desert for 40 days? You think that was easy? It wasn't easy. It was really, really, really hard. Okay. Yeah. See, this is nice too. Like Jamila says, as I'm Christian and also a church choir singer, I love spending time in our church in the peaceful atmosphere. Very nice, very nice. And many of the songs, especially the old Songs that are more spiritual, more religious. I always like those better. Some Christmas songs in America, I like them. Some of them, like White Christmas is a. It's. But it's a new one and it was written by a non Christian. It's a nice song about snow and stuff. Bing Crosby sings it. I like his singing. It's a nice little song. But I really like some of the ones that are more spiritual, more religious, like Silent Night. There's something a little more deep about those. Yeah. Like Khalifi says, we're open minded. We can see in every famous event such as Christmas an opportunity to grow, to share happiness and virtues. Indeed. And even in the events of other religions, you can, you know, like, like Ramadan, you don't have to be a Muslim. You can still fast. Why not? Fasting is. Fasting promotes, encourages these virtues. Certainly self control, temperance. Fasting is. You have to have temperance to fast, but it also actually clears your mind. And I think it encourages and promotes and strengthens all of these virtues. So, you know, why not? During Ramadan everyone can fast. In fact, you don't have to wait for Ramadan. If you're Muslim. You can fast right now. You don't need to wait for Ramadan. You can also fast now, you can fast next week. Right. It's a virtuous activity. That's virtuous always. It's great to participate in these events with other people, of course, because they remind us how important they are. Just like being generous, right? Yes, we can be generous at Christmas, but we can be generous all the time. The idea is that it reminds us of this virtue, this special time, Christmas. But we also hope that we take that virtue with us. Right. That we continue that virtue during the rest of the year also. Maybe not gift giving, but just more of the general spirit of giving goodness and forgiveness and kindness and generosity. Right. Not just December, Right? Of course, Other virtues, like Sarah says, important virtues are to honor, to be honorable with yourself. Also called integrity at first. First to be honorable with yourself. Right, True. Because it starts inside, then with others. Be strong enough and respect older people. Yep. And that's one like for example, Confucius. I can't pronounce his name in Chinese correctly, but the English we say Confucius taught much, taught about that a lot. Very strong about family and respect for elders and this being very important for a society. Med Amin asks, Samodi asks, why is Christmas connected to selling? Do you have an explanation? Yeah, well, it's just the gift giving. Right. Because they're the gift giving tradition is very old. It's just that it used to be very controlled. It had, there was temperance, right? There was moderation. So that the old traditions were maybe give one gift, right? Like each child receives one gift from their parents. So that's very nice. But then what happened is that especially large companies, you know, I think that changed with media, with tv, specifically with TV and these huge, huge companies and they decided, ah, we can encourage people and kind of program people to don't not just one gift, but to buy lots and lots and lots of gifts. So every child gets five gifts, eight gifts, 10 gifts. And we can advertise directly to the children so that they want more. Oh, and they buy, beg and ask their mom and dad for, oh, give me more, more, more, more, right? And Santa Claus, you know, give me more, more, more, more. So it's, you know, it's a kind of brave new world programming. And just another example of that, he's saying, I'm an E Commerce sell seller is booming right now. You can make a lot of money in this period. You can, you can. Not saying don't. I don't. I'm not saying close your business during this time and you may make more money. That's great. But I don't know, I choose. I just. People probably don't buy English lessons at Christmas anyway so much. But I just don't like to push that at this time. I don't know, just me. Anderson, for my. This kind of related to the comment we just got had about older people. And I have to agree with Anderson. Absolutely. Young people today believe they don't need to learn anything from elderly people. That's true of a lot of young people. It's true. They don't respect older people. They think, ah, I can't learn anything from them. And that's foolish. It's stupid. However, the other side is also true. So Anderson also says, on the other hand, old people are less wise today. I mean, they have childish behavior. That's sad. He's right about that too. That's also correct. So you can understand why young people maybe have less respect because a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of older people still act very childish. So the young people think, why should I respect them? And honestly, they don't deserve respect, a lot of them. So I can, you know, you can see both sides, actually, both sides have been kind of corrupted and both sides have a duty. If we tell young people, if we tell them you have a duty or you have. It's virtuous it's good. You should respect older people, listen to them, try to learn from them. Yes, that's good. It's true. But it means the older people also have an obligation. The older people also have a duty. And the duty is to become wiser and to contribute, to not be selfish, to not be childish, to be worthy of that respect, to earn that respect, not just because you're old, but through your virtues. To be virtuous. Right. To be older and to, you know, the idea is, ideally, if you're older, you have more time to develop virtues. Right? You have more time, you've had more years to work and trying to become more self controlled, trying to become more courageous, trying to become wiser. Especially you have more, you should have more life experience. So hopefully you are more wise. You know, you are wiser. But that's not always true. A lot of older people aren't virtuous at all. If you follow a life of non virtue. Right. If you don't follow a virtuous life, then when you become older, you're worse and you're not respectable and no young person's going to respect you and they shouldn't. Right. So it's kind of our duty also as older folks. Yeah. Funda says, I love Christmas. I lived in Berlin for 38 years. I appreciate how they celebrate this wonderful day. A lot of the American traditions that you kind of see in movies do have a connection to German traditions and were brought here by some early German groups that came to America. Brought here. I'm not in America right now, but the Christmas tree, for example, I believe that's a German tradition. Originally we have virtue in Burma. Excellent. Yeah. Like my Mustafa says, talk is cheap. Talking about virtue, signaling again, talk is cheap, but actions are valuable. Not everyone can do it. That's right. Talk is cheap. It's a good saying. And we all know it's true. It's easy to talk. It's easy for. I can, you know, I could talk and say, I'm so virtuous, but I'm. I'm not going to say that. I'm talking about the general. You know, I'm trying to do all of this myself. A lot of times when I talk about a topic, I'm also struggling. I'm also trying to do this. I want to be more virtuous too. Right. So I'm not saying. I'm definitely not saying that I'm some super saint. I'm not. But I recognize the importance of this and hopefully we all do. We should Just remember this. Yeah, this is nice. This is a nice tradition. Sriracha says Christmas time is the best time for me to review my journey all year. This year, 2019 is the best year ever for me. My English is better than last year. Thank you so much. My coach, teacher. That's a great time. You know, the kind of. The end of the year. So this kind of end of the year time period is an excellent time. Exactly. To think back, think back on the year and what did you learn? How did you improve? What good things didn't happen to you? What are you grateful for from this year? What challenges do you have? What difficulties did you have? All of that stuff. It's kind of good to think about the year at this time. And then when the new year starts, we look forward. So this is a nice time to look back at our previous year. And then January, we look forward to the next year. Just symbolically it is nice. It's a good. It's a nice tradition also. Yeah, well, exactly. Here's another example of DiCaprio. I don't like DiCaprio. Maybe you can tell because he. I just. I don't like any of them. It's not just him, but even President Bolsonaro from Brazil entered into a controversial situation because DiCaprio gave money to an organization that's deliberately putting fires, causing fires on the Amazon forest. Exactly. He does all this stuff, right. Just to appear like he's so great. But when you. But this is what happens. See, Bolsonaro looked into the details, or his people did, and they found the truth. And it's like, oh, they're not helping at all. And this is what you find with people who Virtue Signal and especially these celebrities. See, on the surface, it always sounds so nice. So on the surface, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio, oh, we saved the rainforest in Brazil. Those evil Brazilians are destroying it. And then, oh, it makes. He's, you know, I care so much. Look at me, I'm giving a lot of money to help the forest. Right. It's all about his ego. But then you do a little research, you find the details and you find out, oh, no, he's actually just. He's giving money to a group that's damaging the forest because he doesn't care. He doesn't really care. He really doesn't care. He just cares about his ego. He just wants people to think he's great. He doesn't care about the details. He doesn't care about the Brazilian rainforest. He's probably never been to Brazil. He doesn't care, you know, so. And it's the same. It's not just him. It's. I don't know, Robert De Niro and all those guys. These are bad people. Do a little research about their private life, what they really do in their private life. And. And they do some terrible stuff. And then. But publicly, they're always pretending to be so wonderful virtue signaling. It's disgusting. Yeah, like Khalifi with great advice. Don't believe a person who constantly talks about brain virtues, his virtues, until you see his actions and behaviors correct. Look at the actions, not the words. You know, evil people, if they're. If they're not stupid, intelligent. Evil people always talk about good. Right? They sound good. Oh, I got babies crying. I need to go help with babies, guys. So I'm going to answer one more and then we're going to go. There you go. This is. We're going to end with Slavica again because she has a wonderful thought. She says, I have one wish for the Christmas spirit to help us turn off the media for a day. We spend that day in peace. Let's teach other people not to watch TV and other Marxist propaganda. And to that I say amen. That is a wonderful thought. We'll end on that one. Wonderful. So Merry Christmas again to you all. Effortlessenglishclub.com to join my VIP program tomorrow. Maybe not a show tomorrow. I'm not sure. We have to go to the hospital with the babies tomorrow, so I'm not sure. Just watch my Gab account gab.com@ajhogue and I'll let you know. So until then, lots of love to you. See you next time. Bye for now.