If we’re not going off of some established, formal list, I would say church attendance. I’ve seen this used often in the US by victims or survivors of something or as some sort of background info when, in fact, it is completely meaningless and not worth mentioning. “We go to church and then this [bad thing] happened” or “We met at church” are no better or worse than saying “We go to the pub and then…” or “We met at McDonald’s”. I guess it’s related to god-fearing.
Every time I hear it my internal reaction ranges from “so what” to “aren’t you special”.
Another way to put this, though, might be “Loyalty is the mechanism by which we prioritize relationships that are most important to us over those that matter less.”
Ultimately, it is hard or impossible to have an equal amount of compassion or caring for all human beings. Loyalty is perhaps the mechanism that lets us not have to evaluate every action or choice against its impact on every person. Our relationships define our actions. To either extreme, loyalty leads to selfish, destructive, or self-destructive behavior, but in moderation it enables us to function as cohesive units with common self-interest.
In the current climate, I’d say “Respect for authority” is a virtue. Not blind faith obviously, but respecting that people who have formally studied a subject, and who have published their data and research publically, in a community in which such data is scrutinized in detail, probably know more than a rando’s WAG or a some TV pundit pretending to “just ask questions”.
If more people had this attribute maybe we’d be getting on top of threats like climate change and would have taken covid more seriously etc.
I think loyalty has to start with being loyal to your own morals. I had a business partner that I parted ways with because I would not cover up for him cheating on his wife. He accused me of not being loyal. I consider myself to be a very loyal person but my loyalty will never go against my morals no matter who it is.
I thought that was already rated extremely low here.
And it’s rated pretty low in much of the outside world. For example - China.
My nomination is honesty. And not in the sense of politely overlooking failings in others.
Lying is a human universal. Not thinking of any one here, but sometimes I’ve seen people get so upset about lying, on the web, as to hope they don’t have any teenage children. Not that bad behavior by children should be ignored. What should be usually ignored is the lie about the bad behavior.
We in the U.S., until last year, had a President who lies a lot more than is normal. This shouldn’t be allowed to obscure that people can’t get by without lying, especially if they have more than the tiniest bit of power.
My suspicion was that “respect for authority” was referring to “trusting the so-called experts” i.e. the kind of thing that people say when they have no interest in data or research and just want to go with their gut.
No, “authority” has more than one meaning. It can mean an expert, or it can mean someone in a position of power, control, or leadership: an authority figure, a person in authority over you. To a child, this would be parents, teachers, babysitters, etc. To an adult it would be bosses, political leaders, etc. My assumption is that “respect for authority” refers to the latter kind of authority.
