most overrated virtue

Cass emailed today. And called this evening. Seeing as we haven't spoken in about 2 months (my fault I failed to respond to a phone message) we talked for about 2 hours on the phone. We conversed on many subjects amongst them

• parents who almost cut their fingers off
• ontology
• ethics and business managers
• attention deficit disorder
• children under 3 watching tv, and how they shouldn't because it interfers with their synapses
• what men eat when women aren't at home
• myspace is ugly
• the unbelievable little pieces of James Frey

We also got onto Proust's Questions. Running through the list I asked Cass "What do you consider the most overrated virtue?" which meant we had to find a list of virtues. Cass decided that the most overrated virtue is cleanliness.

Then we started looking at vices. If you can define a vice as the opposite of a virtue, then probably the most overrated vice is dirtiness. We also decided that several of the virtues could become vices, eg diligence, or flexibility, or tact even. Perhaps anything taken to an extreme is vicious.