Practicing the Three "R's"

Practicing the three "R's" (to resist, refuse, renounce the prevailing wisdom of one's culture) in addition to doing one's daily activities (working, eating, exercising, sleeping, being the member of a family, of a local community, etc.) is, like taking the red pill in The Matrix, asking for trouble.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was ready to take the red pill. My elders, people I respected, divined my intentions and took me aside. Sagely, confidentially, they advised me with the wisdom of age. I was repeatedly subjected to the following sermon: "Life is tough enough as it is; don't think you can save the world. Look out for 'number one.' If you don't do it, nobody will."

Initially, I resented this advice. For one thing, I had no illusions that I could save the world. That was a misstatement of my desires. Secondly, the notion of "looking out for number one" ran counter to what I had decided were worthy ideals. Mutuality, reciprocity, a sense that human beings share the world and must learn to look out for one another and for the earth herself, just seemed to me to be common sense.

But these ideals were uncommon sense and the weight of my culture, it seems, is dead-set against them.

When Ted Kennedy failed to replace Jimmy Carter as the Democratic Party's nominee in 1980 and Ronald Reagan was subsequently elected, ushering in the "greed is good" decade, I confess I gave in to despair.

Who was I, after all, to piss against the wind?

I began to look out for number one and to rationalize my change in perspective with a clever reading of the Golden Rule: doing unto others as you would have others do unto you is not a call to put others before self; rather, it is only to see that others are treated as well as you would have them treat you. This presupposes that one treats oneself well; and, by all means, when the opportunity arises, do unto others as you would have others do unto you...

By means of this interpretation, I was able to invert an other-centered admonition into a self-centered credo. I now had it on the authority of Christ himself that my ego was to be given free reign. It was not long before "others" were largely pushed out of the equation. By my mid-twenties I was living for myself alone.

And having a ball, I must admit.

No, I'm no St. Augustine and this is no Augustinian confession of remorse. I found it a great relief to be sucked into the cultural vortex and simply go with the flow. The 1980's were, for me, a decade of self-indulgence. My elders were right: you have to look out for number one. If you don't, no one else will.

By the early 1990's, however, I discovered the price that living for self alone entails: one achieves precisely what one is living for--self alone.

Personally, I found that result to be empty. I had dug myself a pit and was living in the bottom of it. I should have been happy, but I was not.

To climb out of the pit of my self, I began to reach out to others. Slowly.

Old habits die hard. But I was determined.

I discovered an early poem of Allen Ginsberg's (entitled "Song") that contradicted the wisdom of my elders: "The weight of the world," Ginsberg wrote, "is love." In other words, the burden of life in this world is to overcome the temptation to live for self alone and to learn to put others, the needs of others, ahead of one's own needs.

I don't pretend to have mastered the discipline that loving others requires--not by a long shot. Nor do I always know what I am doing when I set out to put the principle of loving others before self into action. I cannot guarantee that my motives are purely altruistic--indeed, I would be surprised to learn that altruism is even in my personal repertoire. What I can say for certain is that I have repudiated the advice that informed my actions in the 1980's.

Resist. Refuse. Renounce. "Number one" is not the self but the neighbor. This is the principle. The discipline is love.