Tough times calls for tough people. Personal resilience begins with toughening our minds. See, in G's take on human biology, the mind supports the spine. A weak mind causes the spine to dissolve. My major concern with progressives is the mind-spine connection. Only hard work creates a tough mind. Our minds are plastic: life will mold it for you if you don't construct it through will, hard work, perseverance. OK, there's work to do. First principle: modern ethics (along with all of modern philosophy) is bullshit. Classical times was tougher than our time. It produced tough-minded people. The classical world followed virtue-based ethics. I follow them. Below is a summary I did for myself of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. It explains the classical world's goal of life and I organized extracts of Aristotle's words into a coherent summary for my own use.