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I respect this view, though my personal experience has been that kindness is one of the easiest virtues to corrupt. I prefer truthfulness.

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I really do tend to think that kindness is the ur-virtue. If you aren't basically kind, I don't want to be around you. Period.

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Well, fortunately, I've always been better at truthfulness than kindness. Perhaps I value what I find the harder virtue. Truth is easy.

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I exactly think that's how people come to value different virtues. And roots. Most of my family are kind, but dishonest or self-deceiving.

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my father was a bastard, but a straight-shooter. I didn't find that made up for being an asshole.

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Near-all justifications for being an asshole to people are petty delusions, whatever word the person keeps. Self-deception is also lying.

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and

I see that too. Hence the classical notion of the virtues together making a person good. Just one or two can be easily bent out of shape.