The Importance of being Morally Clever

The Importance of Being Morally Clever:
because there’s always something out there bigger than you.

In writing correspondence to a friend of mine this morning, who was writing some understandably frustrated words at the world, several things about which I have not written about, occurred to me. I should go on record as saying I do not have all the facts about the situation, but neither did I find that I needed them to formulate the response. The long and short of it seemed to be that there was an unpleasant separation of people and the generic shit-storm of drama that tends to go around when that kind of thing happens. It got me thinking, which led to a drink or two, and now this piece relative to the matter at hand. No names will be mentioned in the interest of protecting the innocent.

One of the fundamental troubles that often come from having a relationship with another person is that you are, in no mistake, dealing with another person. This is regardless of what your actual relationship to them may, or may not, be in the real world. New friends, old friends, best friends, lovers, partners, strangers, one night stands, a room full of polyamorous swingers at a key party, drunken ruffians in a bar, or the person standing ahead of you in line at your favorite fast-food, restaurant, all of these people, who are all over the world, are people and if there’s one thing you can say about humans it’s that they are really, really, clever.

In fact, it’s in our hardwired nature to be clever, to be the smartest sonofabitch to ever terrorize the planet on which we live. It’s cleverness that got us out of the ocean, with all its big scary monsters, cleverness that had us find a way to harvest fire, cleverness that had a us invent the wheel, and tools, and cleverness that taught us to harness electricity. Cleverness has been that single bit of near insanity that has, through necessity, paved the roadways of our evolution – never mind that the byproduct of this evolutionary trait seems to be that we’ve made evolution a little bit pointless.

Still, in terms of natural abilities, we can no longer swim underwater indefinitely, we do not have the sharpest teeth, we cannot fly, we are not the fastest predator on the planet, nor do we have all sorts of bits and pieces that let us lay trap doors, change our colors, and so on. What we have is a brain; a fantastic supercomputer capable of all manner of insane ideas and thoughts and guess what? On top of an imaginative brain full of great and wonderful imaginations, we figure out a way to turn roughly ninety percent of those ideas into actual tools we can use.

Now, let’s take a step back and take a look at how being impacts the world in ways that aren’t related to visiting the bottom of the Marianas Trench. What does it really mean to be clever, socially, in this world? What does it really take to keep you not only in the game of life, but also somewhere close to the lead? What does it really take to keep up with the world around you which, with the help of modern technology like cell phones, the internet, Facebook and so on, is bigger and smaller than it’s ever been at any other point in human history?

There’s an inherent, intrinsic sort of wisdom that the animal worlds tends to understand. Weak things are easier to prey upon than healthy, strong, things. It’s a simple fact of the animal world, even if it’s one we don’t think about, I have a hard time looking at the world without seeing examples of it everywhere. A prime example of this, that is present (and complained about) in everyday life would be this:

You know someone, he or she has just separated from their respective partner in some way that could be considered unpleasant. There will be three types of people who universally appear on either side of that line; there will be those who were friends regardless, those mutual acquaintances who side with one or the other and begin a campaign of social genocide, and those social scavengers who have been waiting, stalking, just outside the wings of your everyday life, waiting for that moment for you to let your guard down so they can sweep in for the kill.

These latter are people we tend to shun, abhor, condemn, and cast out for being unscrupulous, self-serving, and bastards in general and while I am no stranger to such thoughts about people who would execute this tactic, there is something about it that warrants another look from a different perspective.

We live in a world that is full, nearly to bursting, with people; a world bristling with thought, cultures, ideals, and principles. We live in a world where everyone has a different idea about what they want, what they deserve, what they should be able to have, and it’s getting harder and harder to satisfy everyone.

For example, most everyone has their idea of ‘the perfect partner’ and probably someone they know who fits within those parameters. If we look at the 2011 sex ratio which postulates that there are only 984 women to every 1,000 men, then, by that number alone, if you assume only twenty percent fall into either a homosexual/asexual category (taking into account that these numbers would decrease within their own gender alone if not taking them out of the equation completely, there still isn’t enough for everyone to have what it is they’d want in black and white.

Okay, no problem. So people have to make choices about what they want, about what they’re willing to settle for and what they’re willing to compromise on. That seems pretty reasonable – except that it’s not. In a social sense we’re saturated with advertisements and social reinforcement that says ‘if you want it, then it’s you’re right to have it, but what happens when you can’t have it because it just isn’t there for you to have? What happens when your perfect man or woman is already with someone else? It then becomes your best interest, if the objective is to fuck and satisfy your desires, or to procreate and pass on a line age, to be seedy, perhaps a bit underhanded, and, without a doubt, clever.

It’s a simple fact: Being clever and having a willingness to be a bit underhanded increases your odds of survival. This is something that could, and often is, expressed in more areas of our life than we could possibly begin to understand – and it’s really easy to sit down and want to take a shit all over it. It’s really easy to sit down and look at the world like it’s full of monsters and assholes whose singular purpose in life is to wait for you to wander off on your own, and then tear your to shreds like some vicious predator who is ravenous with hunger.

It’s not in anyone’s best interest if we all fucking go out in a blaze of glory and fallout. It’s not in anyone’s best interest if the world comes to a crashing halt. It takes a genuine sense of cleverness to keep that from happening or, at the very least, a very large stick to beat anyone who offers that up as a serious threat. That works great for the world at large, even if ‘large’ is a bit of a stretch, but what about everyone in the world? How do we survive without becoming angry and jaded beasts looking to eat until we burst?

Then question then becomes ‘How do we survive and thrive without fucking someone over?’ There’s a simple answer to this one too: You don’t. You will fuck someone over, somewhere along your forward progress no matter what you do – even if that person ends up being you. It doesn’t matter who you are where you live, or what direction your moral compass points you. Eventually you’re going to bend someone over in a way they don’t like and give them something very uncomfortable to take one way or another.

It then becomes a question of value and worth. Will there be people out there who choose to place no value on morals? Abso-fucking-lutely. It is, without a doubt the easier way to be in life. You just worry about you and everything else can fuck off, eat shit, or get eaten. Will there also be people out there who say “Yes, I could fuck you in any way I so goddamn choose because I can, but I could also do this where my intention is to not fuck you and still get ahead? Again, abso-fucking-lutely. Does this always work? No.

So, everyone will fuck you over. Everyone will, at some point or another, act in their own self-interest. Everyone will do something that serves to get them ahead in a way that will set you back ten steps. With this rationale it becomes very easy to be bitter and willing to smash your moral compass with the hammer of success. It makes it very easy to keep your teeth sharp, your claws out, and your eyes always on the lookout for the weakest link you can step on, over or through.

How then, do we justify not bombing ourselves back into the Stone Age? How do we sit back and convince one another that humanity is, in fact, not worth vaporizing with the push of a big, shinny, red, button? The answer becomes identical to the problem: We’re really goddamned clever.

It is possible to be clever and hang on to your moral compass, no matter the incentive. It is possible not to cut deals with horned bastards or men in suit who have spikes tails when you see their reflection in the mirror. It is possible to say “Me first” without adding “So fuck you.” It is possible to step up and say “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it did. I’m sorry, but in the process I set myself up rather well, is there anything I can do to help you?”

At the end of the day, what it really boils down to is choice. You have no, real, choice but to accept the fact that there simply isn’t enough for everyone to win the race, but there’s certainly enough for everyone to finish it without having to take the risk of crashing into a fuel truck and fuck it all up for everyone. We live in a world where we’ve gotten clever enough to make sure everyone has a shot to survive and that we have all the resources to make sure everyone can live, but that’s the catch; everyone has enough to live, but living isn’t the end all be all of life.

We’re clever. We’re smart. We’ve invented the wheel, we’ve learned how to fly, we can make fire, and we can split the fucking atom. We can bomb ourselves into oblivion, we can lie, cheat, swindle, scam, and steal our way into some, self-actualized, sense of importance and superiority, but we all have to answer the same question every day: Is it worth it to me, to keep doing this, just to make it?

Some people will answer that question with a resounding ‘yes’. Some people find no cost too great, some people would be willing to sell their metaphorical testicles if it meant making that extra bit of distance between them and whoever else was either ahead or behind them, but that’s just some people. That’s not everyone. There are people out there who would answer that question differently enough that they’re completely separated from members of the pack who don’t care if they starve to death.

Are they the majority? No, but that shouldn’t matter. They’re the kind of people, the type we all have the potential to be, who are morally clever. They’re a modern Tesla of sorts, people who just want to do what it is that they do best for everyone. It may be easy to miss them in a sea of monsters, it may be easy to overlook them in the pages of history, it may be easy to be angry at them because it looks like they’re trying to swoop in and steal the woman you used to be dating. They might look like the world’s biggest, most self-serving asshole you’ve ever met, but you’re clever.

Take another look at it. The next time you see someone who steps up and decides to commit to the path of pillaging and plundering without remorse, look again. Are they really doing what you think they are? Ask yourself the same question the next time you see someone do something that seems wholly altruistic. Are they, are you, doing something with a genuine intent? What is it you seek to gain from what you’re doing, and, if you look at these things are you okay with it? Is this something you would be okay being done to you?

You’re a human being. You’re designed to survive; you’ve evolved to be clever. Neither of these things gives you the right to be an asshole or to fuck the world over. All it gives you is the right to choose to weigh it out and look in the mirror to decide if it was worth it. There will always be bastards in the world, and there will always be those out there clever enough to get around them. There will always be monsters in the world and those clever enough to bring them down. There will always be evils in the world, and those morally clever enough to find a way to make the world better in spite of them.

This is why it’s so important to be morally clever, because not everyone else is in the world. Not everyone will stop and think of you, in fact most people won’t. It may be easy to say ‘Well, if they don’t care, why should I care either?’ and the answer is simple: You shouldn’t care if you don’t want to, but what’s someone who’s clever and doesn’t care about what that cleverness does to the world around them? You’re clever. Look around your world, if nobody really did care about anyone but themselves, if you really did just give up and decide to get drunk on power and put the petal underfoot, if everyone else decided to do that, where would we all end up?

Cleverness is power, great power, but you know what Uncle Ben always used to say about great power…