Of frogs in the well and the selfish gene
View(s):What a noble beast man is. Sometimes, such as when he protests on behalf of his fellow human beings: Demanding that their dignity, their honour, be safeguarded! Especially noble when that human being is one’s erstwhile leader, a much revered figure, in his time veritably a king. Churlish is the character of the critic who attributes ignoble motives to such protests…
Just this week, we witnessed a spectacle of such ignobility – er, nobility. A cabal of filibusters forcibly occupied the well of the House to protest on behalf of a Most Royal personage. They appeared indignant that his majesty’s reputation would suffer great and regrettable things if his majesty’s person was to be investigated for indignities – er, irregularities – committed while holding the exalted office of supreme commander and sovereign. “Shame,” to treat our rescuer from revolt and redeemer from revolution in such a cavalier manner! “Guilty of treason,” those blackguards who dared sully the name of such a rare demigod! “Dishonour to nation, state, civilization, and all things holy” to drag the name of this person – to say nothing of his exalted corpus – to the dungeons of CIABOC for interrogation and possible incarceration. (At least, his detention for the duration of the questioning would be tantamount to it, in the minds of his defenders.)
Well, methinks the gentlemen protest too much. And so would you, dears, if you had your wits about you. Think, I mean… not protest. Think about it: Never did these paragons of virtue raise as much as a whimper of protest when all about them was rank corruption, rampant crime, and the rising cost of living as crippling as an unbearable cross to the good citizens of the republic. Not a whisper or whinny of rebellion from these protestors when 18A was passed through the Pearly Gates to entrench despotism in the land. But trespass on the sanctity of the once and would-be future king… and a parliament of fouls, er fowls, ensues faster than you can say “humbug” backwards in language unfit for Hansard.
Bless my soul, dears, it’s all in the classics. (The Greeks had a word for it: “hypocrites”: meaning roughly, ‘mask-wearer’.) It’s in the hard sayings of scripture. (The Hebrews knew you couldn’t serve two masters; God or Good Governance and Mammon or illicit, personal, monetary benefit or power-gain.) It’s in The Prince. (One wily Italian knew that the rabble may be roused to serve the most infamous and nefarious of purposes.) Demagogues and tyrants from Demosthenes to Thatcher knew about the filibustering that is fit for treasons, spoils, and stratagems. Do you think of what’s next when the chips are down? the fat’s in the fire? the long arm of the law is clamping down on your shoulder? that long-awaited constitutional amendment is round the corner such that the long-running gravy train looks like it might grind to a halt… You said it: mount a long, loud, vigil that protests the right of some tragic hero who’s been hard-done by the world.
There are those who would be charitable and describe such acts as these as altruistic. After all, the protestors themselves have nothing to gain – or do they? Those who think so would take a more cynical position and condemn the lot who camped out in parliament this week as selfish. After all, they might have everything to lose – don’t they? It was Richard Dawkins in his unforgettable 1976 masterpiece – The Selfish Gene – who cleverly amalgamated the two mindsets. If you will allow me to paraphrase: even altruism can be interpreted as essentially selfish behaviour. Organisms often sacrifice themselves or serve causes other than themselves because it will give others closely linked to them – by kinship or community – a chance to survive.
Is that not at least part of what we’re seeing in the well of the House these days? Are not those organisms which are protesting – selfishly or altruistically – serving a cause that seems to be outside their interests to do? Or is their sacrifice of time, energy, and the goodwill of governmental legislators designed to give That Great Other – closely linked to them by kingship and corruptibility – a chance to survive?
If you want it in more prosaic terms: there is honour among thieves. It is a variant of the highest treason: Doing the right thing – defending one’s side’s kings and commoners – for the wrong reason: To protect yourself from sharing the same fate. But you have not read this far to be told what every intelligent schoolchild watching the live broadcast from the House knows. There must be a more personal challenge and application for you and I. Could it be that in public life as well as private, we must probe our own most altruistic acts for a hidden agenda? The damnation that comes from defending the faith of rogues and rotters is not for the corrupt alone; it is for you and I who make a song and dance out of others’ rights and responsibilities to hide our own corruption and rottenness.
As sure as the sun rises, more arresting developments are bound to happen sooner than later. Now that the 100 days of dalliance and dilly-dallying are done. Even if as the soap opera goes, the fat lady has yet to sing…