You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

“states of Consciousness” Philosophical Concepts and the Virtue Trap / 235
ultimately, I would reach this virtue and be truly spiritual,
healthy, and receive some reward. But what is important is
that it is a concept. In therapy in the early 1980s, “I” called
these unconscious standards, which organize psychological
states and actions, the book of rules.
QUESTiOnS AnD AnSWERS
Student: Don’ t many people project that virtue onto
God?
Wolinsky: All the time.
Student: That there is some right answer that we should
ascribe to.
Wolinsky: Right; well, the Bible, A Course in Miracles:
“Let’s look it up and see what is right for us to
do.” Absolute virtue, or reason, whatever that
virtue is. It is a concept you are searching for,
the problem is that the concept called “you” is
searching for a concept called virtue or reason
or justice or right action or whatever. Hence,
there is no satisfaction in it. People believe that
if they get this virtuous thing each time, then
everybody would say that someone did X, and
everyone in the universe would be in some kind
of agreement that it was great that he did that
because it was a virtuous act. But, probably, a
third of you would say it is great, a third of you
would say it is shit, and a third of you would say
you don’t care.
Most people, “I” would say, in Western culture,
have the idea that it (the ideal of virtue) exists.
It is often their idea that there is a specific right
action in every situation, which is right no matter
what is happening in the universe.