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The Virtues of the Golden Triangle

There is a fourth part of the golden triangle formula. The corners of the triangle represent health, wealth and love, each of which has a smaller triangle attached - diet, fitness & habits; career, skills & belongings; family, friends & self. The fourth part of the triangle is a triangle inside the golden triangle. This sounds complicated, but it looks nice.

See?

Whereas the golden triangle and its fractals represent aspects of our life, the interior virtue triangle represents the values that the golden triangle can help us orient towards.

  1. Love = Humanity
This virtue helps us to know what our goals should be. Without this, we might think it's a good idea to rob a shop for no particular reason. It is linked to the love corner of the golden triangle because the virtue essentially extends the love that we can provide for our friends, family and selves to the rest of the world. If we don’t know how to love the people close to us, then we can never hope to spread love to the world.
  1. Wealth = Competence
This virtue allows us to know how we can accomplish our goals. While we might have figured out that robbing a shop is a bad idea, and we should give our time to a good cause through the virtue of humanity, without competence, we wouldn't know how to go about doing it. We might donate to a charity that donates hats to underprivileged squirrels. This is linked to wealth because remember that the wealth corner includes career (highly specific expertise), skills (less specific expertise) and belongings (you need money to give to charity).
  1. Health = Confidence
Ok, so you've realised that you should help people and that hats for squirrels is a bad idea, maybe we should send our efforts to a poor neighbourhood. Well, doing so might not be so simple. There could be gangs or politicians who get in the way. Health helps you develop the confidence and power to not balk at these challenges. We can orient our form of exercise to develop strength, for instance. If you have a good constitution, then you have less to fear from the obstacles before you.

Think about how a Samurai, a warrior-poet, shows these three virtues. They are fiercely loyal to their master (love/humanity), they train tirelessly in swordsmanship (wealth/competence) and they never fear death (health/confidence).

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