Lust is a deformed version of the virtue of love, the binding force in a number of human relationships including those involving God. Moreover, the passions and more quiet feelings we know as love are those which evolved amongst social mammals. It’s quite a plausible speculation that our ancient four-legged ancestors first began to melt inside when looking into the faces of infants with their soft features and outsized eyes and ears. Did love between Mom and Dad come from a transference of their separate loves for Junior? Maybe. It makes for a good tale and is supported well enough, if still speculatively, to be more than a just-so story.
Our characteristics aren’t drawn from the opposing and non-overlapping lists which have come from the imaginations of philosophers and poets and theologians and pranksters. Many of those lists, to be sure, were essential parts of efforts which were highly plausible and which formed part of the historical development of human thought. Some remain the foundations of our best ways of educating our youth and our own selves in proper ways of behaving and forming relationships in stable environments, but they aren’t dynamic. They have little to do with individual creatures who develop inside of evolving and developing communities, all part of a grand scheme of evolution taking place over billions of years inside of a universe evolving and developing over a greater amount of time. Systems of virtues and vices are pseudo-metaphysical schemes in which the definitions are no less and no more than a snapshot of a world which can sometimes be stable but can sometimes change at a rapid pace.
On a more positive line of thought: I’ve noted before in my writings, we should be careful to think of our human selves as creatures of a strange clay-like stuff. The clay changes over time as our species evolves and the environments, including human relationships, which shape that clay also change over time. We are born with specific potentials and also some clearly defined characteristics. We become specific human animals as a result — at least ideally — of active responses to our environments and even some understanding of the entire world or even the entirety of Creation. For most human beings, these greater understandings aren’t the result of personal exploration in strange lands or libraries, results further refined by analysis and contemplation. For most human beings, these greater understandings of world and Creation or Cosmos or whatever are the cultural air we breath in and the economic food we eat. They are those environments which shape us.
What about those with damaged minds or bodies? Are, for example, terrible mental and emotional disorders the result of some potentially good trait going bad? I don’t find it at all surprising that there is some evidence that even Bipolar Disorder might have some benefits in this messy world. In the article, Research Explores the Positives of Bipolar Disorder, we can read:
The problems of living with bipolar have been well documented, but a new study by Lancaster University has captured the views of those who also report highly-valued, positive experiences of living with the condition.
Researchers at Lancaster’s Spectrum Centre, which is dedicated to the study of bipolar disorder, interviewed and recorded their views of ten people with a bipolar diagnosis, aged between 24 and 57. Participants in the study reported a number of perceived benefits to the condition ranging from to sharper senses to increased productivity.
The research was designed to explore growing evidence that some people with bipolar value their experiences and in some cases would prefer not to be without the condition.
Participants described a wide range of experiences and internal states that they believed they felt to a far greater intensity than those without the condition. These included increased perceptual sensitivity, creativity, focus and clarity of thought.
We can also read in the referenced article:
Dr Fiona Lobban, who led the study, said: “Bipolar Disorder is generally seen as a severe and enduring mental illness with serious negative consequences for the people with this diagnosis and their friends and family. For some people this is very much the case. Research shows that long term unemployment rates are high, relationships are marred by high levels of burden on family and friends and quality of life is often poor. High rates of drug and alcohol misuse are reported for people with this diagnosis and suicide rates are twenty times that of the general population.
“However, despite all these factors researchers and clinicians are aware that that some aspects of bipolar experiences are also highly valued by some people. We wanted to find out what these positive experiences were.
I’ll suggest that the manic phases of bipolar disorder might well be hints of the `high-energy’ state we might enjoy in the world of the Resurrected where the saved share the life of the Son of God. The depressed phases might be a hint of the calm. Those who are resurrected to be companions of Jesus Christ might well enjoy both states at once, rather than the lukewarm state to which human beings accustom themselves in this life.
On a more mundane level, this issue is of some personal interest. After all, I do work, creative thought and writing, which has forced many into cycles of high-energy and quiet study or contemplation or simply energy-gathering. Perhaps some are attracted to creative fields because they naturally take to such patterns of work. I might be one of them. I naturally take to periods of quiet reading and the pursuance of lighter lines of thought and love the mood surges when lines of thought come together and I can put some words together to communicate what’s been happening inside of me. I don’t suffer from, or benefit from, the extreme mood and thought swings of a Lord Byron, but I certainly wouldn’t want to give up my more moderate swings even though I sometimes feel low-key at times when my external circumstances wouldn’t justify any sort of depression.