Bad Aim
On the way in this morning a comment from the other day kept percolating up through the morning fog. In a post about a Cardinal, I said, "He also sounds like someone who thinks 'fixing the World' should come before 'preparing for the next.'"
The thought was not fully formed when I wrote it last week, nor in fact is it now. But what interests me about it is how often it is true. We as a species have remarkably bad aim.
In all of human history, those who set out to “fix the world” have a failure rate of 100%. Communism failed, fascism failed, democracy even has failed (though perhaps less spectacularly than the others). Liberation theology, libertarianism, free markets and statist markets. Feudalism, Empire, oligarchy, aristocracy. Every one of them has failed to improve the lot of the world. (Don’t misunderstand: democracy and free markets do more for the poor than all the rest combined, and they at least allow people to pursue Salvation comparatively free from interference. But they have not cured, nor will they ever cure, poverty.)
On a smaller scale, think about individuals you know. People have ambition to “climb to the top” only to find a barren hilltop when they get there. A priest seeks to be a bishop and then an archbishop and then a cardinal, thinking to “do good” once fully only enabled, only to find that the compromises made along the way limit his ability to do the very thing he wanted the mitre for. A man seeks money to give himself some security and finds that “just a little more” will finally give it to him. A husband goes off to “find himself” and finds that the road goes home again, but discovers it too late.
The aim is bad, because the target is moving. Christ himself told us this, when he told us that the last shall be first, and that those who would save their lives will lose them. Most of us—certainly I do—seek the wrong thing. We seek the effect and not the result, when the result is all we can control. Think of the athlete who wants the fame and the contract, but doesn’t want to practice, or doesn’t want to risk the big play at the end of the game. The result of that play is victory or defeat, and the effect fame or ignominy.
It simply isn’t possible to be happy by trying to be happy. In fact, that seems to be an unyielding law of the universe, with many corollaries. One can certainly achieve a temporary state of contentment. But like the song says, “you can’t get enough of what you don’t really need.” It is rather like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube one color at a time, or to win a chess match by protecting your own King.
The hell of it, the perversity of it, really, is that many people who don’t seek these things often find them. Yes, the driven, ambitious man often makes it all the way up the corporate ladder, but how many of them fall just as quickly? How many wealthy people seem constantly to be chasing after—what? A building named for them at their college? Is that what they really why they missed so many birthdays and anniversaries? But the people you know, who love their jobs, love their families, and seem never to miss a beat: they have found contentment that abandoned it. (These are not to be confused with the blithering idiots who think Pollyanna was too conservative.)
Strangely enough, though, Christ also told us to ask and we shall be answered, to seek and we will find, which is certainly in direct contradiction to my own experience. The only conclusion is that we must ask for and seek the right thing. There is only one target that doesn’t move, because it is the one real thing in a universe of illusion: God. It is in fully abandoning our Selves to Divine Providence that we find we are not abandoned at all. The only integrated thing in this Newtonian or Quantum universe is God himself, and everything we try to fill our Selves with that is not God does not fill us.
Christ came in part to remind us of this; the Spirit had already told us long before Jesus, in the words even non-Jews and non-Christians know: Psalm 23. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
On the way in this morning a comment from the other day kept percolating up through the morning fog. In a post about a Cardinal, I said, "He also sounds like someone who thinks 'fixing the World' should come before 'preparing for the next.'"
The thought was not fully formed when I wrote it last week, nor in fact is it now. But what interests me about it is how often it is true. We as a species have remarkably bad aim.
In all of human history, those who set out to “fix the world” have a failure rate of 100%. Communism failed, fascism failed, democracy even has failed (though perhaps less spectacularly than the others). Liberation theology, libertarianism, free markets and statist markets. Feudalism, Empire, oligarchy, aristocracy. Every one of them has failed to improve the lot of the world. (Don’t misunderstand: democracy and free markets do more for the poor than all the rest combined, and they at least allow people to pursue Salvation comparatively free from interference. But they have not cured, nor will they ever cure, poverty.)
On a smaller scale, think about individuals you know. People have ambition to “climb to the top” only to find a barren hilltop when they get there. A priest seeks to be a bishop and then an archbishop and then a cardinal, thinking to “do good” once fully only enabled, only to find that the compromises made along the way limit his ability to do the very thing he wanted the mitre for. A man seeks money to give himself some security and finds that “just a little more” will finally give it to him. A husband goes off to “find himself” and finds that the road goes home again, but discovers it too late.
The aim is bad, because the target is moving. Christ himself told us this, when he told us that the last shall be first, and that those who would save their lives will lose them. Most of us—certainly I do—seek the wrong thing. We seek the effect and not the result, when the result is all we can control. Think of the athlete who wants the fame and the contract, but doesn’t want to practice, or doesn’t want to risk the big play at the end of the game. The result of that play is victory or defeat, and the effect fame or ignominy.
It simply isn’t possible to be happy by trying to be happy. In fact, that seems to be an unyielding law of the universe, with many corollaries. One can certainly achieve a temporary state of contentment. But like the song says, “you can’t get enough of what you don’t really need.” It is rather like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube one color at a time, or to win a chess match by protecting your own King.
The hell of it, the perversity of it, really, is that many people who don’t seek these things often find them. Yes, the driven, ambitious man often makes it all the way up the corporate ladder, but how many of them fall just as quickly? How many wealthy people seem constantly to be chasing after—what? A building named for them at their college? Is that what they really why they missed so many birthdays and anniversaries? But the people you know, who love their jobs, love their families, and seem never to miss a beat: they have found contentment that abandoned it. (These are not to be confused with the blithering idiots who think Pollyanna was too conservative.)
Strangely enough, though, Christ also told us to ask and we shall be answered, to seek and we will find, which is certainly in direct contradiction to my own experience. The only conclusion is that we must ask for and seek the right thing. There is only one target that doesn’t move, because it is the one real thing in a universe of illusion: God. It is in fully abandoning our Selves to Divine Providence that we find we are not abandoned at all. The only integrated thing in this Newtonian or Quantum universe is God himself, and everything we try to fill our Selves with that is not God does not fill us.
Christ came in part to remind us of this; the Spirit had already told us long before Jesus, in the words even non-Jews and non-Christians know: Psalm 23. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
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