About "self-interest:" a quote from William Sloane Coffin

I shared my previous post (regarding the essay "Getting to Our Fantastic, Non-fictional Future") with some friends, among them being a friend in the Roman Catholic clergy.  He was not impressed by the article from [url]http://atlassociety.org/[/url] that I was sharing and had some pointed things to say about it.  One of the things he said to me was "not to make some sense of this essay or put holy spirituality into it: it's an impossible task."

One of the things that that essay in my previous post embraces is "self-interest" a.k.a. "individualism."  (Or perhaps "rational individualism," or "Objectivism.")  I had occasion to be reading about William Sloane Coffin tonight, and this quote of his popped up:  "The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance [sic] can restrain violence - reverance [sic] for human life and the environment."  Found that quote by a Google search.

I was raised by my mother a lot and I think she held the belief that violence was the last resort of the incompetent.  That philosophy sounded good to me.  I guess I embraced it, because when my family moved to Kansas City in 1970, and I started to encounter for the first time in my life real grade-school schoolyard bullying and violence, I adopted a passive and crying role.  Victim.  I did not think it was fair that I was being picked on, and felt sorry for myself, but I didn't resort to any real violence against my main aggressor until about five years after the tormenting started, by then being in High School.  I had one fight with my enemy, that I instigated, using Judo-flipping that I'd learned some years before.  Was sick for a couple of days after that fight, and it seemed most folks assumed that I was put on suspension from school, rather than being out sick.  And Boy! was the attitude towards me in that high school different than it was before, when I returned.  Respect.

So what provoked my violence to my main grade-school tormentor?  Well, someone earlier in the day had told me in class, "It sure would be funny if a scholarly fellow like you got into a fight."  And I thought about that for the rest of the day.

So was it self-interest (self-preservation?) that was behind my decision (and I think it was a deliberate decision) to fight this enemy of mine?  "Rational self-interest," perhaps?  It certainly wasn't a very loving series of thoughts.  I hated this guy.  Hated the derision he had shown me for years and years, hated the put-downs, the making-fun-of, humiliation, them laughing at me and my discomfort with being shown to be the Fool.  His (and others) asking questions about my private life and my (stupidly) answering them candidly, more ammunition to make fun of me.  It Hurt.  It dehumanized.  Made me wonder what I was doing wrong to make them want to hurt me so.

To continue with another thought from my clergy friend about that essay:  "Mixing her [Ayn Rand's] Rationality with holy spirituality is an impossible task, and I think you should look elsewhere for material."

I remember talking with my Father about freedom.  He believed in freedom.  But, he said, "Others' freedom ends at the end of my nose."  My grade-school schoolyard bullies violated my freedom with taking their license to bully me.  If their freedom rightly ended at the end of my nose, like my Dad said, then they violated my freedom to be let alone, to be unmolested by them.

So my previous posts attempted to conflate an essay about self-interest with a holy spirituality.  An essay that promotes Ayn Rand's Objectivist (or a "rational self-interest") philosophy.  But again, William Sloane Coffin (who himself was clergy) said, "The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance [sic] can restrain violence - reverance [sic] for human life and the environment."

I believe in non-violence.  I am against war.  I think war is a stupid occupation for people.  Yet I was led, in this instance, to fight someone, to violence.  If it is true that the cause of violence is self-interest, and "rational self-interest" (or "rational individualism") cannot be conflated with a holy spirituality as my clergy friend says, then it follows that violence and a holy spirituality must be at odds.  It would seem to be unholy of me to fight my bully, even if it did seem to result in a greater respect and acceptance from my peers at school.  In fact, scripture instructs us to love our enemies.  And forgive others' trespasses (or at least, has us implore God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us).

I think I still have a ways to go to learn that lesson.