I’d like to make 2 points with respect to what you said:

1-A Missing Factor: I think an important factor which you did not mention in the character development formula (apart from principles and actions) is: human nature. If your principles aren’t compatible with human nature, no matter how hard you try to apply them, you will struggle and your actions won’t match your principles.

Having said that, you *can* have your actions match unnatural principles, but your character will be deformed. For example, racism is not a proper principle. It contains an element of human nature in that we are able to make distinctions. It is unnatural because it’s based on ignorance.

The color of one’s skin doesn’t define his character. You can have someone be completely prejudiced towards people of other races, but they would have to maintain their ignorance and suspend observation in order to dismiss the fact that skin color has nothing to do with character.

Human nature is why a liar can hate being lied to: he doesn’t acknowledge the principle that lying is bad, but human beings have a natural disdain for deception.

2- When I dismissed struggle in character development, I didn’t mean that one will not experience a struggle in developing his character. I meant that it is not a natural state. I don’t believe that there is a natural conflict between mind and heart, that we must always experience the two tugging us in opposite directions.

I would even go so far as to say that “temptation” (an inclination to act in a way contrary to your values, e.g. your moral principles regarding sex) is not a natural state. You can effectively reach a point where you do not experience any inclination to act against your principles.

Temptations arise when you are:

- unaware of your principles
- uphold principles that conflict with your nature
- uphold conflicting principles that develop character contradictions
- have not adjusted your psychological outlook to match your beliefs

I will need several blog posts to cover these topics in greater detail.

What I was struggling with earlier was whether character development needs to be a struggle.

Let me share how I understand the subject, and you (or others) may tell me if I’m missing anything:

People have principles and they have their actions. When a persons actions contradict his/her principles it’s either because they require more strength to do what is right (to him/her), or its because what they thought was a principle was not really so and that their actions expose their “real” principles. While it may sometimes be a combination of both, I tend to think the latter is the mostly case. Since the example talked about in previous contributions was about lying, it’s application here would be that while one may think s/he carry a principle that truthfulness is a virtue yet continues to lie means that s/he probably doesn’t “really” have that principle.

The struggle…

I believe that people struggle to identify areas where their principles and actions are not aligned. This identification process is not easy, and I believe your main contribution speaks to this matter. Another situation in which people struggle, is when they have identified their “real” principle and want to change it to what they thought it was before it was exposed, the struggle here is a greater one.

I look forward to you upcoming post and I hope I didn’t jump the gun with this contribution.

Thanks for passing by and giving your feedback.

I will hopefully write a post on the “alignment of heart and mind” REAL soon, most likely entitled: “The Roots of True Happiness.” So watch out for that one

Character development INVOLVES the alignment of heart and mind, but it’s not IDENTICAL to it. Some people act contrary to their principles not because it conflicts with what they feel, but simply because they’re unaware of how they should behave in order to put their principles into practice. This is a very important aspect of character development.

To me, this reads “Character development = Alignment of heart and mind”

If my understanding is correct, I would like to learn more.

By the way, I really like what you’re doing

But because we don’t make the connection between our principles and our actions, we end up living in contradiction.

A liar does not like being lied to, but he’s not adopting the principle as his own, and is not taking the actions necessary to live by this principle.