Shantung Compound

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Author: Langdon Gilkey
Full Title: Shantung Compound
Category: #books

Highlights

Rational behavior in communal action is primarily a moral and not an intellectual achievement, possible only to a person who is morally capable of self-sacrifice. In a real sense, I came to believe, moral selflessness is a prerequisite for the life of reason—not its consequence, as so many philosophers contend.
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the things we long for—peace, prosperity, and a long life—depend to a far greater degree on the achievement of harmony and justice among men than they do on the latest inventions from our laboratories, valuable as the latter may be. That achievement of harmony and justice confronts us as a race, not with problems of technological know-how or scientific knowledge so much as with the problems of political and moral decisions.
wealth is by no means an unmitigated blessing to its community. It does not, as may often be supposed, serve to feed and comfort those who are lucky enough to possess it, while leaving unaffected and unconcerned others in the community who are not so fortunate. Wealth is a dynamic force that can too easily become demonic—for if it does not do great good, it can do great harm.
Had this food simply been used for the good of the whole community, it would have been an unmitigated blessing in the life of every one of us. But the moment it threatened to become the hoarded property of a select few, it became at once destructive rather than creative, dividing us from one another and destroying every vestige of communal unity and morale.
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the only answer was not less wealth or material goods, but the development of moral character that might lead to sharing and so provide the sole foundation for social peace.
the creation of a viable community is as dependent on the moral ability and willingness to share what we have with our neighbor who is in want as it is on the technical ability to produce and accumulate wealth.
We commit most of our serious sins against our neighbor—and these are the serious sins—for what we regard as a “moral principle.” Most of us, in spite of whatever harm we may be doing to others, have long since convinced ourselves that the cause for which we do what we do is just and right. Thus teaching high ideals to men will not in itself produce better men and women. It may merely provide the taught with new ways of justifying their devotion to their own security.
what makes them so-called “political animals” or “born politicians” is not this capacity to rule, but the ability to draw power to themselves, to assume and keep—by one means or another—the role of leader. This achievement of rule, of legitimate and controlled power, establishes the political problem, both for a man and for a society.
If the committee is to do what it thinks just, it must be able to get people to comply with its plans. But if people won’t be persuaded, and if they can’t be compelled, how is the justice to be enacted? For the first time it appeared to me that, contrary to most pacifist and anarchistic theory (to which I had been sympathetic), legitimate force is one of the necessary bases upon which justice can be established in human affairs.
no program in the life of a community is really just if that program cannot be enacted. Ideal solutions can always be conceived by liberal onlookers, and they may appeal to our minds when we contemplate them. But they are politically useless and of little moral value if they can in nowise be put into effect. Such solutions cannot claim the word “just,” for they are never either relevant or real. To refuse to move the women on idealistic grounds would not have been just; it would merely have resulted in the irresponsible—and much more unjust—political act of leaving the Belgians homeless. In this case, compromise of one’s moral principles appeared to me to be morally necessary.
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Politics is essentially the art of the possible—not of the ideal. Fundamentally it involves enacting solutions to community problems in actual life, rather than thinking out solutions to intellectual problems in the realm of thought—although
We do not act in political life because our act is just. We act because the pressures of the moment force us to resolve in one way or another some vital problem in the community.
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- Note: Pragmatic response
there really isn’t as much difference as we like to think between the ordinary guy demanding justice for himself and the heel who wants to take more than the next guy. One’s a kind of polite, respectable, legal sort of self-interest, the other’s a rude, antisocial and illegal one—but both are motivated by the same thing.”
in history, justice seems to ride on the back of self-interest rather than on that of virtue.
however virtuous the “cause,” it is well to recall that those who justly clamor for more equality are as much motivated by self-concern as are those more fortunate ones who stubbornly seek to preserve their unequal privileges.
- Note: I.e. cui bono, who benefits from the cause being clamored for? The clamorer? If not, more credibility, if so, less.
Whenever, in fact, the needs of people really differed from those of their neighbors, it was manifestly unjust to give them equal portions.
even exceptions to the law have to be determined legalistically. It seems impossible ever completely to leave the realm of law and enter the paradise of love where each is merely given what he needs and asks for, because in his self-concern, what a man asks for will always be more than he needs and also more than he sees his neighbor getting.
Somewhat to our surprise, we found we agreed that the law was made necessary because of self-interest, and that therefore its primary function was not, as I had always thought, that of stating what is abstractly just and right, but rather that of controlling self-interest, and molding it into socially creative rather than socially destructive patterns.
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- Note: cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Law, it seemed to us, must be just in the sense that in controlling behavior it should mold behavior in more and more creative and equal directions—else needless suffering result and society be engulfed in conflict. But first of all, law must be an agent of control. Thus it must be practical. It must be in touch with actual patterns of behavior if it is to be the controller of them. Consequently effective law is almost always a good deal less than the ideal.
the law had always had an ambiguous, dubious role to play in our lives, and that this situation probably tended to weaken immeasurably its legitimacy and force among us.
the black market unquestionably contributed further to the general disrespect for the
I will not be held responsible for something I don’t approve of but can’t prevent.
As the honest chaps get uneasy and want to move out, the scroungers move up—up from the ranks of helper and right into the heart of the organization itself,
Immorality, my friend, is not merely the private demon of the ‘missionary saints,’ Brockman flung at me. It’s more like a public demon, and it can bring a society to its knees as surely as any physical plague!”
Since the community was unable to control her, it should not be held responsible for her, said they. Therefore the section should not be punished for her stubbornness. Having watched her antics once from a distance, the chief agreed. In broken English, he put the point quite well, “Group have not responsibility for her; she have none for them.”
“We make a great to-do about the force of public opinion,” said Matt, “but when the chips are down, it’s a skittish and unreliable thing at best. It may light on some unfortunate with a surprising and unjust weight, and at the same time remain indifferent to a real menace.
“The real difficulty with the concept of a social order based on moral pressure is that it assumes that everyone is already moral. Look at the way Willie laughed at those poor chaps who were the judges. If their moral condemnation of Willie is to stick, they have to be clean themselves—and who hasn’t been involved in some shadiness in this place?
Without the threat of some sort of harm to the offender, without some form of force, no system of law is possible in a world where universal morality cannot be assumed. And if it could, then after all, no system of law would really be necessary!”
Why put him somewhere as a nonworking policeman when he’s already keeping the lid on things where he works?”
Every time a man of integrity was mentioned, the head of his utility would complain that his organization would collapse without this man and men like him.
“no group can legislate itself above its own moral level. You don’t get honesty by shifting a man from a worker’s uniform to a police-man’s. Solutions to the problem of law and order won’t come because men take on other jobs. They will come only if the community has a sense of responsibility to its own welfare. No increase in the police force will add to that! … Old Irenaeus once said, ‘Only the immortal can grant immortality to the mortal.’ We might paraphrase that in our situation, ‘You can’t handle the problem of corruption except by incorruption.’
It seemed clear that the community did not want a more effective law, for the same reason, ironically, it so desperately needed it, namely, that it was morally too weak to keep from stealing from itself. We were faced with the uncomfortable and frustrating truth that a democratic society can possess no stronger law than the moral character of the people within it will affirm and support.
A good constitution is the expression of a deep underlying moral will of a community, not its cause. Only where a certain ethical self-control exists do the people want an effective law; and so only then is a social constitution possible.
First, I had learned that men need to be moral, that is, responsibly concerned with their neighbors’ welfare as well as their own, if human community was to be at all possible; equally evident, however, men did not or even could not so overcome their own self-concern to be thus responsible to their neighbor.
What I felt especially weak in these Protestants was their false standard of religious and ethical judgment that frustrated their own desire to function morally within the community, for this standard judged the self and others by criteria which were both arbitrary and irrelevant. In the end, it left the self feeling righteous and smug when the real and deadly moral issues of camp life had not yet even been raised, much less resolved.
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The constructive moral forces in our life were only weakened and the cynical forces strengthened when missionaries judged honest, hard-working, and generally self-sacrificing men as “weak”—and even went so far as to warn their young people not to associate with them!—because they smoked or swore.
Such men were not hypocrites—as others often felt who found themselves judged by these unknown laws. They didn’t want to judge others—they couldn’t help it.
In their frantic effort to escape the fleshly vices and so to be “holy,” many fell unwittingly into the far more crippling sins of the spirit, such as pride, rejection, and lovelessness. This, I continue to feel, has been the greatest tragedy of Protestant life.
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Whatever their code of personal morals might be, they knew that love and service of the neighbor, and self-forgetfulness even of one’s own holiness, were what a true Christian life was supposed to be. Unlike the pious legalist, they attempted to apply no homemade plumb lines to their neighbors’ lives, but sought only to help them whenever their help was really needed.
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Whenever a layman would express his distaste for the missionaries, he would always carefully exclude the Salvation Army workers.
Perhaps the unique contribution of what I have called this creative group of missionaries—which included persons from almost all denominations—was their willingness to help others when there was special need. Most internees would help their families and friends over a difficult spot. But it rearely occurred to them to take the time and energy to put themselves out for someone they did not know.