Virtue is Not Optimization

tl;dr: Virtue is not something you can hack. It is borne of effort, sacrifice, discipline, and commitment. Hope shrinks when it becomes a personal aspiration we try to manage. But when practiced as a virtue, it becomes a way of being. It frees us from the illusion that everything rests on us.

I recently started following the work of Liz Bucar. She wrote a viral piece titled We Made Deepak Chopra Rich. Then He Befriended a Predator. It does a good job of naming how we relate to these wellness gurus. And what it reveals about us.

There is something about an “ancient” teaching when it is taken out of lineage and context. It becomes intentionally vague. And this is how it becomes more palatable to the contemporary West.

It gives us permission to access spirituality without needing to change anything about our lives.

You can embrace Chopra’s teachings while remaining fully embedded in capitalist consumer culture.

We want spiritual depth without material sacrifice.
We want ancient wisdom without cultural context.
We want transformation without discomfort.
We want to feel enlightened without actually changing our lives.

There is a lot that does not work about the trappings of religious structure. But they still have a number of safeguards against self-indulgent post-modern narcissism. The spiritual traditions that survive millennia all make significant demands of us.

Religious structures are constituted to help us move through heartache and discomfort as we mature into the fullness of our humanity. As we grow into the capacity to be with life and its terms. As we become the partners, parents, friends and community members we are meant to be. Worthy stewards of the planet and life upon this Sacred Earth.

In a different piece, Bucar argues that Gen Z is hungry for this kind of depth.

They’re seeking religious life, not just religious experiences. They want the big transcendent moment, the pilgrimage, the breakthrough, the mystical experience. But they also want to know what comes next.

How do they integrate that into daily life?

How do they build community?

Where do they find discipline?

They’re looking for actual well-being, not just wellness.

Wellness, it turns out, is too low a bar. Real flourishing requires community with obligations (not just benefits), discipline and practice, values and ethics, and, crucially, de-centering yourself.

I’m happy to learn that Gen Z is moving in this direction. And I don’t think it’s just Gen Z. In my work with people across generations, I notice that more and more folks want to move beyond the feel-good part of the spiritual buffet.

More people are looking for something grounded in what’s real. In the unfolding of day-to-day life. More people are yearning to remember ways that will give us the wisdom and fortitude with which to meet the challenges of our time.

Bucar points out that:

The wellness industry promised Gen X and Millennials that they could optimize their way to happiness. That turned out to be an exhausting quest.

I have certainly fallen for it.

I am blessed to be an initiate in an ancient lineage. And yet I have still fallen into the trap of saying:

My goal is to optimize life at the intersection of love and freedom.

Not the worst of aspirations!

But it still aims to turn life into a math problem that can best be solved by ME.

And this is where something subtle but important happens.

Hope as Virtue

Hope provides a particularly clear example of what happens when a virtue we are called to practice is reduced to a personal aspiration, to something we take on as our own work to manage.

If we are under the optimization spell, we will try to manage hope.

This is where I find David DeSteno’s thoughts on hope to be especially important.

He writes of a core idea that the world’s spiritual traditions have championed for millennia: hope is a virtue to be practiced, not an aspiration to be managed.

This is a significant distinction.

When we are caught in the optimization trap, even our deepest longings begin to shrink. We learn to hope only for what feels manageable. Only for what appears achievable. Only for outcomes we believe we can control.

Religious life is different in that it is not designed for your personal optimization. It makes an ethical demand. It is concerned with how we live with those around us. And it calls for a life of virtue.

Borrowing from DeSteno:

We will allow ourselves to hope only for what we believe is achievable. Dialing back our hopes becomes a way of protecting ourselves from disappointment.

From a modern psychological perspective, the logic is familiar. Aiming for goals beyond your control—saving a loved one from a terminal illness, ensuring that a government adopts a particular policy—can be framed as “false hope.” Hope, in this view, must be disciplined by probability.

While minimizing hope in this way may protect self-esteem and reduce stress—both worthy goals—it comes at a steep price.

As challenges become more difficult, we shrink from them. We become less willing to engage what is actually required of us. We seem to be witnessing this phenomenon today as a sense of gloom and “Why bother?” settles in.

Here we see another example of therapy culture gone awry. When self-reflection is practiced through a narrow, hyper-individualized lens, our measure of success is reduced to self-esteem and reduced stress.

This is too small an ambition.
Too small a perspective.

Something shifts when we align with ancient wisdom and see hope as a virtue to be practiced.

Hope is no longer about predicting outcomes or protecting ourselves from disappointment. It becomes a posture. A way of being. A habitual movement toward the good.

Hope allows us to meet life and its terms without any guarantee of success. It moves us out of the overwhelm and paralysis that make meaningful action even less likely.

And crucially, it releases us from the illusion that everything rests on us.

To practice hope as a virtue is not to deny difficulty or minimize suffering. It is to remain oriented toward the good even when outcomes are uncertain. Even when success cannot be guaranteed.

This is where I keep coming back to Victor Frankl’s invaluable wisdom, the liberating power of tragic optimism.

This, to me, marks a profound difference between wellness and flourishing.

Wellness asks whether I feel better.

Flourishing asks how I am called to live.

The answer is not optimization.

It’s the embodied practice of virtue.

Beyond any power that rests on us.