You're confusing weakness with virtue, and we have already done that - with Christianity -.

I am basically asking if we gain any real virtues with age that aren't the direct result of our own decline?

I'm wondering what your encounters with older people are like. =) Older people are just like everyone else, except they've had more experience in the world. Some people use this experience to become better people. Some use it to become worse. Some just never change.

I am basically asking if we gain any real virtues with age that aren't the direct result of our own decline? — TiredThinker

In my 8+ decades I have seen and experienced much, and that accumulated history perhaps gives me a different if not better perspective on current events. I have become more tolerant and far less impulsive.

And since Frank Apisa was excommunicated from the forum I feel somewhat alone. That's not bad really, since much of my avocational career as a rock climber was going solo. :cool:

I am basically asking if we gain any real virtues with age that aren't the direct result of our own decline? — TiredThinker

In our youth, we wanted to hurry up in case we were late for it. (Reference: Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A.Milne, in which Tigger and Roo climb up a tall tree and forget how to come down.)

In our old age we have enough experience to bury that impatience by knowing that nothing hardly ever moves, or changes, and the more things change, the more they remain the same. (Reference: Led Zeppelin, "The Song Remains The Same".)

And thirdly, by my age people realize that a virtue is a term of misconception in and by itself; it means exteme moral behaviour, which we know is a farce (a real one, but still a farce) that society forces down the throat of each of its members. Morallity is real, but it's not virtuous... it's just a social coercion to do what the majority or what the most powerful want us to do.