Get what you ‘deserve’

Get what you ‘deserve’

Used to be that folks made decisions simply.

They followed the classic model of Plato, whose theory of the soul was that it had three parts: A good part, a bad part, and a third part-that made the decisions. He likened it to a chariot driver who is driving both a good and bad horse and directing both simultaneously.

As such, any decision could be said to be good, bad or some shade between the two.

Plato’s theory of behavior was called ‘moral’ or ‘moralistic.’ Sometimes you’re good… sometimes, bad. It was like changing horses. It was a quaint, old-hat notion.

Yet, even as far back as a hundred years ago things had taken a whole new tangent.

For, as the Industrial Revolution took hold, the whole notion of good or bad went out the window in favor of preference to the ‘the one’ — the individual who found himself or herself as an impersonal commodity in a world-wide labor force — in competition with every other inhabitant of the planet — in a mad scramble to attain money… grappling for the trappings of power, control and all that goes with it.

What we call today, materialism.

Only, people don’t like to see themselves as just grist in a mill. It tends to depress them.

Wonder why?

So, with the loss of the feeling of community, a new justification for existence needed to be found at the turn of the 20th century. And it was.

Josiah Royce, an eminent professor at Harvard University, in 1908 pointed to this in a series of lectures and published a title, The Philosophy of Loyalty, which basically expressed this thought …that folks needed something to attach themselves to in order to make them feel that their lives were relevant any more.

His ‘Theory of Loyalty,’ simply stated in his own words: “…Loyalty, I have said, be the cause worthy or unworthy, is for the loyal man a good, just as, even if his beloved be unworthy, love may in its place still be a good thing for a lover. And loyalty is for the loyal man not only a good, but for him chief amongst all the moral goods of his life, because it furnishes to him a personal solution of the hardest of human practical problems, the problem : 'For what do I live? Why am I here? For what am I good? Why am I needed?'

But there is a problem: A person can just as well have a MISPLACED loyalty.

And the first half of the 20th century was replete with this type of mentality — the supreme example would be to picture Adolf Hitler sitting in his jail cell, intensely writing away at Mein Kampf, which would become the handbook for the rise of Nazi power in Germany and the fuel that stoked the fiery calamity of World War II upon all nations of the world.

Similarly the philosopher, Eric Hoffer, wrote in his seminal work, (The True Believer, 1951) of the rise of socialism and communism being spread across the globe in the same vein — by charismatic figures such as of Che Guevara or Fidel Castro — those with misplaced loyalties to dastardly ideals that eventually led to social, cultural, economic and physical calamities — not to mention, murder, rape and torture.

Hoffer, instead, suggested in his writing that one might attach themselves to their work. Your life would still be totally meaningless, but, at least there would be minimal collateral damage to society that way.

So, along we went… through different times.

The time of Friedrich Nietzsche (also at the onset of the 20th century) whose Nihilism stated that the world offers nothing and is therefore worthless and meaningless.

Then there is Existentialism, per the Frenchman – Jean-Paul Sartre — who maintained … in his own words: 'We can act without being determined by our past which is always separated from us.'

Yet, ironically, as humans, we are guided by experience … by nurture and nature. So, according to Sarte, we are free agents who can be anything we say we are. Therefore, If I IMAGINE myself as a red balloon, then I AM a red balloon. If I think I am Napoleon, then I AM Napoleon.

(I sure hope the staff down at the Arkansas State Hospital mental ward aren’t reading this and taking me seriously? Sarte said it. Not me!) This may be the reason that Existentialism didn’t catch on so well?

Just sayin’.

Next, there is the novelist and philosopher, Ayn Rand, and her notion of ‘Objectivism.’ She put forth the proposition that enlightened selfinterest was necessary for the progress of all mankind. However, if one stops for a milli-second to ponder the phrase, ‘Enlightened selfinterest,’ the discrepancy between enlightenment (which is guidance from outside self) and self-interest (which is from the inside of self), might seem highly contradictory.

If you really want to get a taste of what it would be like to live ‘objectively,’ just check out the movie, ‘The Fountainhead,’ a 1949 movie based on her novel of the same name, starring Gary Cooper in the lead role as a young architect.

The movie broke the ‘Golden Rule’ by making the main character one that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE LIKED OR RESPECTED. Instead, he embodied the ‘ideal man’ of Rand (who wrote the screenplay.) An effete snob, with a superior air that was intolerable to audiences of the day. The film was panned by critics and earned less than its production budget at the box office.

It was so-o-o bad that even though several filmmakers have considered doing a remake, no new film adaptation has EVER been done; that’s how bad a taste it left in everybody’s mouths.

So, here we are.

And folks tell me that they don’t know why the country is in a mess and why people are hard and conceited, contemptuous of others — incapable of reasoning: Not because the ideals of others might not be favorable…but not accepting of others simply because they ARE from others. To not do something because you did not think of it first. To dismiss history and experience and logic, while we are incapable of curbing our own greedy natures… all because we feel that we DESERVE to be catered to. Take a listen, for instance, to the commercials these days: From a fitness outfit: “You DESERVE to look good.” Or emanating from some lawyer’s office: “You DESERVE to be treated better.” Yet another, from some infomercial: “You DESERVE the best money can buy.”

Do you, indeed?

Try re-reading the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

I don’t think you will find those things anywhere in there.

Could be wrong?

This is why the modernday chariot driver of the soul is considerably less able than he was in Plato’s time. For today, he is hitched to just one horse.

That horse today is Comfort.

And he has left the other horse in the barn: Accountability.

By Robert Hall