Surprised

When I read or hear someone expressing an opinion on something a fundamentalist fanatic has said, I always wonder: why are they paying attention? And also, why does it seem to shock or surprise them? And then I think to myself, "Gosh, that's a jaundiced view of the world." Because I should still feel shock and surprise when a human being says or does the things that fundamentalist fanatics regularly do. I say I believe in the basic goodness of humans; why then am I not surprised when that goodness continues to go un-evidenced?

The first question is a valid one: if you are paying attention to your ideological opposites in order to feel outrage when they do something within their ideology that isn't within yours... well, look at how I phrased that. I'm pretty sure people who do that are the sorts of people who are no better than their "enemy" and in fact probably see their "enemy" as such, rather than as someone with whom they have a difference of faith. In other words, even if I agree with you, you aren't behaving in a much better manner than they are.

But I do think it's important to recognize that there are times when it's not just a difference of opinion. A difference of opinion is when I like sushi and you can't get over the fact that it's raw fish. But if you believe that God told you to kill gay people, I have more than a difference of opinion with that. If you believe that, we can't be friends, no matter how nice you are. I might be civil to you, but only because even though you're a living piece of excrement, you're still my fellow human and I love you, but I don't like you. I might view you as a problem that needs to be corrected. I'm sure that my not wanting to kill gays, and in fact welcoming them as full-fledged members of society, might make you believe the same things about me (although to be honest, I wouldn't expect the same level of civility from you if you believed that).

So sometimes one must keep tabs on the other side. It's a little mean (and I'm using the word "mean" in its sense of "inferior in quality") but sometimes it's important. I get why some people delight in torturing themselves in order to feel self-righteous, and I also get why some people listen to Glenn Beck just to make sure the outside world hears what a wackadoo he is.

But the second question is more interesting: why be surprised? A leopard does not change its spots. And yet, perhaps some (those who are not simply shocked because they want to be shocked) who hear outlandish things coming from the mouth of someone who regularly says outlandish things can still be shocked because at each moment, they hoped for redemption.

I can't find a parable to illustrate this, so I'm making one up on the spot. It's harder than it seems at first glance. Jesus was no mean parable-maker (and here again I'm using "mean" in the sense of "lower quality," not to imply that Jesus was a nasty guy).

There was a trader in Galilee who had a donkey, and he was on his way to Jerusalem with pottery to sell at the local kitsch shop because tourists would eat that kind of crap up. And as he walked, he swatted his donkey on the rump with a stick, and the donkey would bray.

He met another traveler on the road, a Samaritan (every good parable needs one) who happened to be a member of PETA. They agreed to walk together (because their cars were broken down or something, I don't know). Well, the Samaritan saw the trader swatting the donkey again and again, and finally he'd had enough. "Hey, you can't go on abusing him like that!" said the Samaritan.

"He won't walk if I don't give him a little swat," replied the trader.

"Take the pack off him and I'll carry it," said the Samaritan.

So the trader shrugged and took the pottery out and loaded the Samaritan up. The Samaritan was barely able to move, but he staggered forward, only to hear the donkey bray again. "The fuck, man?" groaned the Samaritan, staggering around to face the trader.

"How was taking the pack off of him supposed to make him move faster?" asked the trader, hitting the donkey again.

Okay, that wasn't really a good parable. Let's try again.

A married couple had a routine: every morning the alarm would go off, and every morning it would wake the wife up, and she'd turn it off and then she'd shake her husband until he woke up. And every morning he would groan like the world was coming to an end, curse, and then stagger off to perform his morning ablutions.

This went on for 30 years, until finally the wife said, "Look, why do you act like that? We've been doing the same thing for 30 years. Surely you're not surprised?"

The husband sighed and said, "No, but I keep hoping that this morning is the morning that you stop shaking me, and I've been disappointed the same way every time."

Maybe it's not shock so much as hope being dashed yet again. I mean, sure, there's some shock; how can they keep doing it, how can they do this particular horrible thing, how can they not see, etc. But we're supposed to love everybody, and as such we have to hope that some day all eyes will be opened and the blind will see, and all that. So continued blindness on the part of some people is painful. Plus, the things they say have profound consequences as well; it's all well and good to talk about differences of opinion, but if your opinion is that homosexuals should be hunted for sport and get get elected governor, what you're saying and thinking matters not just philosophically.

But I'm still hung up on my jadedness. Because I may think, "Oh, what a stupid asshole," but I won't usually be shocked by it. I don't usually consider it noteworthy when fundamentalist fanatics say fundamentalist-fanatic things. If they're fundamentalists, they're not going to come out and say that abortion is great or that gay people are wonderful. That this is continually confirms saddens me, but it doesn't shock me.

There were two beggars, one with no eyes, and one with no legs. They slept in the same archway and had formed a sort of brotherly bond, except that every morning the beggar with no legs would moan, "Oh no, my legs are gone!" Which was understandably, a bit annoying to his friend. Still, the blind beggar figured things were bad enough without making them worse, so he didn't complain and offend his legless companion.

One morning, the blind beggar didn't hear anything from his companion, and when he reached out to touch the legless beggar, there was nothing there. The blind beggar immediately began running through the streets, knocking into people, crying, "A miracle! A miracle!" Finally, he calmed down enough to tell people that the legless beggar had grown new legs. No one believed him, and he want dejected back to his place in the archway, with no food in his belly because he hadn't been able to beg all day, what with the running and crying and so forth.

Then he heard his friend's voice. "My God, how does it feel to have legs again?" the blind man asked, rushing up to the other beggar, but when he reached the man, he could feel that the legless man still had no legs, and he became silent. The legless beggar explained that he'd merely gone to beg in a new spot earlier than usual, because someone had said the pickings were better there, but now he'd come back to get his friend. The blind man silently followed the legless beggar, and it was indeed better; the man who lived nearby gave bread to the poor, and there was a better place to sleep as well.

The next morning, the blind man was awakened by the legless one moaning "Oh no, my legs are gone."

"Shut up!" screamed the blind man. "You say that every morning! Of course your legs are gone."

"Why didn't you say something before?" asked the legless man, hurt.

"Because before yesterday, I had hope that one day my sight might return."

I'll get better at parables some day, I hope.

I don't want to be jaundiced, and of course I welcome with joy any sleeper who awakens or any blind beggar who can now see.  Because hope for that is hope for us all; we're all blind beggars, and if the lame can walk, then perhaps the blind can see.  But by the same token, that a legless man doesn't grow new legs is a generally-accepted truth, and if he tells us that he has no legs, that's perhaps cause for sadness but not surprise.

And we shouldn't wait for legs to grow back by themselves. If someone has no legs, offer them a prosthesis. If someone is blind, offer them a cane, a dog, or just a hand to guide them.  But if we're sure that someone will never change by themselves, try to help. It may seem hopeless, but the surest expression of love and hope is to try to help, even though it's hopeless.

So no, I'm not surprised when the latest screed by a right-wing fundamentalist talks about wanting to round up undesirables into camps. I'm not surprised by human nature in many cases, and perhaps I should be. But whether I'm surprised or not, that doesn't mean that I don't do something about it.

There's a difference between reading about some idiotic thing that someone said and reading about some dangerous-to-our-rights thing that someone has done, some law enacted, some election rigged. I might not be able to do much, and maybe reacting and spreading the word to people who can is all I can do. But I won't act surprised. I won't be shocked that there is gambling going on in Casablanca. These people aren't blind beggars. They're rich, they're successful, and if they're blind, it's because they refuse to open their eyes.

One more.

There was a man (I should have more women, but sadly these parables are mostly directed at men) of Galilee (why not) who had a working automobile and so was able to drive rather than walk to Jerusalem, albeit that from my understanding the number of checkpoints make it not a very fast drive either. So he was driving along at 100 mph, swerving around, hitting pedestrians, and the police are chasing after him.  They finally run his car off the road and into an embankment (the west embankment? Huh? Nothing?) and he crashes, totals the car, really hurts himself. So he turns around and sues the police. And he gets up on the stand and says, "It's not my fault; I didn't know those people were there because I had my eyes glued shut."

So the police officer is called to the stand, and the defense attorney says, "My client had his eyes glued because of a medical condition and also he likes to drive that way. If that was a problem, why didn't you get into his car and open his eyes up so he could see to drive? Then you wouldn't have injured him or destroyed his car."

The police officer says, "I was more concerned with stopping him than with opening his eyes. That's his responsibility."

If we lived in a just world, the above wouldn't be true, and moreover the jury would acquit the police department. Sadly, I think it might frequently be the other way around; the willfully blind and privileged are allowed to get away with it. No one even tries to stop them, and if they do, the willfully blind say that they shouldn't be stopped because they like driving with their eyes closed.

Shine a light in darkness. Make the blind to see. But if the blind are hurting others, maybe stopping them, even if they remain blind forever, is more important than opening the eyes that they've glued closed.