We have such a preoccupation with expectations of material satisfaction. All know the pleasures of physical self-interest, but when is enough, enough? Thank you, I have enough mash potatoes. How come we don’t take all the mash potatoes we can get and stuff them in our pockets? How come the pursuit of wealth is not like mash potatoes? Thank you for the raise, but instead of money can you cut my work week by an hour?
In the early 70’s when I was a Humanities major Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil was required reading. When we leave behind or abandon something we have gone beyond it. Are we moving beyond justice? Is Nietzsche right? Is life and will the exploitation of others?
This world has never been fair and we still can’t define what is good for someone else. However, we still recoil at yesterday’s news about elderly and mentally hurting people held captive in a dark basement while hoodlums took their social security checks.
We choose our values; what is best for the majority, honor among thieves, etc. Apparently we still choose to condemn cruelty to the helpless, but money, not mash potatoes, trips us up. More and more people, whether marching or not, are frustrated with the greed we see in federal, state, county, city governments and of course the banks and wall street. I don’t think people have a problem with wealth earned through hard work and ingenuity, but wealth created from tweaking the system, what the Bible calls unfair scales, drives us nuts.
So, do we become what we pursue? Has that which we sought shaped and molded us into who we are today? Are we plundered by our dreams, goals and ambition? Have we yet failed to learn there is no permanent profit in self-serving adventures?
We are a polluted people living in a polluted land. We sigh, feign sadness and comment on the distressed; they fell between the cracks. Indeed, there was no law, no government agency, no church, no person to extend a saving hand. We failed to legislate compassion.
We forget or ignore that when the pursuit of individual excellence is cultivated without a deep commitment to others, the result is only vanity and worse. Nietzsche comes to mind, but it is Jeremiah’s words that fill me with dread.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice
the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
29 Shall I not punish them for these things?
says the Lord,
and shall I not bring retribution
on a nation such as this? (Jer 5:28-29)
All of us need forgiveness and compassion, if we don’t think so now, inevitably we will. They are the great flashing lights that mark the entrance to the other side. If we don’t see them now, will we see them then, or will we too fall through the cracks?
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