It is what causes us to think we are too good for:
Our job
Society
Our families
Having children
Being a parent and raising children
Being a wife
Being a husband
The normal and necessary drudgeries and chores of daily
living.
Jesus has something to say about this:
“And he also told this parable to some people who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt. ‘Two men
went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am
not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax
collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes
to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the
sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the
other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles
himself will be exalted.’” Luke 18:9-14
See, when we have such a high regard for our self, we tend
to think we are special in a way that others are not; that we have
sensitivities and qualities which others do not possess.
We feel that we are more concerned
about the world than others; that we alone have the answers to the world’s
problems.
We believe ourselves to be creative and in possession of a
vision that nobody (or only a very few), likeminded souls possess, and if it
weren’t for inane social constructs or other’s incompetence, we’d flourish and
reach our full potential.
In other words, if it weren’t for “the man” (that
ill-defined obstructer to our no-brainer solutions) we’d implement—efficiently
and successfully (with an implied sense of single-handedness)—all of our ideas.
What tends to occur as we languish within this very high
regard for our self—now with a self-formulated enemy called “the man,”—is that
we do
nothing. We impact no one. We become immobilized.
But we don’t hold ourselves accountable for that lack of
action because self-constructed victimhood has deluded itself that not “selling
out”—that remaining disengaged from “the man”—is doing something. In
this way immobilization is enabled and encouraged.
But what high-regarders often miss is that we are not
escaping “the man” after all.
For example, those who cannot hold down a job due to their
inability to co-exist within an office or employment paradigm not of their own
making, will ironically become reliant on, who?—“the man” in the form of
parents, friends or the government.
See, as far as I can tell, this nefarious bogeyman people
call “the man” is nothing more than the guy who has his act together enough to
carry the world when the disenfranchised check out—or when it serves the
disenfranchised’s convenience.
As a case in point, those wanting to “stick it to the man” fail
to see that they serve “the man” every time they fill their automobile tank
with gas, use their iPhone, drive their corporately produced car, shop for
groceries or employ the teachers of a child’s daycare.
Which brings us, I believe, to the real point: We think we
are too good for those in the world who don’t agree with or exemplify our
lifestyle or ideology, not realizing that, in fact, we are mutually beneficial
to one another.
In fact, we ourselves, in many ways, are “the man,” not only
through our eventual and ultimate reliance upon him, but also in terms of
someone else wanting to stick it to us: because there will
always be someone who disagrees with our standards and idealism.
We are, at any given moment, “the man” in someone else’s
eyes.
It’s the old adage of “You can’t have your cake and eat it
too.”
One cannot be disaffected by the world and yet desire or
rely upon the benefits of those we claim to disdain. And one can’t prevent one’s
self from being “the man” which others perceive to be getting in their
way.
It’s a beautiful oxymoron that proves the joke is on all of
us.
So, to illustrate:
One’s disdain of government comes up against another
person’s enjoyment of and appreciation for maintained sidewalks, bicycling
lanes, a place to send their child to school, social security in the later
years and worker’s disability compensation.
One’s all-out lamenting of big corporations comes up against
those who like nothing more than to see the emerging big corporation of, say,
Elon Musk’s Tesla or the success of a
conglomerate such as Whole Foods, Apple or Volkswagen.
One’s abhorrence of being an at-home mom (one of those nasty "social constructs" that must be obliterated)—and her general
stance that staying home and raising children is “settling” and “below” the
liberalizing of women—comes up against the fact that this very mom relies upon other
women to raise her children for her while she works outside of the home. One
does wonder if this same woman would find it “beneath” a man to raise those
children? And it comes up against the women who find the “social construct” of
staying home and raising children not only satisfying, but also exceedingly
beneficial to the children and family.
So what do we make of all of this?
Simply, that to think we have a righteousness and rare sixth
sense of virtue, intelligence or artistic disposition that others do not possess
is the height of narcissism.
This sense of individuality, of being “above” the “normal”
machinations of society, excludes us from consistent, long-term interaction
with a community comprised of a variety of personalities and value systems.
We have worked hard to fool ourselves into believing that
it’s society’s fault for rejecting our greatness and aptitude. But society
hasn’t rejected us at all. We have
rejected society because it doesn’t meet our standards or operate within our
idealism; we have rejected it because we’ve deemed it to be below us. We,
our lifestyle choices and worldview, are always better. Our
affirmation is what counts. We are obliged to affirm no one
(especially those who have a vastly differentiated experience than ours!)
So much for co-existance and tolerance!
The problem with idealistic thinking is that it is either/or
thinking: there’s no place for the real world, which isn’t as cut and dried as
we’ve made it and as we’ve waxed philosophically about from a distance.
In short, the end result is that, since others cannot accept
me
“the way that I am,” and the world cannot offer me “the world as it
should be,” then I will not accept
others and the world either.
The high-regarder withdraws to nurse the conviction that the
world and everyone in it is an incompetent cog in a pathetic wheel.
We sit back and do nothing because nothing is where our high
regard for ourselves can live unchallenged and undisturbed. We take our ball
and go home.
More on the potential antidote to this state of being in the coming days.
Copyright Barb Harwood
No comments:
Post a Comment