Virtues that Mitigate the Deprivations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 2025, Hartman

Dolphin

Dolphin

Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Virtues that Mitigate the Deprivations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome​

Robert J. Hartman
In Eric J. Silverman, Virtuous Responses to Suffering, Tragedy, and Evil. Routledge (forthcoming) Copy BIBTEX

Abstract​

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is an invisible disability.

It is a condition of overwhelming fatigue that can last for years with various other symptoms including, most importantly, post-exertion malaise.

I offer my own experience with CFS and the experience of others to explain its staggering deprivations: CFS greatly reduces the scope of access to objective goods; it greatly diminishes autonomy about their realization; it creates hardships that tend to end or diminish friendships; it tends to habituate in ways that mitigate inner peace and corrupt good character; and it diminishes bodily health.

With those serious deprivations in view, I explain how various virtues can recapture some degrees of well-being lost from CFS and how their corresponding vices magnify its deprivations.

The virtues of humility, patience, prudence, courage, and hope mitigate the deprivations of CFS and promote well-being.

The vices of pride, impatience, impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, cowardice, presumption, and despair compound its deprivations.



Categories​

Applied Virtue Ethics in Normative Ethics
Disability and Well-Being in Applied Ethics
Physical Disabilities in Applied Ethics
Virtues and Vices in Normative Ethics

Keywords​

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Well-Being Virtue Humility Courage Hope Wisdom Friendship Thomas Aquinas Vice
 
I haven't read this yet but am intrigued with the thoughts of anyone who has.

Not currently impressed by the last line terming as vices a long list of things given if it was written in laypersons terms to other pwme as a 'kick yourself' situation that would be one thing, but all we have had it trickery of no-wins, heads/tails it is always your own fault from medics and the world alike, even when they've been the ones pushing us 'just cos', for the sake of it and not even ever getting to the point that they see the consequences and realise that's them doing it and they should stop and 'why do I keep instinctively doing this to those people'.

I might agree on humility being a virtue if it is meant in the correct sense - but it applies to all, and particularly to those who have anyone less fortunate than them be they 'well' or at least not suffering with ME/CFS or coming across someone more ill to realise it isn't 'how that person manages it'.

THis is his page: https://www.robertjhartman.com/ and it lists how a lot of his research has been in 'moral luck' (and responsbility and other things)

On the other hand I've looked into

his line:
I offer my own experience with CFS and the experience of others to explain its staggering deprivations
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And in the article it says:

I had CFS for five years due to an atypically long and severe infection of mononucleosis, the Epstein-Barr virus. My symptoms evolved over these years. In the final two years, I lived primarily from my bed, desk, couch, and wheelchair. My limits for physical exertion included being unable to walk more than 500 feet at once and not more than twice a day, being unable to walk up more than one level of stairs, and being unable to pick up my children who were two and three years old. These physical limits were the height of my capacities. They could not be increased or improved with rest. I could surpass these limits, but in doing so, I would suffer post-exertion malaise (PEM).
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https://philarchive.org/archive/HARVTM

page 2, there is more in the following para so it is worth a read.

I didn't copy more as it felt wrong because it is pretty accurate and didn't know how much felt appropriate to post. But hopefully this first little bit gives the impression that he does 'get' what PEM is and doesn't see it as something either minimal or just a few hours etc.
 
Like you @bobbler I'm unclear as to his target audience. This is an undated pre-print of an academic paper from Ohio Northern University whose motto is Ex diversitate vires = Out of diversity strength.

I only popped in to pick a reference for something else, so I don't have spare capacity to read the article although I did glance through his other papers and books, noting the one on cancer.

From the Abstract
Dolphin said:
I offer my own experience with CFS and the experience of others to explain its staggering deprivations: CFS greatly reduces the scope of access to objective goods; it greatly diminishes autonomy about their realization; it creates hardships that tend to end or diminish friendships; it tends to habituate in ways that mitigate inner peace and corrupt good character; and it diminishes bodily health.

With those serious deprivations in view, I explain how various virtues can recapture some degrees of well-being lost from CFS and how their corresponding vices magnify its deprivations.

The virtues of humility, patience, prudence, courage, and hope mitigate the deprivations of CFS and promote well-being.

The vices of pride, impatience, impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, cowardice, presumption, and despair compound its deprivations.
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predisposition, perpetuation and outcome.

However, as the the University hosted Dr Martin Luther King 3 months before his assasination in 1968 I decided to skim through. As you say he writes about PEM with examples from other people with ME/CFS, references to ethics include papers papers by Keith Geraghty and others.

PEM cannot be reversed by resting, and the stupefying mental fatigue and debilitating physical fatigue follow.
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To avoid triggering PEM, a person with CFS must vigilantly self-monitor and plan, which begins when a person wakes up. First, at the beginning of the day, she takes stock of how many spoons she has by thinking about how heavy her body feels. Second, she thinks about whether there is a reason why she would have fewer spoons that day given the last few weeks. Is she getting over a cold, recovering from PEM, or has she slept badly? Third, she estimates how many spoons her planned activities cost and thinks hard about hidden energy costs. For example, bracing herself while being pushed in a wheelchair over cobblestones requires exerting considerable energy, and these bracing actions may be performed instinctively without consulting the conscious mind; they can trigger PEM. Fourth, if the day’s activities require leaving the home, she plans for all energy outputs, transportation, and bodily necessities. For example, she calls ahead to determine whether the restaurant has access to a nearby restroom without climbing stairs. Fifth, she vigilantly monitors her energy output and regularly updates her estimate of how many spoons she has left. But this anxious monitoring mitigates access to inner peace, as a person worries about activating PEM throughout engagement in objectively good activities. Inner peace is disturbed precisely because the mind cannot rest. “I can’t forget about it, I always have to think about it.”30 5.
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Corrupted Good Character. The hyper-vigilance and self-prioritization required to manage CFS can habituate a person in ways that corrupt the objective good of “virtuous character.”31 But do not challenging conditions reveal what our character traits are actually like rather than corrupting good character? Although I agree that challenging circumstances and conditions often reveal new sides to our character about which we were previously ignorant, serious and repetitious hardships can erode some good character traits.32 An example might help here. An enslaved person is habituated to feel, think, and act submissively to avoid abuse, but these often-repeated submissive interior and exterior actions—as well as the absence of actions involving self-respect and autonomy—tend to diminish character involving self-respect and autonomy. As Martin Luther King Jr. points out, Jim Crow laws habituated in black people a “degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’” in that era.33 Allow me to slow down and articulate two mechanisms implicit in this example.
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At the end of 17 pages before the conclusion there is this:

Hope, however, involves movement toward a good that is difficult but possibly obtained by oneself or with help from others.74 The hopeful person is optimistic in a way that supports his well-being, in contrast with the oppressive sorrow of despair. The hopeful person is not presumptuous that some intervention will restore health, even if others urge him to take up that attitude as they so often did in my experience. Rather, the hopeful person diligently researches whether people with CFS have recovered through the suggested interventions, and if not, they move on to more promising strategies.
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The hopeful person is motivated to regain health even after many failed treatments. Each failed intervention is a great hardship because its failure is discovered by triggering PEM and “hope deferred makes the heart sick.”75 Being motivated to try other treatment options is one reason why hope is so valuable. With some luck, he finds a strategy to restore health, or he just gets better after enough time passes.
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At a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, I met a philosopher who had CFS and recovered through using an intervention called the Lightning Process.76 It is a brain-mind-body approach that is like cognitive behavioral therapy in some ways; it teaches the person with CFS to exercise some conscious influence on brain function to affect physiological changes.77 In hope, I read the books and hired a Lightning Process practitioner to work with me for a few days. Within a few months, I was walking ten miles a day, and I have not had CFS symptoms since.
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I attended an NLP course for veterans and trauma back in 2014. That's when I stopped reading the article.

For an article covering ethics and the religious concepts of vice and virtue, and bearing in mind that he suffered from CFS for 5 years it is somewhat surprising that he does not examine the long term effects of how the undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder that many of us shows signs of, interact with those vices and virtues. This comes from decades of having to defend ourselves and our characters dealing with public, media, governmental and institutional abuse, denigration and harm caused by prescribed 'therapy'. A recent example of which sounds like the response Putrino received - hypervigilance.

Overall, I would've been disappointed that I'd wasted my energy even just skimming through the 17 pages, but it has added to my section on the effects of PTSD in what i'm doing.
 
I liked parts of the article because they explained some of the limitations and psychological dynamics of living with illness. It was too PEM-centric though.

Then I got to the part about LP and now I'm wondering whether this is just a made up story.

In words similar to the author, the vice of wishful thinking and wanting to believe in miracle cures is also important and problematic...
 
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Dolphin said:
With those serious deprivations in view, I explain how various virtues can recapture some degrees of well-being lost from CFS and how their corresponding vices magnify its deprivations.

The virtues of humility, patience, prudence, courage, and hope mitigate the deprivations of CFS and promote well-being.

The vices of pride, impatience, impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, cowardice, presumption, and despair compound its deprivations.
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«Stop being inferior humans and your suffering will lessen.»
 
I have now skimmed through the whole article, reading some parts, skimming over others. It's a turgid judgemental ramble through the author's interpretations of managing ME/CFS to avoid PEM in terms of moral virtues and failings.

All leading up to the 'punch line' on page 17. It's a recovery story and sales pitch for the Lightning Process. Nothing more, nothing less. Us poor sods who haven't recovered are clearly not virtuous enough.

Bah humbug.
 
Trish said:
I have now skimmed through the whole article, reading some parts, skimming over others. It's a turgid judgemental ramble through the author's interpretations of managing ME/CFS to avoid PEM in terms of moral virtues and failings.

All leading up to the 'punch line' on page 17. It's a recovery story and sales pitch for the Lightning Process. Nothing more, nothing less. Us poor sods who haven't recovered are clearly not virtuous enough.

Bah humbug.
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The self-as-case-study plus pontificating tells us so much, and what it tells us is not what the words say!
 
I'm confused as to why so many people publish recovery stories for LP.

Are they brainwashed by NLP? Are Phil Parker paying them or persuading then to do it? Are they made up?

The negative participant testimonials for LP always are more detailed and sound more genuine. On those LP doesn't sound like anything special. Why all the attention?
 
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Liie said:
I'm confused as to why so many people publish recovery stories for LP.

Are they brainwashed by NLP? Are Phil Parker paying them or persuading then to do it? Are they made up?

The negative participant testimonials for LP always are more detailed and sound more genuine. On those LP doesn't sound like anything special. Why all the attention?
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Doesn’t the lightning process teach you to write recovery stories to “manifest recovery” so to speak, to basically convince your brain you’ve recovered even if you haven’t really.
 
Liie said:
I'm confused as to why so many people publish recovery stories for LP.

Are they brainwashed by NLP? Are Phil Parker paying them or persuading then to do it? Are they made up?

The negative participant testimonials for LP always are more detailed and sound more genuine. On those LP doesn't sound like anything special. Why all the attention?
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They have to tell themselves they are recovered/well, as part of 'positive self talk'. And reports from people who've done Lightning (and blow the whistle) say that they are told by Lightning Trainers that if they don't say they are recovered then Lightning won't work. That is why you cannot trust when Lightning Process graduates announce they are recovered.


Detailed accounts of doing Lightning Process.

Joan McParland interview: “I have been conned” - When sick patients are sold psychological snake oil



.
 
Lou B Lou said:
They have to tell themselves they are recovered/well, as part of 'positive self talk'. And reports from people who've done Lightning (and blow the whistle) say that they are told by Lightning Trainers that if they don't say they are recovered then Lightning won't work.



Joan McParland interview: “I have been conned” - When sick patients are sold psychological snake oil
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From the link:
They were told not to talk to each other about what happened in the room, don't discuss it
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the LP person told Joan to only ever talk in positive terms and words. So Joan and Paula would have these stupid conversations only in positive terms, partially out of fear, partially because they had paid so much money
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Joan was instructed to only speak in positive terms, so she called her husband and told him she was cured
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Joan practiced the self-affirmations daily and almost became evangelical about it. If any one had of said to Joan at the time that LP was a load of crap, she would have argued that it wasn't - the LP person phoned and asked the patients if they would go on tv or radio to tell about their experience - if he had of phoned Joan a week earlier then he did, she would've gone on tv to say how great LP was, he was like the Messiah to Joan - Joan was so desperate to better after years of being sick, she believed it
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Somewhat brilliant way to make money.
 
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