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Our Selection for 2025: Ten People Who Built Through Virtue While the World Watched Spectacle When wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance guide our choice, we find transformation happening in obscurity
by Michael Lamonaca, 26 December 2025
While 2025 celebrated ego-driven spectacle—Trump renaming institutions to feed vanity, Musk performing dominance on social media, tech CEOs promising revolutions they didn’t deliver—we identified ten people you’ve never heard of whose work embodies the four cardinal virtues the Stoics prized: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. These individuals don’t necessarily practice Stoic philosophy. But their actions in 2025 demonstrated what these ancient virtues look like when applied systematically to contemporary problems. They solved problems that save lives, dismantled systems that punish the innocent, worked in war zones when others fled, and chose planetary survival over quarterly profits. The ancient Stoics understood that character isn’t what you perform when cameras watch—it’s what you build when no one’s looking. These ten people proved that wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance still work as selection criteria for identifying who actually mattered in 2025. They just don’t trend. What does it reveal about our moment that the people embodying virtue through action operate in complete obscurity while we organize attention around those who embody none of it?
The mechanics of invisibility operate through systematic amplification of spectacle over substance. Modern media infrastructure rewards performance that generates engagement, not work that generates outcomes. Trump renaming the Kennedy Center produces outrage, shares, clicks—measurable attention that translates to advertising revenue. Dr. David Liu editing genes to prevent inherited disease produces papers read by specialists, grants awarded by committees, and eventually treatments that save lives no journalist will connect to his breakthrough. The spectacle is immediately legible. The substance requires expertise to recognize and years to verify. Markets amplify what can be monetized now. Virtue operates on timelines measured in decades or generations.
This creates perverse selection pressure. Individuals seeking visibility learn that performance beats competence, that narrative matters more than results, that the appearance of authority generates more power than the demonstration of wisdom. Those who prioritize actual outcomes over public recognition discover that solving problems doesn’t produce fame—it produces more complex problems requiring deeper expertise. The scientist who cures one disease confronts ten more. The judge who reforms one broken system reveals five others requiring equal attention. Virtue compounds through iteration, not publicity. Spectacle peaks at first performance.
Wisdom reveals itself through iteration that deepens rather than expands. Dr. David Liu didn’t solve genetics once and move on. He spent decades developing base editing technology, then refined it, then discovered limitations, then created new methods to address those limitations. His 2025 Breakthrough Prize recognizes not a single discovery but a systematic program of research where each answer generated more precise questions. This is Sophia—practical wisdom that compounds through depth rather than breadth. The more Liu understands gene editing, the more he recognizes what remains unknown. Wisdom doesn’t produce certainty. It produces increasingly sophisticated uncertainty that enables increasingly precise intervention.
Holly Lane, Ph.D. at the University of Florida Literacy Institute didn’t declare a literacy crisis and propose a manifesto. She built AI-powered assessment tools, tested them, measured outcomes, identified failure points, revised methods, retested, and iterated until the system worked well enough to distribute. The tool now helps teachers deliver personalized instruction, but Lane knows exactly where it fails—which student populations it serves poorly, which learning disabilities it can’t accommodate, which cultural contexts it misreads. Her wisdom isn’t final solution. It’s systematic problem-solving that reveals the next problem requiring attention.
Howard Bell III expanded Learning Ally’s audiobook access to 2.6 million students, then discovered that access alone doesn’t solve literacy inequality—it reveals infrastructure gaps, teacher training deficits, and curriculum mismatches that prevent effective use. Each problem solved exposes the system more clearly, showing where intervention matters most. These wisdom practitioners share a pattern: solve one problem, discover ten more, develop methods to address those, iterate continuously. They don’t promise revolution. They deliver systematic improvement through patient accumulation of knowledge applied to specific problems. This takes decades. It generates no viral moments. It works.
Justice operates through patience that outlasts opposition. Erez Reuveni refused illegal deportation orders in 2025 knowing his objection wouldn’t stop the policy, wouldn’t change the administration, wouldn’t reform the system immediately. His refusal mattered not because it prevented all harm but because it established that some DOJ attorneys still prioritized law over loyalty. That precedent won’t reverse policy this year. It creates institutional memory that future reforms will reference when systems eventually shift. Justice-building operates on timelines that exceed any single career.
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner led New Jersey’s criminal justice reform eliminating money bail—work that began in 2014, implemented in 2017, and by 2025 shows sustained success through data accumulated over years. The reform faced immediate opposition from bail bondsmen, prosecutors who preferred discretionary detention, and politicians who claimed it would increase crime. Rabner didn’t defeat opposition through argument. He implemented reform, measured outcomes rigorously, published data annually, and let evidence compound over time until opposition lost credibility. Justice requires the patience to outlast bad-faith objections through systematic demonstration that reform works.
Sarah Staudt and the Prison Policy Initiative produce comprehensive reform guides now used in all 50 states—work requiring years of research synthesizing criminology, policy analysis, legislative process, and coalition-building across political divides. Each guide addresses specific jurisdiction, anticipating objections, providing counterarguments, citing precedent, offering implementation roadmaps. The work is technical, unglamorous, and cumulative. One guide builds on another. One reform enables the next. Justice isn’t dramatic reversal. It’s patient construction of better systems that outlast those who built them. Dikaiosyne operates through accumulation of small victories that compound into structural change no single opposition can reverse.
Courage manifests through calculation that risk is necessary when inaction guarantees harm. Dr. Younis Awadallah and Fairuz Abuwarda didn’t lack fear while coordinating polio vaccination in Gaza. They calculated that 600,000 unvaccinated children in a war zone guaranteed disease outbreak, and that someone had to stay despite danger or the outbreak would happen. This isn’t heroism—it’s math. Polio spreads predictably. Vaccination prevents it reliably. Someone must administer vaccines. If everyone who could leaves, the disease wins by default. Courage is the decision that your presence despite risk produces better outcomes than your absence despite safety.
The 152 American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza performed the same calculation. They knew the statistics: over 1,500 healthcare workers killed since October 2023, hospitals bombed systematically, colleagues targeted deliberately. They went anyway because the alternative—allowing preventable death through absence—violated the core commitment that justified their expertise. You don’t become a doctor to watch people die when you could intervene. Andreia isn’t absence of fear. It’s accurate assessment that the cost of inaction exceeds the cost of risk, followed by deliberate choice to act despite danger because the math requires it.
This is what distinguishes courage from recklessness. Recklessness ignores risk. Courage calculates it accurately, acknowledges it honestly, then acts anyway because not acting produces worse outcomes. The healthcare workers didn’t pretend Gaza was safe. They documented precisely how dangerous it was—in their October 2025 open letter exposing systematic targeting of medical infrastructure. They published it knowing it risked professional consequences and personal safety. But silence would make them complicit in concealing preventable harm. Courage is choosing to speak truth when silence is safer but dishonest. The calculation is cold: your silence enables continued harm. Your testimony risks punishment but might prevent future harm. The math requires testimony. Andreia follows math.
Temperance demonstrates through restraint chosen when expansion remains possible. Yvon Chouinard didn’t give Patagonia away because he lacked options. At 87, he could have sold the company for billions, enriching himself and heirs for generations. He chose instead to restructure ownership so profits fund environmental protection in perpetuity. This isn’t sacrifice—it’s accurate calculation that personal wealth accumulation produces temporary benefit while planetary preservation produces permanent possibility. Sophrosyne isn’t deprivation. It’s recognizing that restraint now preserves options later, while extraction now eliminates options permanently.
Ryan Gellert implements this calculation operationally through choices that directly reduce Patagonia’s growth potential. The Worn Wear program repairs products instead of selling new ones—explicitly cannibalizing sales to extend product lifespan. The company designs for durability over planned obsolescence, making products that last decades rather than seasons. Gellert co-founded Brands for Public Lands, coordinating 100 brands to prioritize environmental protection over market expansion. Every strategic choice rejects growth-maximization in favor of sustainability. This isn’t idealism—it’s pragmatism recognizing that infinite growth on a finite planet produces inevitable collapse, while voluntary restraint produces indefinite continuation.
The pattern these temperance practitioners share: recognize capacity for extraction, calculate that extraction produces temporary gain and permanent loss, voluntarily limit present consumption to preserve future possibility. Chouinard could extract billions. He chose perpetual environmental funding. Gellert could maximize quarterly returns. He minimizes planetary harm. Both understand that Sophrosyne isn’t moral superiority—it’s intelligence recognizing that systems requiring continuous growth eventually consume the foundation supporting them. Temperance is choosing structural stability over short-term optimization because collapse isn’t an acceptable outcome.
The historical pattern is ancient and repeating. Marcus Aurelius practiced virtue while governing empire, writing Meditations not for publication but for personal discipline. His son Commodus performed power, hosting gladiatorial spectacles and renaming Rome after himself. History remembers Marcus as philosopher-emperor whose Stoic principles influenced leaders for two millennia. Commodus is remembered for the collapse his ego-driven rule accelerated and the assassination that ended it. Virtue builds structures that outlast their builders. Spectacle creates monuments that crumble when the performer dies.
Florence Nightingale reformed military hospitals through systematic data collection and hygiene protocols. Generals who commanded the armies she served are footnotes. Her nursing principles remain global standard practice 170 years later. Norman Borlaug developed wheat varieties that saved a billion lives from starvation. Politicians who took credit for distributing his seeds are forgotten. His agricultural methods still feed continents. Jonas Salk created the polio vaccine and refused to patent it, forgoing billions in personal profit so the vaccine could be distributed freely. Pharmaceutical executives who would have monetized his work are unknown. His vaccine eliminated a disease that terrorized generations.
The principle repeats across centuries: character expressed through competent action creates value that compounds across time. Ego expressed through visible performance creates attention that dies with the news cycle. We remember builders, eventually. We forget performers immediately. The lag time between contribution and recognition can span generations. Nightingale was dismissed as difficult during her career. Borlaug won the Nobel Prize but remained unknown to those his work fed. Salk achieved fame but less than entertainers of his era. None of them worked for recognition. They worked because the problems demanded solving and they possessed the capacity to solve them. That calculation—problem exists, I can address it, therefore I must—is virtue in its purest form.
The consequence of organizing attention around spectacle rather than virtue is structural erosion. When Trump dominates headlines for renaming the Kennedy Center while Dr. David Liu’s genetic breakthrough receives specialist coverage, we teach the next generation that performance matters more than competence. When Musk’s social media provocations generate more engagement than Fairuz Abuwarda vaccinating 600,000 children in a war zone, we signal that visibility equals importance regardless of actual contribution. When quarterly profit-maximizing CEOs receive compensation packages dwarfing Ryan Gellert’s salary despite Gellert building sustainable systems that will function after their companies collapse, we demonstrate that markets reward extraction over restraint.
This creates selection effects that compound generationally. Talented individuals observe which behaviors produce rewards and adjust accordingly. Those capable of both competence and performance learn that performance requires less effort for greater return. Those committed to competence despite obscurity become increasingly rare as opportunity costs rise. The talent pool available for virtue-driven work shrinks. The pool pursuing visibility-driven performance expands. Over decades, institutions hollow out—staffed by people skilled at appearing competent rather than being competent, led by individuals optimized for attention rather than outcomes.
The damage isn’t immediate. Dr. Liu’s breakthrough happens regardless of media attention. Erez Reuveni refuses illegal orders whether journalists cover it or not. The ten people we selected work despite the incentive structure, not because of it. But systems that fail to recognize and reward virtue eventually lose the capacity to produce it. If wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance generate no institutional benefit for practitioners, fewer practitioners emerge. Each person profiled here chose virtue knowing it wouldn’t produce recognition. That’s admirable individually. It’s unsustainable systemically. Eventually, the virtuous burn out, retire, die—and nobody trained to replace them because the system taught talented people that virtue doesn’t matter.
The Stoics offered no solution to systems that fail to reward virtue because they didn’t expect systems to reward it.Marcus Aurelius didn’t write Meditations hoping Rome would celebrate philosophical emperors. He wrote it knowing that practicing virtue was his only controllable contribution to a world largely indifferent to virtue. The Stoic response to institutional failure isn’t reform the system—it’s practice virtue anyway because the alternative is complicity in degradation you can’t prevent but don’t have to accelerate.
This sounds fatalistic but operates as radical pragmatism. You can’t control whether institutions recognize wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. You can control whether you practice them. You can’t determine whether your work receives acknowledgment. You can determine whether the work was worth doing independent of recognition. Dr. David Liu can’t make media cover genetic breakthroughs. He can make genetic breakthroughs that save lives whether media covers them or not. Fairuz Abuwarda can’t guarantee anyone will notice she vaccinated 600,000 children in a war zone. She can guarantee those children didn’t contract polio because she stayed when others left.
The Stoic calculus is cold: you die eventually, your work outlasts you or it doesn’t, recognition comes or it doesn’t, none of that matters compared to whether you acted with wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance while you had the capacity to act. The ten people we selected demonstrate this calculus in practice. None of them asked whether 2025 would celebrate their work. They asked whether the work needed doing. Polio needed preventing. Genetic disease needed curing. Unjust systems needed reforming. Planetary collapse needed averting. The problems existed. They possessed relevant capacity. The virtue was in applying that capacity to those problems regardless of whether anyone noticed.
This isn’t heroism—it’s basic competence applied with character. The radical claim is that this should be normal rather than exceptional. The Stoics believed every person capable of reason possessed capacity for virtue, that practicing virtue was the only reliable path to eudaimonia, and that systems failing to recognize virtue didn’t eliminate its value—they merely revealed their own corruption. The ten people we selected didn’t wait for systems to reward virtue before practicing it. They recognized that virtue is intrinsic—it doesn’t require external validation to function. The work was worth doing because it reduced suffering, reformed injustice, saved lives, or preserved possibility. Whether anyone noticed was irrelevant to whether it mattered.
The question facing everyone who reads this isn’t “how do we make systems reward virtue?”—that’s beyond individual control. The question is “will I practice virtue anyway?” Dr. David Liu wakes up tomorrow and continues genetic research whether this article exists or not. Erez Reuveni faces the next illegal order and refuses it or complies. Fairuz Abuwarda decides whether to stay in Gaza or leave for safety. Yvon Chouinard and Ryan Gellert choose profit maximization or planetary restraint. Each decision happens in obscurity, unknown to almost everyone, mattering enormously to outcomes regardless of visibility.
The ten most important people of 2025 weren’t performing power. They were practicing virtue. We weren’t watching—but they didn’t need us to. The work was worth doing anyway.
Tags: Stoicism, Virtue Ethics, Leadership, Character, Justice, Courage, Wisdom, Temperance, 2025, Selection, Human Flourishing, Marcus Aurelius