The intellectual virtues of lifespace and access to resources

One of the most important intellectual virtues is lifespace. Consider a Muslim teenager who becomes an atheist. If his Muslim parents were to find out, it would be awkward or worse. To build out his new naturalistic worldview, he wants to write public blogposts and post public YouTube videos expressing his views and working through the philosophical puzzles he’s struggling with. This practice of talking out loud and connecting to other philosophically inclined folks across the internet is essential to him for processing information and developing his philosophical skills. He also wishes he could major in Philosophy at university. But he’s scared to express his views publicly in fear of his family and community finding out. Because he relies on his parents for education funding, and because of the economic non-viability of philosophy, he’s scared to pursue a Philosophy major. So instead of focusing on expressing himself, developing his worldview, and engaging with like-minded individuals, he focuses instead on trying to achieve financial independence. The teenager focuses on another career that can pay the bills. But that career has nothing to do with developing one’s intellectual virtue and philosophical knowledge. Many careers stifle one’s intellectual virtue and retard one’s philosophical development. Plus, the teenager wants more than anything to pursue philosophy, and so being deprived of this pursuit leads to chronic stress, and chronic stress is known to severely hurt one’s mental health and brain health, which in turn hurts one’s intellectual virtue. So we can see how a lack of lifespace leads to a loss of intellectual virtue, and indeed a lack of lifespace is perhaps the single greatest cause of the extreme lacuna of intellectual virtue we see in society. We also see how social structures tend to be anti-intellectual in nature, because maintaining one's status in a social structure requires going along with established narratives no matter how absurd and clearly false they may be.

Lifespace alone is not enough, though. Another intellectual virtue is access to philosophy resources. That means: 1) Reading materials, 2) Mentorship & training, and 3) Participation in philosophical communities and extended conversations across a wide variety of topics with a wide variety of people. Considering how rare it is to have the lifespace and access to resources needed, it’s no wonder that intellectual virtue is rare. Because becoming rich and powerful often has nothing to do with virtue, and indeed often has more to do with a lack of virtue, it's no surprise that intellectual virtue is especially rare among the rich and powerful. In a metaphorical sense then, what Jesus says is true when he says that it's harder for a rich man to go to heaven than for a camel to fit in the eye of a needle.