Personality vs Character

Many of you groin-grabbing fucktards-- wait, hold on. Let Knuckles start again. Just noticed an alarming lack of epithets on this site lately and panicked.

Alright, today's sermon from Father Knuckles is the confusion between personality and character. It's important to know the difference between the two. Especially during times of war and when you're dating.

Personality traits are individual, subjective and vary widely.

Character traits are constant, objective and timeless.

Character traits include honesty, trust, respect, responsibility, leadership, loyalty and courage. One's character can be objectively judged. Character is defined as right or wrong. Character, despite its detractors, can be taught. However educators are bypassing the difficulty of teaching character and have gone directly to self-esteem, the reward of strong character. But without character, self-esteem is a hollow concept.

And while character traits are universal, each individual has the choice to accept or reject them. One of character's best features is that you can do them without conviction and the end result is the same. For instance, a coward can recognize he's a coward yet still perform an act of bravery and no one will fault him acting out of character.

Personality is subjective. It includes your sense of humor (or lack of), whether you're outgoing or shy, friendly or stoic, your interests, passions, and the list goes on. While some people have well-developed personalities, their character sucks and you eventually avoid them even though "they're a lot of fun."

Taking the historical big-picture long view, personality is neither right nor wrong. Some people will like any particular personality and others won't. (You're thinking Knuckles is trying to justify his crappy personality. But you would be wrong. Knuckles is a pantload of fun.) And while someone's basic personality never changes, it can be improved with exposure to the arts, people, travel, reading, hobbies, and pilgrimages to the holy site of this blog.

To sum:

Clinton has personality.
Bush has character.
Kerry has neither.

Bless you and fuck off, er, go forth and multiply.

Father Knuckles