Why I Write About Magnanimity
I’m Thomas. I’m a teacher.
That sentence used to bother me more than I wanted to admit. Not because I didn’t love teaching—I did. Not because I wasn’t good at it—I was. But because every time I said it at a social gathering, I could see the math happening behind people’s eyes.
Smart guy. Good school. Could have done anything. Chose… teaching?
The unspoken question hung there: What happened? What went wrong?
Nothing went wrong. I chose genuinely worthy work and built an excellent career doing it. But it took me years to stop measuring that choice against society’s scoreboard. Years to stop wondering if everyone else was right and I was just rationalizing settling for less.
Then I discovered Thomistic virtue ethics. And suddenly I had language for something I’d intuited but couldn’t articulate: the difference between vainglory and magnanimity.
That discovery changed everything. Not my circumstances—I was still a teacher, still making the same choice I’d made years earlier. What changed was the framework. I stopped seeing my vocation through the lens of “ambitious enough vs. settled for less” and started seeing it through the lens of “genuinely worthy vs. status-seeking.”
The question wasn’t “Did I achieve enough by society’s standards?” The question was “Am I pursuing what’s genuinely worthy in a manner worthy of it?”
The answer was yes. And that made all the difference.
What Teaching Taught Me About Magnanimity
Here’s what I learned from choosing the unconventional path:
Vainglory isn’t about what you achieve—it’s about why. Some executives and founders pursue genuinely worthy work and do it magnanimously. Others chase status and titles. Some teachers choose worthy work for fitting reasons. Others hide from harder callings out of fear. The path matters less than the motivation. I wasn’t chasing conventional success, but vainglory still had its hooks in me—I just measured my inadequacy by someone else’s achievements instead of my own.
Society doesn’t distinguish between worthy work and prestigious work. Teaching is genuinely worthy—it matters, it shapes lives, it requires skill and dedication. But culture treats it as noble failure. The prestige hierarchy has nothing to do with actual worth. Understanding that distinction is what separates magnanimity from vainglory.
You can live magnanimously in any genuinely worthy vocation—conventional or not. You can be an excellent teacher and live magnanimously. You can build companies and lead organizations magnanimously. You can be a founder, executive, doctor, lawyer—and do it for genuinely worthy reasons in a fitting manner. The great-souled life doesn’t require rejecting conventional success. It requires pursuing what’s actually worthy, whether that’s prestigious or not.
The cultural scoreboard is designed to make you miserable. Whether you win or lose by its measure is irrelevant. The game itself is the problem. I spent years feeling inadequate for not choosing the prestigious path. Some of my high-achieving friends spent years feeling hollow for choosing it. Different paths, same misery, same cause: measuring ourselves by vainglory’s standards.
But you can’t just “redefine success for yourself.” That’s the generic self-help answer, and it doesn’t work. Some things are genuinely worthy. Others aren’t. Magnanimity is about knowing the difference—not about making up your own scoreboard to feel better about your choices.
These aren’t abstract philosophical insights. I learned them by living them. By choosing worthy work, being excellent at it, and still fighting the pull of society’s scoreboard every time someone asked what I did for a living.
Why I’m Qualified to Write This
My authority doesn’t come from winning society’s game and then renouncing it after burning out on vainglory. I’m not the reformed executive who climbed the ladder, hated what he found at the top, and discovered wisdom through failure.
I never chased it in the first place.
That gives me something different: proof that magnanimity works outside conventional success. That you don’t need to achieve everything and feel hollow before you can live well. That choosing the worthy path from the beginning—and being excellent at it—is magnanimous, not settling.
I’m Catholic. That’s important context because this site draws heavily on Thomistic virtue ethics—specifically Thomas Aquinas’s insights about magnanimity and vainglory. My understanding of these concepts is shaped by Catholic moral theology and years of reading in that tradition.
But the philosophy stands on its own. You don’t need to be Catholic to see that Aquinas got this right. You don’t need to be religious at all. The distinction between vainglory (disordered desire for honor beyond what’s fitting) and magnanimity (great-souled pursuit of genuinely worthy things) describes human nature accurately regardless of your faith background.
I write for everyone who’s morally serious and intellectually curious—religious or not. The framework works either way.
What Led Me Here
I started writing about magnanimity because I saw a gap that needed filling.
Our culture is happy to celebrate vainglory or settle for pusillanimity—but struggles to recognize magnanimity in either conventional or unconventional paths. We celebrate ambitious executives consumed by status-seeking and miss the ones pursuing genuinely worthy work excellently. We offer therapy-speak and anti-ambition passivity to people in unconventional vocations instead of helping them see their work as magnanimous. What we don’t do well is distinguish between worthy pursuits and status-seeking—regardless of how prestigious the path looks.
Some of the high-achievers in my life—founders, executives, professionals who “made it”—were pursuing genuinely worthy work magnanimously. Others felt hollow because they’d achieved everything society told them to pursue but knew they were chasing status, not worth. Same external success, completely different internal reality.
The unconventional-path people had the mirror problem. Some chose genuinely worthy work for genuinely worthy reasons—that’s magnanimous. Others refused harder callings out of fear and rationalized it as virtue—that’s pusillanimity. Society couldn’t tell the difference and treated both as noble failure.
Both groups needed the same thing: a framework that named vainglory as a vice (not just “toxic ambition”), offered magnanimity as the actual virtue (not just “healthy ambition”), and worked whether you chose the conventional path or the unconventional one.
Thomistic virtue ethics provides that framework. Aquinas identified 800 years ago what our culture has completely forgotten: the difference between pursuing worthy things fittingly (magnanimity) and pursuing honor disorderly (vainglory). It’s not about how much you achieve. It’s about what you pursue and why.
That’s what this site teaches. And it’s what I try to live.
What I Hope You’ll Find Here
This site offers philosophical clarity for morally serious people who are tired of both hustle culture and anti-ambition passivity.
You won’t find motivational content, therapy-speak, productivity hacks, or religious evangelism. You will find:
Moral clarity grounded in classical virtue ethics. I take clear positions about what’s worthy and what isn’t. You won’t get hedging or relativism.
Content written for both paths. Whether you won society’s game and feel hollow, or chose the unconventional path and feel inadequate—the problem is the same. You’re still measuring yourself by the wrong scoreboard. The solution is magnanimity.
Philosophical frameworks that actually help with real decisions. Career choices. Marriage and family trade-offs. How to raise children without replicating achievement culture’s toxicity. When to say no. When to push harder. How to know what’s genuinely worthy.
An anti-therapeutic, pro-reality approach. Feelings are real but not authoritative. Virtue matters more than how you feel about yourself. You don’t need to process your relationship to achievement. You need to pursue genuinely worthy work in a manner worthy of it.
Proof that magnanimity works outside conventional success. Because I’m living it. Not as a reformed striver who learned the hard way, but as someone who chose the worthy path from the beginning and has zero regrets.
A Note on Tone
I write the way I think: directly, with moral seriousness, but not preachy.
I’m not trying to convert you to Catholicism (though I won’t hide that I’m Catholic). I’m not trying to make you feel validated or inspired.
I’m trying to tell you the truth about what makes ambitious people miserable and what actually leads to living well. Sometimes that truth is confrontational. Sometimes it contradicts what culture celebrates. I take positions and defend them.
But I write with respect for your intelligence and agency. You’re capable of evaluating arguments, making your own decisions, and living with the consequences. I trust that. I hope you find that refreshing.
Start Wherever Makes Sense
If you’re new here, the homepage walks you through the three-pillar structure: the problem (Selfish Ambition), the solution (Magnanimity), and the practice (Cardinal Virtues).
Or just browse the blog and see what resonates.
The goal isn’t to consume content. The goal is to live magnanimously. Use what helps with that. Ignore what doesn’t.
Why “Grow In Magnanimity”?
Because magnanimity isn’t something you achieve and lock down. It’s something you grow into over time.
I’m still growing in it. Still fighting the pull of society’s scoreboard when someone asks what I do. Still measuring my choices against the virtue instead of against other people’s achievements. Still learning what it means to pursue worthy things fittingly.
This site documents that growth—mine and hopefully yours.
You won’t regret pursuing what’s genuinely worthy. You’ll only regret measuring yourself by the wrong scoreboard for another decade.
Let’s not do that.