Second-order unskillfulness
Stumbling is beautiful!
Content: My own take on virtue ethics.
Epistemic status: based on advice from meditation manuals
When you put on your virtue-glasses,1 you will start noticing unskillfulness. This is a bit like becoming your own personal trainer, spotting tiny mistakes in how you act. When you spot unskillfulness, your way of reacting is very important.
A lot of people fall prey to second-order unskillfulness. Second-order skill is all about how you relate to your own mistakes. Second-order unskillfulness can take the form of disappointment, anger, frustration, hopelessness, resignation, judgment, or similar.
Let’s say you’ve decided to embrace Courage. You have a pattern of resisting making phone calls, procrastinating them to your own detriment. You want to have the courage to make phone calls without any resistance. You find yourself abandoning Courage, leaving your phone unused. How do you react to this situation? Do you judge yourself “for being a coward”?
When you react in a way that’s coercive/antagonistic against yourself, you increase your level of internal conflict, making it much harder to make progress in your virtue training. If you find yourself reacting poorly to your own unskillfulness, I recommend leaning into acceptance, showering your second-order unskillfulness with love and compassion. If you react poorly to your second-order unskillfulness, you’re at the third level. Every new level of unskillfulness is an opportunity to find self-acceptance.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus Aurelius
Self-acceptance in this sense is about Wisdom; having an accurate view of the world (in this case: your own limitations). This doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to sit back and be content with the way things are. Think of it like potty-training a puppy: you shouldn’t scream at the puppy for peeing indoors, but neither should you be content with decorative pee puddles.
So what’s the proper stance2 like? Nth-order skillfulness looks like appreciation, self-compassion, a bit of analysis, and a firm resolve to do better next time. This mindset appreciates moments of unskillfulness, seeing them as opportunities to improve your ways of being, enabling you to move closer to virtue.
This approach reduces internal tension, allowing you to respond to the situation in a more flexible manner. Maybe you can find underlying reasons for your resistance, and figure out how to practice overcoming them. If nothing else, you get to practice higher-order skills!
Second-order skillfulness is related to Wisdom and Sophrosyne. Wisdom because it’s about having an accurate idea of your own limitations, as well as ability & skill in the area of self-training. Sophrosyne because the ideal version of second-order skill is an emotional response pattern that automatically leads you into skillful second-order responses rather than unskillful ones. If you’ve developed your Sophrosyne enough, self-judgment won’t even come up as a potential reaction pattern.
A good metaphor is that of raising a kid.3 If the kid fucks up, you shouldn’t blame and judge. Instead, work with the kid, finding ways to practice and grow. Think of it as “raising your inner child”.4
Finally, I have an aphorism5 I use to anchor this perspective in myself:
Stumbling is beautiful
(it’s how we learn how to walk)
P.S.: This post is informed by self-love and meditation techniques from “The Mind Illuminated”.
Seeing how your way of being aligns with, or is misaligned with, a movement towards virtue.
I’m using “stance” to mean something between perspective & approach
In a skillful way that’s optimized to help the child row into a healthy adult.
My friend noted that third-order skillfulness is akin to training your inner parent ;)
aphorism: short text that captures a lot of information. Is used to trigger a certain perspective in me.