Virtue by Virtue

What is virtue? Is virtue an end result to a means that can come in many forms? Or is virtue the means that leads to an end that forms from many different origins? Being the intellectual animals that we are we often seek answers to many of life's questions. We've searched through science, religion, mythic interpretations, holistic interpretations, and yet we still cannot answer it all. Even the small amount that we've been able to wrap our head around seems to slip into doubt as more time passes. It seems like both the eastern and western traditions alike have tried very different approaches to finding what this Truth is all about. Both seem to come close but nearly miss with maybe an exception or two. How can we raise a global conscious in a time span that needs urgent action when it has taken thousands of years of mistakes of grand and small scales to lead us a millimeter in the right direction? Can we make significant strides and "snap-out" of our cloudy state of mind to focus on the problems that plague us the same way they did those that lived in that distant yet short past?