Politics

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Grouped

/ G. Scott Huggins / 4 Comments

In her excellent novel, Dawn, Octavia Butler shows us a small group of humans struggling to adapt after having been rescued from a nuclear war on Earth by an alien species called the Oankali. One of the aliens says that humans have two attributes that doomed us to destroy ourselves. We are intelligent, and we are hierarchical. The hierarchies we seek to establish are the cause of our violence, and intelligence used in service of this violence gives us the ability to destroy our species.

I would add a third quality, however, that Ms. Butler may have overlooked,* and this is our tendency to groupishness. In some ways, this can be a strength. One of my favorite characters in all of science-fiction, Ambassador Delenn of Babylon 5, said, “Wherever humans go, they form communities.” Yes. We form groups. We form them because they are fun. We form them because we learn from them. We form them because they are essential to realizing certain dreams. And we form them because they make us feel safe. We form them because they reassure us that we are righteous. That we are sane. That we are not trapped in the hell of loneliness.

We are born into certain groups, whether we like it or not. Physical gender. Levels of physical abilities. But the fact is that we humans will make up groups to sort people in any number of ways. Some are real. Some are imaginary. And it is this tendency of humans that truly makes me fear for our species.

It isn’t just that we place ourselves in these groups. It is not even just that we seek to exclude others from our own groups. It would, in some ways, be impossible to have groups that did not exclude. It is our desire to group other people, whether they are willing to be so grouped or not, and then to rank them in an hierarchy according to what groups they have been melded with.

We’ve all played the game: “If you are this, you can’t be that.” “If you are this, you must also be that.”
You cannot be a loyal American and a Muslim.
You must be a racist if you fly the Confederate flag.
You cannot be scientifically knowledgeable and a Republican.
You cannot be a pacifist and a patriot.

What else is the current debate over the Confederate flag about? It’s about the ability to put people in groups. The Confederate flag was originally flown over the desire to put people in groups. To have a symbol for the people who wanted to ensure that the white race would always be superior to the black race. To have a symbol for those who believed that the federal government had no authority to order the sovereign states to obey it.

For those who believed the former, but not the latter, there was no special symbol, but the American flag did well enough. After all, most white people in the 1860s were quite openly convinced of white superiority. As for those who currently believe the latter, but not the former, they have no symbol. They want to use that symbol because it is potent and rich with history. Their opponents are just as concerned with the potency of the symbol, and are determined to deny its use, because they fear that it secretly means a determination to subjugate and destroy them, just as it openly did 150 years ago.

The common thread here, as I see it, is that people want absolute freedom to group. Of themselves they wish to say, “I and I alone, determine what groups I join and what they mean to me, and only we, the People of the Group, may have an opinion on the worth of the Group and the ultimate meaning of the Group.” Of others, they wish to say, “I will determine your worthiness to be admitted to my group, and what other groups you belong to, whether you acknowledge your membership in that group or not. Whether you know those groups exist or not.”

Obviously, these freedoms cannot coexist. No two people can have that kind of power over themselves and over the other. At the core of this groupishness is a terrible fear that we may be left alone with no group, and a willingness to disrespect others’ agency to form groups, lest they expel us from our group, or tear our group apart. The more a group feels itself attacked, the tighter it hangs together, because a group is in many ways a spiritual home. A place where we can escape form loneliness and be understood by the Group. Threaten that, and you threaten something very close to family. People will kill for it. Some asshole just did, because he thought that members of the Group of Black Americans threatened his Group (what he called it in his mind, I neither know nor want to) by their insistence on being fully included in the Group of Americans. Now the Groups are on the march. Active. Angry. Defending their Groups from perceived attack and mobilizing to attack Groups they perceive as potential threats. Groups they perceive as the source of this asshole.

I feel I have spent a lot of time saying little that is profound. What, after all, can I recommend, here? I don’t have much of an answer except “awareness.” Awareness that leads to love. When you see people passionately defending a group or a symbol that stands for something you hate, be aware that they are probably being honest in their claims that they are defending a love, and a home. Don’t assume they must be cherishing a hate because they know or dress like, or like the same symbol as THOSE PEOPLE. It’s true not everyone is honest. Some are monsters, I will grant, who lie about what groups they are part of and what those groups mean. Most are not. Be aware of what you are doing when you assign people to groups, and that you may be wrong. Be aware that if your Group is threatened, you may overreact. Ask yourself if that’s possible. Try to allow people the same freedom to form Groups and determine their meanings as you would want for yourself.

It’s the only lesson, or hope, that I can see.

*I say may. Steven Barnes, who certainly knew Ms. Butler better than I did (having been her student for only a week) says that Ms. Butler said that humans were hierarchical and tribal. I prefer “groupish” because it implies a more fluid construct than a tribe, which is usually something you are born into, or at least choose for the long term. However, I’m happy to give both Ms. Butler and Mr. Barnes credit for noting the really important parts of this phenomenon before I did.

Put All The Gods Back In Schools: Why We Need Religious Education

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

What would you say if the school systems of the nation refused to teach children about a subject that affected the entire population of the world for all of known history, and has been used both as a motivation to liberate, persecute, build and destroy nations? Would you not justifiably wonder at the ignorance and cowardice of the institutions that are supposed to be teaching our children? And yet no one seems to question the fact that our public schools systems by and large do not teach about the religious beliefs around which (and sometimes in spite of which) the moral structures we build our society upon rest. We ignore them entirely, and as a result, students have almost no understanding of what religions have taught or do teach, and which inform the actions of millions within the nation and billions outside of it. The result of this is a citizenry that is incapable of putting together the most rudimentary theological statements. They can neither examine nor defend a religious position, nor comprehend a religious text. They think all religious statements are opinions, on the level of “I like strawberry ice cream,” or “I’m a Chicago Bears fan.” They do not understand that for many of their fellow Americans, let alone the people of the world, religious faith is a matter beside which matters of life and death dwindle into insignificance. And because of that, we are unable to relate to our fellow humans.

You see, whether you believe that the Bible (or the Koran, or the Bhagavad-gita, etc.) is the Word of the Lord to Mankind or whether you believe it is the biggest pile of bullshit ever delivered — and certainly whether you like it or not (as if the world cares) — religion is, long-term, one of the most  successful ideas in human history. There have been gods before there were nations, before there were states, possibly even before there were economies. This is why I don’t take anyone too seriously when they say that the death of religion is just around the corner. These people are at best the equivalent of the liberal who, after Richard Nixon’s 49-state sweep in 1968 said, “I don’t know how McGovern lost; I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon.”

Further, until the day that religion does go away, there is no one on the planet who can logically fail to have a religious position. “I believe in God” is a religious position. “God is a fairy-tale” is a religious position. “I don’t know” is a religious position. And your religious position, once known, affects the behavior of other people with religious positions toward you. Even refusing to declare a religious position will do that.

Therefore, we are doing a grave disservice to our children, to say nothing of our nation as a whole, when we do not teach about religions. And why do we not teach about religion? Because we are petrified of the potential consequences. We are scared that our children will be exposed to religions we don’t agree with. Our children might turn Muslim. Or atheist. Or Christian. To which I can only say: if you are so worried that being exposed to religious ideas other than your own in a class for a year or two might cause your child to embrace another religion than the “true” one you are teaching in your home, then you must not be doing a very good job of being the (un)religious leader of your household. I think that’s a big fear behind our unwillingness to consider this idea. We’re worried that our kids might become one of those people.

Oh, we pretend to have higher motives. We don’t want to “offend” anyone. Sure. So rather than make anyone the least bit uncomfortable, we, in the name of civil discourse, pretend that religion is either unimportant or does not exist. We are lying to them (which they know) and telling them that public discussion and debate about such things can’t happen because disagreeing with someone over such matters is tantamount to a declaration of enmity.

Is this the right lesson to teach in a democracy? Because we’re teaching it. That’s what we’re teaching by not teaching religion. That disagreement is hostility and war, and the only way to avoid that is to lie to one another. And a democracy cannot survive that loss of trust and honesty. No, what we need is a Comparative Religion course that forces our students to examine the different belief systems according to their own points of view. We take a comprehensive view of, say, the six-to-ten most practiced religions in the nation (yes, including atheism) and teach their historically-known origins, the origins as they see them, and an overview of the dominant doctrines. For kids who believe in a faith not represented, we let them have a day of class time to present their faith, or to invite a religious leader of their choosing to present it. No one is forced to pray to anything, or to participate in any overtly religious activity. No one is proselytizing. Everyone is studying, and learning what people believe.

Now about this time I expect to hear a few major whines:

“But why can’t Social Studies classes teach that? They teach history, and religion is part of that, right?”
Yeah, but it’s big enough to warrant its own class. That’s like asking why we teach US History and not just World History. Isn’t the US in the world? I can’t teach all the doctrines of even all the major religions. I’m not qualified to explain their theologies, and how they’ve changed, and why people act the way they do in support of them. I might be able to with some training, and time to teach them, though. Which means, having a separate class.

“But what about all those people pushing their own agenda? What about bad teachers who push THEIR religion onto MY kid?!”
Okay, seriously, you think you won’t hear about that? Treat it like you would any other incompetent or abusive teacher. Report it, complain about it, and if it gets bad enough, go elsewhere. If it’s real, and not just you being paranoid, it will be addressed. Bad teachers happen; this subject isn’t special.

“I like the way we do it now, because it does teach kids that religion is unimportant, and religion shouldn’t exist.”
Well, okay. That’s at least honestly said, but of course, you’re turning around and lying to the kids and they know it, as I said above. And you’re taking the position that it’s okay for the government to push the religious position of agnosticism on our children (because you acknowledge it is doing that), which is both unconstitutional, because it effectively violates the Establishment clause, and bad education, for reasons discussed above.

“But what if we get it wrong?!”
Okay, this one at least isn’t rooted completely in selfishness. But we get school wrong all the time. Ask any teacher. We will get it wrong, frequently. But it’s not the end of the world. We screw up, we learn, and we do better. We consult with religious leaders if we’re accused of misrepresenting matters of faith, we take their input, and we do better next time. Like adults who care.

Adults who care need to teach this, without fear or favor. Without flinching. Because otherwise we are further teaching a lie, and weakening ourselves.

In Slavery to Freedom

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

I was brought up in the American nation, and I was brought up in the Christian faith. And I quickly learned the two lessons you are supposed to learn growing up in those two traditions. They are not hard lessons to grasp; my five year-old son can do it:

1) A follower of Christ loves God’s people (that means “people,” by the way. Not “people I approve of,” or “my co-religionists.”)

2) Americans, and all people, are of right and should be free.

Now that is very, very simple, and I find it incredible, really, that American Christians seem to have lost our way on what really should be the very beginning of Christ’s teaching here. This week I see examples of that failure all around us. Who could possibly miss them? The Church, no less than the nation, has erupted into rage and outrage, cries and outcries. We see outward condemnation and smug self-righteousness everywhere. So maybe we have to go back to two very simple points, one about love and one about freedom:

Point 1: If you will not love a person that you can love, then you are doing evil.

I will not backtrack on this statement, though I know a lot of people will want to call me on it. They are going to say that I have no right to tell them to love. They will say that they cannot love anymore. They are going to say that they will love once they have justice.
Well, the first one is right on; I do not have the right to tell anyone to love. I can only point to Christ, who does have that right because he earned it in the only way that kind of right can be earned: by showing just how far his love would go, and He took it very far indeed. As for those who truly cannot love anymore, I will not judge them, but I will say that if you truly cannot love, then you are as close to powerless as a human being can be. The power of a human soul is nothing other than the power to love, and if that has been taken from you, then I can only counsel that you try to do no harm and pray for God to change you. But the idea that you are going to love only when you have justice, or worse, freedom, is truly a perversion. For one thing, it creates the terrible delusion that justice could ever be anything other than love. And this, of course, is what the protests in Ferguson, in New York, and in Cleveland have got to be about, or they are nothing but bloodlust.
Justice is about restitution, both to the person injured, and to the one who has done the injury. We may do harm to the offender, but it is in the name of (at best) turning him or her from an offender back into a free citizen. At worst it is about stopping him or her from injuring others, because we cannot do what is best.
Now if these protests are about anything meaningful, they are about the perception that White America does not love Black Americans. That we are more interested in doing what is worst: controlling, suppressing, and eliminating them than we are in taking the risk involved in doing what is best, and relating to them like we would to other human beings with different skin colors and voices and cultures. And love entails taking risks just as surely as justice entails love. Law enforcement should understand this more than anyone, and while I don’t want to dump on the police here, who face a lot of risk daily over the dumbest things imaginable, the fact of the matter is that the very reason we respect the police is because they are willing to take risks. They signed up for the awful privilege of taking those risks, not because they are good at avoiding them. And that does mean putting themselves in harm’s way to avoid killing.
But likewise, when we demand justice from the police and from the state, we must remember that the police and the state are in the end human constructs of human beings. Society itself is nothing more than individual human beings.
Now, if our goal is to engage that society with the hope of changing it for the better, then it must be in love. Either that, or we might as well go all the way and admit that we do not want to better our society or our neighbors, that we are two societies at war, and start fighting in earnest, so that the horror of it might be spilled out, and show the survivors how not to do it.
But if our goal is to be free and claim power for ourselves, then it is even more vital that we love. When we fight, do we not fight for the right to be safe enough to love our families and our friends? And when the “enemy” whoever it is, has been defeated, how then do we treat our families? Which of my readers has never been involved in the terrible wars that families wage, or the bitterness of broken friendship?
This is the terrible and painful truth: If we will not claim the power to love our enemies, we will never be able to love anyone as we must. We cannot pretend that the injustice done to us gives us some “right” to withhold love, or justice, from our oppressors, as if that were a strength. It is a false strength. Which brings me to my second point:

Point 2: If you cannot love until you have a thing, you are a slave to that thing.

When you deny that you can love, because you have not received enough justice, or enough safety, or enough equal treatment, or enough respect, you are effectively ruled by that thing that others have the ability to deny you. And yes, you can really be ruled by that thing. It would be stupid for a man held at gunpoint to pretend there is no gun. I am not one to recommend non-violence in all situations. Hold a weapon on me, or God help you, one of my children, and you will see what violence I can do.
And I do have sympathy (for reasons I will not go into here) for those who find it difficult to get out of that type of thinking. Who really have been traumatized to the point where they have difficulty believing they can ever really be out of danger. It takes for them great courage to love. It is not their fault that they have been wounded. But this is not really about fault. This is about healing, and all healing requires the act of courage, at the last, to say to oneself, “I will go out into the world that has hurt me, even though the danger is not past, and live again.” Anyone who cannot do this is not really healed, but wounded. Anyone who is wounded is not really strong yet.
We have accepted a lie in this nation, which is that strength is the ability to take what we want by force, and ignore our enemies. This is a powerful illusion, but it ends up with us treating everyone like an enemy, and being the slaves of our wants: safety, respect, and possessions, and even freedom itself. Only when we learn to love like followers of Christ will we be truly free.

Employment Opportunity

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

Hey, here’s an awesome job opportunity I recently heard about, and I’d be happy to put you in contact with the relevant people if you’re interested, so here’s the information.

Position Requirements:

Education: none
Experience: none
Applicant must be a U.S. citizen and be at least 25 years of age.

However, it is EXPECTED that the successful applicant will also:

Demonstrate excellent public-relations skills
Display an unswerving dedication to customer service
Possess expert knowledge of sales techniques
Be willing to travel on short notice in response to customer-service and sales opportunities
Show the ability to satisfy wildly differing needs of diverse groups of clients simultaneously
Display an uncompromising pursuit of client satisfaction
Negotiate expertly as part of a decision-making process with several hundred co-workers

It is expected that the applicant will never contradict him or herself, say anything that would reflect poorly on him or herself, the client base, the company, or any group within said client base or company.

Application Process:

The application process varies greatly depending on the location the applicant wishes to work in; however, the company’s clients are generally looking for an individual willing to invest, on average, 1.6 million dollars in the company up front. This investment is expected to take place before the first round of the interview process, however, applicants are cautioned: NO AMOUNT OF INVESTMENT WILL GUARANTEE YOU A POSITION. The amount you invest is entirely voluntary, but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will the money be refunded.  While it is not unheard of for our clients to contribute to this investment for applicants they find attractive, it is expected that applicants will find their own means of securing this, or any other, financing. Applicants must convince the interviewers and clients to whom they report that they are the best candidate for the job in two consecutive rounds of interviews. Applicants should be aware that average expectations may vary massively between the two rounds of interviews, and that the final interviewers will have full access to the notes taken during the initial interview.
Once the final interview is passed, the new hire will be awarded the position under a two-year contract. The position must be reapplied for every two years.

Compensation:

Compensation is attractive, offering a salary of $174,000 per year, plus health, life, and retirement benefits.

Working conditions:

Employees will be required to commute regularly between national and regional headquarters, and be available for client interviews at any appropriate time. During times of high demand, employees should expect to be available at any hour of the day or night. It is recommended that employees maintain both a public and private telephone number, as the clientele is extremely demanding and apt to call at any time. Employees must expect to be under surveillance by any and all means at any time during the interview and (if applicable) contract period. Employees will be subject to an unofficial but extensive background check. Any unsatisfactory criminal or social history may be grounds for termination of the interview process or non-renewal of contract.

Code of Conduct (Employees)

Employees should be absolutely above reproach in financial, social, and legal matters. Employees are expected to treat the clientele and their supervisors with courtesy at all times, regardless of any provocation to the contrary.

Code of Conduct (Supervisors)

None. Supervisors are immune to termination except for the commission of felonious crime, and are guaranteed the right to express any opinion of any employee at any time and in any manner, without fear of recourse.

Responsibilities:

Set policies for a large nonprofit organization with multinational interests in cooperation with several hundred of your co-workers for the good of an approximately 300,000,000-member client base.
Regularly communicate the status of the organization to clientele and supervisors, with scrupulous regard for the truth.
Serve on various committees, to which you will be appointed by your co-workers, on basis of seniority.
Investigate claims brought by clients and co-workers regarding the status of the organizations.
Take part in regional and company-wide ceremonies on most holidays.

Organization:

You will directly report to many supervisors, all of whom have a say in whether your contract will be renewed for the next two-year period. Depending on the position for which you apply, you may report to as few as 190,000 to as many as 13,000,000 supervisors, most of whom have no working knowledge of what your job entails, and almost all of whom believe they would do it better. You will be given, on average, a $1.4 million budget to work with, and may hire a staff of no more than 18 people to assist you.

The review process is stringent, and as mentioned above, the position must be re-applied for every two years. The applicant must expect conflicting reviews from supervisors. Expect strong competition for this highly sought after position.

 

Popular UnWisdom #2: No Better Than They Are

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

“If you kill people to show that killing is wrong, you are no better than they are.”

–Unknown

I don’t have any sort of research for this quote. I have found no source for it, but I hardly think one is necessary. Variants on “killing” include “hitting” or “doing violence.” I have heard it all my life, and I imagine that most of my audience has heard it likewise. It is frequently found on the placards and in the mouths of mothers, elementary school teachers, and activists who oppose war and the death penalty.

It’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Let’s just examine this a little bit more closely, shall we? The death penalty is wrong because killing makes us, as a society, morally equivalent to the killers. Ah, yes, of course. That makes perfect sense. Then what, exactly, does that make our society when we lock people in prison for kidnapping? Doesn’t it make us kidnappers? What if we fine them for committing theft? Doesn’t that make us thieves? And why does the punishment have to fit the crime? If the proverb above holds, then it seems we have built a society in which justice has been confused with kidnapping people and stealing from them.

And, by the way, why do we not draw that parallel? Why is killing criminals wrong, while kidnapping them is not?

I begin to suspect that most of the moral outrage that purports to equate execution to vengeance really has very little to do with morality. Instead, it simply has to do with squeamishness, as evidenced in the debate over the death penalty itself. Dr. Jay Chapman, one of the inventors of the mix of drugs which until recently were used for lethal injection, has since repudiated his own invention, saying that the guillotine would be more humane. So why don’t we use it?

Because it would be messy. It would be ugly. We would not be able to hide behind the notion that we could clean up death. And we might have to face the fact that we live in a world where sometimes, we can’t clean it up.

It’s not that we don’t want to kill, it’s that we don’t want to deal with the mess. Or why else was there so much outrage over the way a giraffe in Denmark was recently killed? It was shot through the head, which is one of the less painful ways to go that I can imagine. And yet, some asked why the animal wasn’t euthanized by using drugs, (which of course, would have made its meat useless for consumption by the zoo’s large cats). Could it be that people were outraged simply because guns draw blood? Because that method of killing is ugly?

I have probably left some people under the impression that I am pro-death-penalty and even pro-violence. Actually, I am neither. You see, there are a host of good reasons to be against the use of the death penalty. Right now I’m against it for two reasons: Firstly, the probability of executing an innocent man under our present laws is just too high. Secondly, it seems that judges and juries have a nasty habit of condemning minorities to death at a disproportionately high rate.

But neither of those reasons is the same as making a false equivalence between a murder by individual whim and an execution by the rule of law. The difference is profound: Criminals inflict random violence on random victims. Juries and judges are supposed to inflict it after deliberation and reasoned judgment, and to do so on those who are aware that their punishment is deserved, or at least that such punishment a likely result of their own actions. It is the process, and the limits on that process, that makes all the difference. To us, this is vital. If we do not understand it — if we confuse all punishment with vengeance, and all law with whim — then we approach a mindset in which the very idea of a civil justice system is impossible. And that’s what we built to avoid being murdered by criminals.

Most crime involves the criminals inflicting some form of pain on the victims, whether that is physical, social, or financial pain. And in all the justice systems I know of, justice involves some form of society inflicting some form of pain on the criminal, as a deterrent and/or a means of protecting society from the criminal. Of course, it would be preferable to simply persuade the criminal to repent and make restitution, but few criminals will do this. And on what basis do we say that, for example, Singaporean caning is torture while American solitary confinement for years on end (and this is done) is not? The problem is not that our consciences are strong. The problem is that our stomachs are weak.

Now, I’m just waiting for someone to point out that judges and juries can and do make mistakes, or act out of fear or vengeance and therefore, my argument here is invalid. And that misses the point entirely, of course. It’s a true observation, but it’s not a counterargument. Depending on the venue, it may be a completely separate argument against the death penalty. But it’s not the same as saying that punishment is the same as vengeance, and that’s the real danger. That way lies anarchy.

From somewhere in orbit

Popular UnWisdom #1: What the Good Man Doesn’t

/ G. Scott Huggins / 4 Comments

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

— John F. Kennedy Edmund Burke Charles F. Aked Every Activist on The Internet.

The above quote, which has no verified source, but seems to me most likely to have originally come from John Stuart Mill, has been driven at me so often and so hard that I am beginning to flinch every time I see it headed my way: the overloaded hitch-trailer of indignation pulled by the immaculately buffed car of self-righteousness. It tends to dangle from the end of pleas, or worse, demands, that I join the caravan of this champion of justice, or be an agent in the triumph of Evil.

Well, I really can’t afford either the Saville Row suits or the traditional black leather that comprise the current Agents of Evil dress code, so I’m not a fan of being relegated to their ranks. But the popular wisdom that has been misattributing this quote to Edmund Burke for the last hundred years is hard to refute, yes? I mean, Hitler could have been fought at the gates of Prague rather than at the gates of Moscow if Chamberlain and Daladier had just stood up to him, yes? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. You can find countless anecdotes throughout history in which this is true. If only the good men had stood up to the evil when it was small, how great the past would be.

And it’s all complete and utter balderdash.

Let’s look very carefully at what the users of this argument are asking us to accept without any examination on our part here. Firstly, they want us to accept that what they are fighting against is evil. Note that this is an entirely different proposition than the idea that what they themselves are doing is good. Good people want us to join them in building up what is good. The proponents of this aphorism want us to join them in a crusade against Evil. Do we remember that the Crusades themselves were launched more or less on this very principle? Do we remember what we think of the Crusaders, and the Popes who unleashed them against the “evil” of Saracen occupation of the Holy Land (land the Saracens and their predecessors did, of course, conquer themselves). For a more modern example, however, we can turn to something a bit less extreme, but damaging enough:

“The earliest known citation showing a strong similarity to the modern quote appeared in October of 1916. The researcher J. L. Bell found this important instance. The maxim appeared in a quotation from a speech by the Reverend Charles F. Aked who was calling for restrictions on the use of alcohol [SFCA]” (O’Toole).

And we all remember what a rousing success Prohibition was, right? How many lives were saved because “good men” stood up and fought the evils of drink, yes? Would it not be wise to remember that much evil, if not more, has been done by “good men” who stood up and acted without seriously considering what evils they themselves might be tempted to, driven to, or simply accidentally unleash in the name of their crusade?

But let us say that we have considered it, and the target of the cause is indeed evil. The warriors of righteousness are fighting Hitler, or his moral equivalent. Those people exist; I’m not a moral relativist. But now look at what they go on to say, and this is the real issue I have with those driving this particular load of guilt around. Their fight is so important, that they get to draft us into supporting their fight. We are either for them, or against them. We will either speak up every time they want us to, at the volume and pitch they want us to, or we are not their friend. We are not their ally. We are instead their oppressor and their enemy. Well, I think that’s sad, because many of these people I like, but the cost of that friendship is just too high.

Because the real statement here, and it’s fairly insulting if you think about it, is that they get to choose for me what my moral energy goes into fighting.   And that is one thing that no one should get to do besides God and me, in that order. The people making this statement do not want allies. Because allies have a voice in what you say, what you do, and how you say and do it. They have an interest in your success, and you have one in theirs. What these people want in you is not an ally. The word we’re looking for here is “subordinate.”

“But, Scott,” I hear you say in the comments (assuming you, like me, are the kind of jerk who throws Hitler into every argument), “Are you saying that there’s nothing everyone is obligated to fight? Wouldn’t every good person have been obligated to join the fight against Hitler?”

Leaving aside for the moment that there were many who considered themselves good who didn’t join that fight (I’m not a pacifist, either), I do agree that there are some extremes in which one must act, indeed must act instantly and violently, against evil (and if you’re waiting for an exhaustive catalogue of such things here, good luck to you), but they are for most of us, rare. I don’t know how I would act when presented with one of them. I hope I would act honorably, but I distrust those who are sure before they’ve been tested. Octavia Butler once said in my presence, “Hitlers are rare. That’s one of the reasons they are so popular.” But while I’ve heard a lot of people try to enlist me in their cause by claiming their opponents are fascists, I’ve yet to agree with that assessment.

Of course, some of you are seething by now, because you’re sitting here saying, “Sure, Scott, you can talk, but those ‘rare situations’ are my LIFE! I’m one of the victims of this injustice you say you don’t want to spend your precious ‘moral energy’ on.” Okay, let me slow down and answer that one with utter, dead seriousness and respect.

I’m sorry. Truly, I am. And if there’s a specific thing you want me to do for you, personally, you contact me and ask, and I’ll do what I can to help you. Your pain is not meaningless. Your pain is real. I’ve been the victim too (and if it’s ever relevant in this blog, I may even tell you of what) and it sucks. And I was fortunate enough to have people to help me.

But I’m not going to pick up your banner for you. I’m not going to devote my life to your cause because you threaten to disrespect me for that or call me names. I have my own causes that I champion, my own callings to help the less fortunate that I follow. And neither you nor anyone else has the right to override that and call on my aid for your cause to the exclusion of the others unless you can demonstrate a clear, immediate, and overriding threat. We live in a world overflowing with injustice. We’re up to our eyeballs in it, and the stink of it is in our nostrils to the point it’s sometimes hard to distinguish it anymore. I’ll fight the injustice with you, but understand it may not be the exact injustice you’re most committed to. And that’s for the simple reason that my pain is not your pain. And we should respect each other’s pain, not fight over whose is worse, and whose need is greatest. Someday, God willing, we’ll meet up on the same side.

From somewhere in orbit