When we
were children, we were taught that we could not expect much justice or reward in
this life if we counted ourselves among the good people who followed the rules
and behaved well, rather that we would find praise and reward for being good in
the next world, after we were dead. This was provided you believed in an
afterlife, which was a given on the part of the religious instructors we had as
children in Catholic grammar school. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve wondered about
a lot of things, and this is one of them. I’ve never really liked the philosophy
that good people have to suffer at the hands of bad people, or that they have
to accept that suffering without standing up for themselves or fighting back. And
I loathe the idea that bad people get to do what they want at the expense of good
people, without ever having to account for their behavior or without getting
caught or stopped. What do I mean by bad
people? Psychopaths, sociopaths, true narcissists, the holier-than-thous, those
who believe the rules don’t apply to them because they are too smart, too
good-looking, or too rich. Those who mess with others’ heads to achieve their
own egotistical aims, those who miss no opportunity to badmouth those around
them, those who aggressively cross others’ personal boundaries over which they
have no business going, those who actively seek to destroy their co-workers in
the quest to get to the top. How do you do the latter? By doing the first three
things. Why do I bring this up today?
Because I have been witness to a few comeuppances recently, and I must say that
I am glad I didn’t have to wait until I was dead to experience them. And
because I have experienced a small amount of joy in watching these people get
their just deserts, my conscience has bothered me. But these people have reaped
trouble--lost top leadership positions, experienced being badmouthed and attacked
themselves, got told to back off or get out of people’s lives--because they
sowed trouble. They deserved what they got,
and the reason I felt glad about any of it was because it happened in this life
and not the next. The people around them are now spared their nasty slimy
behavior.
I believe that
good people should stand up for themselves and should fight back, insofar as
that is humanly possible. I’m not sure what Christ really meant by turning the
other cheek, but I don’t think he meant that good people should let themselves be attacked
and/or killed, or that they shouldn’t try to dissuade bad people from behaving
badly. I think he meant that they should set an example—good behavior—not that they should let the nasty people ride roughshod over them. Good people have the right to defend
themselves if they are physically, verbally or psychologically attacked. I include
spiritually as well, because some people cross all sorts of boundaries in their
dealings with you, and expect you to simply accept their transgressions because
that is who they are. But if good people are
exposed to enough bad, unethical, nasty, slimy, evil behavior, they risk being
contaminated themselves, if they never fight back. They risk being inundated by so much crap that they slip
under the surface of slime. They risk becoming like those who are not worth
emulating. Sometimes, they even end up ‘casting their pearls before swine’, a very
favorite expression of mine. They throw away their values in order to live among
the bad people. It can happen gradually, one pearl at a time, and suddenly, they’ve
given their souls away, to be trampled upon. It’s worth thinking about.
