LOSERS
At the
upcoming Mensa World Gathering, on
We are
all familiar with the heartbreaking story of James Sidis,
as described by the equally tragic figure of
We may
have felt defective and have been accused of being somehow defective many
times. Sometimes being both intellectually gifted and "sensitive"
feels much more like a birth defect than a gift. This essay comes in the hopes
of allaying those thoughts, feelings, and self-doubts.
Before
those who unquestioningly accept Capitalist society with all its attendant ills
and injustices, and to those who readily acquiesce, surrender and capitulate to
it; a dizzying array of choices as to what type of cog in or appurtenance to
the industrial machine are placed.
Some of
those professions are noble indeed. Certainly the seamstress,
the baker, those who work in factories and in shops render essential services
to people. At a higher level of education and training: medical
personnel, many research scientists and educators provide critical services to
the public-at-large.
Some people
possess talents that allow them to be gainfully employed in a way which
provides profound satisfaction and an outlet to their abilities: musicians,
dancers, actors come most immediately to mind.
Perhaps
the luckiest of all in Capitalist society are those whose talents allow them to
create original works in a manner that is recognized by society as useful and
desirable: inventors, composers, artists, choreographers are among those.
However,
all of those workers share the fact that in order to work they must sacrifice
their values. They must remain silent in
the face of injustice. They must buy cheap and sell dear. They must engage in
misleading advertising. They must remain silent when they know they should
speak. They must create a professional "network" and that always
involves "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" relationships. In
the worst cases the relationships are more on the order of: "You don't
tell on me and I won't tell on you." Those in the most competitive and
desirably fields must be ruthlessly ambitious. They must work 60,70 and even 80 hour weeks.
There
are some, of course, who are unemployable due to a physical and/or mental
and/or emotional deficiency or illness.
There
are some who wish to serve Humankind but Capitalist society does not have a job
description for the service they wish to, and are able to, render. They are
unique individuals with talents that society has not evolved to the point of
recognizing. They exist "before their time". They may wish to spend
their lives considering the nature of love.
They may wish to put more emphasis on being than on doing. They may
consider attaining wisdom more important than acquiring material wealth or even
knowledge. They may wish to do something that has never been done before, which
will not produce a saleable commodity. These people will not find employment,
or will be classical "underachievers" in Capitalist society.
Then
there are those who will not accept the injustices of Capitalist society. They will not acquiesce. They will not capitulate. They will not
surrender that which they know to be true and good and just. They will not
remain silent when they see a coworker abused.
They will not buy cheap and sell dear.
They will not engage in misleading advertising. They will not demoralize
others or themselves by engaging in opportunistic and mutually using and
abusing relationships. There are those who, together with John Henry Mackay, declare:
"Wherefore I will Not rule, and also ruled I will
not be!" (Poem entitled "Anarchy"). For these there is no hope
of ever being able to put what they are best at to work in Capitalist society.
These people are labeled rebels. They are said to be "bad" and
"troublemakers". They made outcasts. They are the losers. They are very
likely to be menial workers if they are employed at all. Most of their life
will be spent in frustration and depression.
Noam Chomsky writes: "Fame,
fortune, and respect await those who reveal the crimes of official enemies;
those who undertake the vastly more important task of raising a mirror to
ourselves can expect quite different treatment, in any society. " ["Containing the Threat of Democracy",
1990]. (This, of course, brings us to the question of how and why it is that Dr.
Chomsky enjoys the fame and comfortable tenured professorship that he does if
indeed he is the Anarchist sympathizer that he claims to be, but I digress).
Capitalist
society does not reward the morally gifted, the unique and the sensitive. No
jobs have been designed for such as these in Capitalist society. Even Professors
of Ethics must belong to a faculty in a college or university and we all know
the games, politics, power plays and generally simian hierarchy involved in
being a member of those august institutions.
Those
who are morally gifted are labeled "overly sensitive" or "hypermoral", the latter being a designation that is
considered pathological, a symptom of syndromes such as Geschwind's.
Of all of the "losers" in society, this waste of Human potential is
the most tragic. It is tragic for the individual who can never be of service to
society as he or she would wish to be and it is more tragic for society, which
does not receive that which the morally gifted would give were they not
marginalized, penalized, povertized, demonized,
silenced and at worst institutionalized.
In
response to this essay, I was asked what I mean by the phrases "overly
sensitive", "morally gifted" and the term "hypermoral".
I began
to treat that question some time ago in an essay that I wrote entitled
"Moral Giftedness", which can be found on the following URL:
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/MoralGiftednessXP.htm
At this
juncture I will elaborate on the subject by offering some information about three
very concrete examples of people who were, in my opinion, preternaturally
morally gifted.
I have
chosen to quote from the writings of Louise Michel, Emma Goldman and Gustav Landauer not specifically because they were Anarchists
(although I do believe that those who are morally gifted are far more likely to
arrive at the correctness of Anarchism than is the general population), but
rather because of the way in which these people were described by those who
knew and loved them in contradistinction to the way in which their respective
societies treated them. I quote from their works directly because they
articulate so very well the reactions to injustice that the preternaturally
morally gifted experience. They were contemporaneous and constituted a mutual
admiration society.
Louise
Michel was one of the leaders of the
Louise
Michel was honored with tribute in writing from Victor Hugo, her life-long
friend; Bertolt Brecht and
Emma Goldman. Of course, the
About
herself Louise Michel wrote: "As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror
at the tortures on animals. I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the
dog could bite the man who was mercilessly beating him, that
the horse bleeding under the whip could throw off the man tormenting him. But
mute animals always submit to their fate…
Animals
always submit, and the more ferocious a man is toward animals, the more that
man cringes before the people who dominate him…
My
evening in the village added to the feeling of revolt that I felt time and time
again. The peasants sow and harvest the grain, but they do not always have
bread…
I
thought that if that usurer had come into the village at that moment I would
have leapt at his throat to bit it…I was indignant [that] everybody couldn't
have food every day." (op. cit. sources of
rebellion)
When
she was exiled to
The
second example I will proffer is that of another woman who, like Louise Michel,
was considered saintly by those who knew her but was considered a
"firebrand" and "extremely dangerous" by her society, Emma
Goldman. Emma wrote prolifically and was a lecturer much in demand and so we a
large corpus of her works is extant.
About
Emma Goldman, who was jailed, exiled and vilified by the American establishment
it was said by those who knew her and were sympathetic toward her: "Your beautiful
letters have been a great comfort to me, when I have an opportunity of reading
them. E.G., my spiritual mother (you have permitted me to call you in this way)
you are a daughter of dreams." (Ba Jin)
[Emma
Goldman was] "a role model and exemplar, as a stunning speaker, a star, as
an anarchist leader of immense energy and integrity always willing to go to
jail for her principles (parentheses mine)." (RED EMMA SPEAKS, Compiled
and Edited by Alix Kates Shulman, Humanity Books, 1998)
"An
anarchist like Goldman, an individualist concerned not only to change social
structures but to live out her principles as well, was sometimes impatient with
women who were unable to follow her example. She frequently exhorted people not
only to organize to resist authority but to change their ways as
individuals." (op. cit.)
"Goldman
was always political, fighting to change the social structures that restricted
women instead of simply changing her own life." (op.
cit.)
She was
considered "hot-tempered". (op. cit.)
"…Goldman
was denouncing what she called "internal tyrants" that thwart and
cripple women." (op. cit.)
She was
a fierce critic of society's moral norms and the soi-disant guardians of
societal norms, like Anthony Comstock. She wrote an essay on this topic entitled
"Victims of Morality", which was published in her periodical Mother
Earth in March 1913.
As to
how the state saw her: "During her thirty years as an anarchist agitator,
labor champion, free speech activist and birth control advocate, the notorious
Red Emma was feared a promoter of violence, free love, and anarchy." (op. cit)
About
herself Emma wrote: "Each child responds differently to his environment.
Some become rebels, refusing to be dazzled by social superstitions. They are
outraged by every injustice perpetrated upon them or upon others. They grow
ever more sensitive to the suffering round them and the restrictions which
authority places in their way. Others become rubber stamps, registering every
convention and taboo imposed upon them.
I evidently
belong to the first category. Since my earliest recollection of my youth in
On
coming to
The
final figure who I will hold up as a paragon of morality is Gustav Landauer. Gustav Landauer was
deeply loved and respected by those who were close to him and who understood
what motivated him and why he wrote what he wrote and acted as he did for
society. As for the society in which he lived: they beat him to death at the
age of 48.
About
Gustav Landauer it has been said: "The memory of
Gustav Landauer must not fade…" (Eberhard Arnold)
"…Landauer deserves to be remembered as a saint." (Hakim
Bey)
Gustav Landauer's close friend and student, Martin Buber, based a good deal of this thought and work on that of Gustav Landauer and
quoted him in his work.
We turn
now to the words of Gustav Landauer himself.
"…compassion
and love are not necessarily the right words to describe our deepest motives.
As for my animating force, it lies in the repugnance of the humanity that
encircles us, a rage at the indolence of the rich who blithely build their
happiness on the ruins of the joyless existence of the dehumanized multitude.
My rage dissipates not one iota when I consider the extent of the squalor to
which the oppressed are subjected." (Anarchism in Germany, 1985)
"…something
new, grand, magnificent, is about to be realized by the united efforts of
mankind…"(Social Democracy in Germany 1896)
"In
unspiritual times of decline, un-culture, un-spirit and misery, men who suffer
not only externally but also internally under this general condition which
seeks to engulf them fully – in their life, thought, feeling and will – men who
resist this engulfment must have an ideal. They have an insight into the
oppressive depravity and debasement of their situation. They are unspeakably disgusted
with the misery that surrounds them like a swamp. They have energy that presses
forward and longs for something better, and thus arises in them, an image of a
pure, salutary, joyous mode of human communality in lofty beauty and
perfection…And now they no longer say: it can be so. Instead, they say: it
should, and must come about." (FOR SOCIALISM)
"Sacred
dissatisfaction is aroused and stimulated; something like a spirit…" (op. cit.)
"You
people, one and all, who suffer under this outrage: let not only my voice reach
you and the tone of my words. Hear also my silence an
atonality, my choking anxiety. And see my clenched fist, my twisted
features and the pale decisiveness of all my bearing. Grasp, above all, the
inadequacy of this description and my inexpressible incapacity for I want
people to hear me, stand by me, walk with me, people who, like me, can no
longer bear it." (op. cit.)
We see,
then, a number of similarities of character among these moral giants.
We see
that they respond to the very same social injustices that people of ordinary
moral caliber react to, but their reactions are far more "keen" and
"deep", as Emma Goldman describes it. They are so keenly and deeply
affected by injustice that they cannot but act to aright the wrongs.
They
are not an insipid lot. Though they most certainly do love and feel the deepest
compassion for Humanity, their "animating force", as Landauer calls it quite correctly, is a combination of
rage, outrage and disgust at injustice.
They do
not, however, allow that rage to drive them to commit acts of violence against
innocent persons, as do common criminals who, like them, society calls
"losers". If they do resort to violence, and they do not do so
commonly, but only when the established powers give them no choice; the
violence is directed against authority figures, not ordinary citizens.
Errico Malatesta,
another central figure in the history of anarchy describes them thus: "Let
there be no hatred, though, because love and justice cannot arise from hatred.
Hatred brings about revenge, desire to be over the enemy, need to consolidate
one's superiority. Hatred can only be the foundation of new governments, if one
wins, but it cannot be the foundation of anarchy…For this reason true haters
cannot be found among our comrades, although there are many rhetoricians of
hatred. They are like the poet, who is a good and peaceful father, but he sings
of hatred, because this gives him the opportunity of composing good verses…or perhaps
bad ones. They talk about hatred, but their hatred is made of love.
For
this reason I love them, even if they call me names." ("About My
Trial: Class Struggle or Class Hatred?", 1921)
Ernesto
(Che) Guevara would echo a similar sentiment when he
said: "The true revolutionary is inspired by a great feeling of
love."
They
are guided by visions of what Human society can be,
this is what leads them to be revolutionaries. They are idealist visionaries.
They
all strove to make life better for all humanity, rather than to concentrate
their energies on personal advancement, this despite the heavy price that was
exacted from them from the establishment, which considered them criminals, not
heroes.
They
were often misunderstood and vilified not only by the establishment, but by the
very people who they endeavored to help and whose lot they risked their own
lives to ameliorate. Errico Malatesta
explains this phenomenon thus: "…a man whose limbs had been bound from
birth, but who had nevertheless found out how to hobble about, might attribute
to the very bands that bound him his ability to move, while, on the contrary,
they would diminish and paralyze the muscular energy of his limbs…Suppose a
doctor brought forward a complete theory, with a thousand ably invented
illustrations, to persuade the man with bound limbs that, if his limbs were
freed, he could not walk, or even live. The man would defend his bands
furiously and consider anyone his enemy who tried to tear them off." (op. cit.) Such is the case with most people in society. They
have believed the lies that their masters have told them about their fetters
being good for them, even essential, and they defend them with a vengeance.
Thus, the revolutionary is often as hated and feared by the oppressed as s/he
is by the establishment.
This,
then, is the type of personality that I had in mind when I began to treat the
subject of "hypermoral" or "moral
giftedness" or "overly sensitive".
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,