Together we considered our animal nature, our selfishness, greed, vice, violence, cruelty, the reality of a strictly Darwinian universe, the principle of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, the meaning in such a world of the word "fit," the idea that love is only a euphemism for need and desire, the Marxist idea that life is fundamentally material and economic. To this vision most of the young would-be businessmen subscribed, though they squirmed at my deliberately crude, plain, and graphic summary of it. I directed my students once more briefly to Williams’ “The Yachts,” to the “sea of faces about them in agony, in despair until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind.”
To my left, at the far end of row two, silent and attentive sat Arthur. He normally had little to volunteer and rarely raised his hand. But to our discussion of this grim topic Arthur contributed a statement that impressed itself indelibly upon my memory. He offered it like an announcement.
“In order to stay alive I would eat human shit and drink human blood.”
Still, with only a few exceptions, most of my students remained—at least in their classroom remarks—solidly theistic, unable to square their uncompromising belief in the bottom line, the world of dog eat dog, the real world, the rat race, with their belief in God. They wanted it both ways, to have God, Christ, love, and heaven and yet also to be free to do—because it was necessary to do—whatever needed to be done to survive, to thrive, to succeed, to accumulate wealth, and to retire happy, fulfilled, and content. Every student saw the hypocrisy of publicly espousing Christian principles while privately seeking personal gain, but most of my students quite readily and easily accepted this contradiction.
“That’s just the way it is,” one concluded.
“Everyone does it,” another concurred.
Most found it amusing to contemplate this reality and its absurdity. They smiled and laughed at the thought of everyone praising God, peace, love, compassion, mercy, honesty, truth, and generosity, while everyone secretly lied, cheated, envied, hated, and wished their rivals were dead. I laughed with them. Indeed, for most of us, this was the fundamental joke of the human comedy—the bombardier closing his eyes, crossing himself, and whispering The Lord’s Prayer before he drops his bombs, the business executive compelling his employees to attend the organizational indoctrination seminar on honesty before they return to the public relations and advertising offices to polish the glossy misrepresentations, half-truths, and lies about the company’s product and service, the average man’s oaths, promises, and vows to himself and to God to change, change, change tomorrow, right after he finishes this one last beer and enjoys this one last cigarette while this one last pornographic movie heaves to its conclusion. We would go on living in this contrariety, on the one hand paying our lip service to the public pieties and on the other hand privately cursing our creditors and bosses, betraying our wives and husbands, lying to our children, and buying insurance. For me and for most of my students, this was the human condition, and with a smile we sadly and—we hoped—wisely accepted it.
To my left, at the far end of row two, silent and attentive sat Arthur. He normally had little to volunteer and rarely raised his hand. But to our discussion of this grim topic Arthur contributed a statement that impressed itself indelibly upon my memory. He offered it like an announcement.
“In order to stay alive I would eat human shit and drink human blood.”
Still, with only a few exceptions, most of my students remained—at least in their classroom remarks—solidly theistic, unable to square their uncompromising belief in the bottom line, the world of dog eat dog, the real world, the rat race, with their belief in God. They wanted it both ways, to have God, Christ, love, and heaven and yet also to be free to do—because it was necessary to do—whatever needed to be done to survive, to thrive, to succeed, to accumulate wealth, and to retire happy, fulfilled, and content. Every student saw the hypocrisy of publicly espousing Christian principles while privately seeking personal gain, but most of my students quite readily and easily accepted this contradiction.
“That’s just the way it is,” one concluded.
“Everyone does it,” another concurred.
Most found it amusing to contemplate this reality and its absurdity. They smiled and laughed at the thought of everyone praising God, peace, love, compassion, mercy, honesty, truth, and generosity, while everyone secretly lied, cheated, envied, hated, and wished their rivals were dead. I laughed with them. Indeed, for most of us, this was the fundamental joke of the human comedy—the bombardier closing his eyes, crossing himself, and whispering The Lord’s Prayer before he drops his bombs, the business executive compelling his employees to attend the organizational indoctrination seminar on honesty before they return to the public relations and advertising offices to polish the glossy misrepresentations, half-truths, and lies about the company’s product and service, the average man’s oaths, promises, and vows to himself and to God to change, change, change tomorrow, right after he finishes this one last beer and enjoys this one last cigarette while this one last pornographic movie heaves to its conclusion. We would go on living in this contrariety, on the one hand paying our lip service to the public pieties and on the other hand privately cursing our creditors and bosses, betraying our wives and husbands, lying to our children, and buying insurance. For me and for most of my students, this was the human condition, and with a smile we sadly and—we hoped—wisely accepted it.
