I recently saw that on a blog about business and good management; and thought sin e! That’s exactly what I mean when I want to look at the 9 Virtues, but need to look at both the shadow and the light of them. Think ‘too much of a good thing’. For example, tolerance. Tolerance can be a wonderful attribute. A parent uses tolerance when teaching his or her child self-soothing and emotional regulation; not over-reacting to displays of temper, using the concept of operant conditioning to extinguish unhelpful behaviors over time, etc. (appropriate toleration).
However, taken to EXTREME, means tolerance becomes martyrdom, as in ‘doormat’. Being too tolerant is what happens when a battered spouse stands and takes the abuse and excuses it away, instead of getting out. It’s the frog that gets boiled to death in the pot because the water only GRADUALLY got hotter, and the frog adjusted (learned to tolerate). The frog adjusted him or herself to death. That’s the type of shadow vs. light balance I need to highlight for the 9 virtues.