Do you see where your eyes are looking? You are looking at the earth, at what is lowest and basest, at these miserable laws of the dead, and you regard not the laws of the gods.
Hard experience has taught me not to have too much confidence in what a man says he is going to do, and to put more weight on what he actually gets done. Perhaps he is simply being overeager, and not deliberately deceptive at all, but his words will only tell me what he wants me to think about him, while his deeds will show me who he truly is.
A helpful corollary to this rule is that I can discern even more by how a man behaves when he is put in a position of authority over others. Yes, he surely has some charm, which is how so many people find their way into high places, and yet I must look beyond such appearances. Does he ultimately treat others as ends in themselves, or merely as means for himself?
He may be wary of saying it out loud, but the boss who is a bully will consider you to be his property, to be used when convenient, to be discarded when inconvenient. He does indeed think he “owns” you, in the sense that the whole world exists to serve his pleasure.
It shows itself in smaller ways, as when a diner berates a waiter for spilling a drop of soup, and then also in bigger ways, as when the employer abuses his workers to squeeze out the last drop of profit. There is certainly a broader social injustice here, reflecting an unnecessary conflict of class and privilege, though it all springs from an immediately personal injustice, where one man chooses to treat another as an object instead of as a brother.
No, I shouldn’t brand him as a monster, because then I dehumanize him, just as he wishes to dehumanize me. Rather, I should try to understand why he has flipped his world upside down, and so try to help him get oriented. Maybe it will take some knocking about to get the job done, but I cannot become what I condemn.
What is he looking at? Everything that is base in him, and nothing that is noble. As Plato put it, his gut tells his heart how to rule his head, when his head ought to be telling his heart how to rule his gut.
There is nothing Godly in how he lives, even as he believes himself to be a little god. Is it any wonder if we reject God, when this is the twisted model with which we are regularly presented?
To show reverence for God is impossible without also showing reverence for my neighbor, as the good of the latter is an expression of the will of the former. I am called to love all of it together, not just the bits that are expedient for getting fat and rich.
I think of the words of General Robert E. Lee, now a man completely out of fashion on account of our tribal warfare, and I refuse to engage on that petty level. He certainly had his flaws, as we all do, though I deeply admire the way he was a man who could practice what he preached. His definition of a gentleman, found in his notes after his death, is something I recall when I am tempted to become the bully:
The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman.
The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly—the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light.
The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled when he cannot help humbling others.
Whether you happen to wear the blue or the gray, that is a good man, and that is a pious man.
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