6 The Invisible Man

Take a deep breath. What I have to convey here is deeply philosophical. But it is not out there in the fantasy world of ideas really; we can see these things every day.

It is interesting to reflect on how very different becomes our perspective on things between the ages of 15 and 45. When I was 15, like most people, I viewed my own life and well-being as paramount; I could not rank anything higher than the value of my own health and security. But as a grown adult, I had many occasions to ruminate on various philosophical propositions, and I asked myself, for example: What if I had to choose between being murdered and being a murderer? Which of these two ghastly undesirables is the worse?

My original answer, which I arrived at after only a moment of consideration, has not varied at all since that first assessment. I believed, and believe, that it is much more important that I take care not to do any evil; what one does follows from ideation, and my ideas are not to ever be of the sort that victimizes. I would much rather die from murder than murder anyone. What one does must always maintain a status above what happens to one; what I do is more important than what happens to me.

We must take care of what we do! I always say, “You are the last guard at the castle gate; do not let unworthy thoughts or values in, for there is no one beyond you who shall afford rescue!” And when I say this, I mean to communicate not just that there is a danger in being a villain, but danger in the thoughts that precipitate the actual condition of being a villain. I do not prepare for uncivil engagements. And, as you might expect, I have no guns and nothing that is preconceived as a weapon at my disposal. In this way, I have greatly reduced the likelihood that I fall ignorantly into those unenviable immoral pits that are predation and bringer-of-oppression and victimizer.

We all have experiences with injustice. Such recollections bring forth nasty emotions; we are resentful, umbrageous. Our emotional feeling consumes our consciousness, and we unwittingly drown out the more morally important consideration of what we do by frequently recalling the transgressions. And transgressions are so plentiful that we do not have to go back ten or twenty years to find them. Many of us suffer indignities and sleights every day of our lives. And these live continually in our minds – a universe surreal and out of balance, the scales of justice grotesquely and irreparably tipped. And all this is so compelling in our thinking that the more important consideration of what we do is not considered at all.

Decades ago, I realized that I will live out my entire life without ever spitting on anyone. And it is not because I have lived a pristinely agreeable life, not because I have no experience with rudeness or inconsideration or disgust at what another person has done. No! I have experienced transgression! But what I realized is that there is something at once invisible and marvelously treasurable in my refusal to do a vast array of uncivil things: that and that and that and that and that. No one will see it, and history will make no record of it; indeed no human shall cogitate on it – no, not even for a transient moment – but it will have come to pass that I did not respond violently to provocation, and I did not act uncivilly when treated thus. Of this too righteousness must consist.