Adaptability, Service, Responsibility, Choice
This entry's thoughts brought on and inspired by:
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion by Mark Ames
Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith Small
The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishohp
"Por una Cabeza" by Carlos Gardel
This week's series of comics on www.userfriendly.org
I expect that my feelings on this will be unpopular. I can live with that.
Mark Ames has some interesting data that he uses as evidence in his book that humans are extremely adaptable, and will adapt even to a situation of slavery and oppression, quickly feeling that such a situation is normal. This normalcy extends so far as to consider those that rebel against it crazy. Ames goes on to discuss how slave revolts in the 1700s and 1800s that hoped to spark widespread rebellion found instead that the very slaves they were trying to free were against them, in some cases going so far as to fight for their owners against the rebels.
This is all interesting, in no small part because Ames then compares modern postal, school, and office shootings to these doomed slave revolts. The oppressive, competitive, fear-based and paranoid nature of the modern American corporate and scholastic culture (and beyond - "See something? Say something!") is considered normal now.
There's lots more to say about that topic, but it's actually tangential to what I wanted to discuss. The thing I took away from it is just how ludicrously adaptable people are to situations where their individual rights and powers are taken away.
Then I started to think about priests. Here are folks who sacrifice a great deal and take vows (in many cases, for life) to enter into a life of service to God. I thought about soldiers, who do the same to enter into service of Country. And I realized that I see the appeal. I myself once thought about joining the army (and my Dad didn't say I was fucking high; sorry, Ben Folds). In The Black Jewels Trilogy, men have instincts to serve strong women, good Queens. They crave a life of service to a higher power. Rereading it recently, I realized that I understood how that feels.
And I realized why. If you serve, if you do what someone else says, then responsibility for your actions falls on them, not on you. You can shrug off the burden of personal responsibility for your actions and say, "I was just following orders." You can assume that those above you are working towards the greater good, not feel the need to ask for details, and simply do.
It's incredibly liberating.
It's incredibly appealing.
It's incredibly false.
In the end, choosing to serve does not free you from the responsibility of your actions. Every choice you make, every consequence of those choices, is yours. If someone tells you to run into a burning building and save a child, you still have to choose to do it. If someone orders you to start the fire that will burn the children to death, you still have to choose to do it. Service does not eliminate your personal responsibility.
On some deep level, we all understand this. It's become an object of ridicule that the Nazi soldier that killed thousands of civilians were "just following orders". And yet, how many others have done things, both wonderful and horrible, and then simply said that they were told to?
Whose orders are you following? Your superior's? Your boss's? God's? The voices in your head's? Your vicar/priest/rabbi/guru/whatever's? Your own?
When you choose to obey, as when you choose not to, you should remember, responsibility is yours, and you can't get rid of it. The consequences are yours. If you fire a gun and people die, that's yours to live with. If you pull someone out of a car right before it bursts into flames, that's yours too. It doesn't matter if it's your job, your duty, or your calling. It's still, and always will be, your choice.
Giving up your choice is a choice.
This is how I live. How I, self-referentially enough, choose to live. How do you?
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion by Mark Ames
Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith Small
The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishohp
"Por una Cabeza" by Carlos Gardel
This week's series of comics on www.userfriendly.org
I expect that my feelings on this will be unpopular. I can live with that.
Mark Ames has some interesting data that he uses as evidence in his book that humans are extremely adaptable, and will adapt even to a situation of slavery and oppression, quickly feeling that such a situation is normal. This normalcy extends so far as to consider those that rebel against it crazy. Ames goes on to discuss how slave revolts in the 1700s and 1800s that hoped to spark widespread rebellion found instead that the very slaves they were trying to free were against them, in some cases going so far as to fight for their owners against the rebels.
This is all interesting, in no small part because Ames then compares modern postal, school, and office shootings to these doomed slave revolts. The oppressive, competitive, fear-based and paranoid nature of the modern American corporate and scholastic culture (and beyond - "See something? Say something!") is considered normal now.
There's lots more to say about that topic, but it's actually tangential to what I wanted to discuss. The thing I took away from it is just how ludicrously adaptable people are to situations where their individual rights and powers are taken away.
Then I started to think about priests. Here are folks who sacrifice a great deal and take vows (in many cases, for life) to enter into a life of service to God. I thought about soldiers, who do the same to enter into service of Country. And I realized that I see the appeal. I myself once thought about joining the army (and my Dad didn't say I was fucking high; sorry, Ben Folds). In The Black Jewels Trilogy, men have instincts to serve strong women, good Queens. They crave a life of service to a higher power. Rereading it recently, I realized that I understood how that feels.
And I realized why. If you serve, if you do what someone else says, then responsibility for your actions falls on them, not on you. You can shrug off the burden of personal responsibility for your actions and say, "I was just following orders." You can assume that those above you are working towards the greater good, not feel the need to ask for details, and simply do.
It's incredibly liberating.
It's incredibly appealing.
It's incredibly false.
In the end, choosing to serve does not free you from the responsibility of your actions. Every choice you make, every consequence of those choices, is yours. If someone tells you to run into a burning building and save a child, you still have to choose to do it. If someone orders you to start the fire that will burn the children to death, you still have to choose to do it. Service does not eliminate your personal responsibility.
On some deep level, we all understand this. It's become an object of ridicule that the Nazi soldier that killed thousands of civilians were "just following orders". And yet, how many others have done things, both wonderful and horrible, and then simply said that they were told to?
Whose orders are you following? Your superior's? Your boss's? God's? The voices in your head's? Your vicar/priest/rabbi/guru/whatever's? Your own?
When you choose to obey, as when you choose not to, you should remember, responsibility is yours, and you can't get rid of it. The consequences are yours. If you fire a gun and people die, that's yours to live with. If you pull someone out of a car right before it bursts into flames, that's yours too. It doesn't matter if it's your job, your duty, or your calling. It's still, and always will be, your choice.
Giving up your choice is a choice.
This is how I live. How I, self-referentially enough, choose to live. How do you?