Newman: Morality 101

My only business is to ascertain what I am, in order to put it to use. ... My first elementary duty is that of resignation to the laws of my nature, whatever they are; my first disobedience is to be impatient at what I am, and to indulge an ambitious aspiration after what I cannot be, to cherish a distrust of my powers, and to desire to change laws which are identical with myself. (John Henry Newman, Grammar of Assent, II.9.1)

I've spent a great deal of my life trying to become a Jedi Knight. When most of my peers were struggling with the existence of Santa Claus (in whom I never believed), I was instead wondering why I wasn't able to "influence" minds and levitate distant objects. My eventual realization that the Jedi are entirely fictional crushed also my capacity for faith in religion and in any kind of truth whatsoever. To this day, I still catch myself asking, "Why should I believe this?" whenever I face anyone's assertion of some truth or fact.

The problem lies, not in the stars -- however much I would like to blame Lucas for my malady -- but in myself believing that I was a star. My shrink calls this "grandiosity", which is I guess a more politically correct term for "megalomania". I'm constantly striving to be something that I'm not, and when I fail to live up to my fictional and outrageous expectations I consider my attempts and my entire life to be a failure. In fact, my only real failure is to accept reality as it is: to accept myself as God made me to be.

Since I can't accept myself, or (as Newman puts it) since I am impatient with what I am and distrust my powers, aspiring after other powers, I'm often off base when it comes to figuring out the world around me. This makes interacting with other people, well, interesting, to put it politely. I frequently misunderstand fairly simple statements. I usually interpret somebody talking about their own life as if they were talking about mine. Someone says, "I wish I were more organized," and I reply, "Hey, I'll clean up my mess when I'm good and ready, so get off my back!"

The solution is, obviously, to face reality. But would you trust somebody who thought the Jedi were real to figure out what's real and what's not? Would you trust someone who believed in Santa? Okay, so we're in the same boat, then. I guess that's why I don't judge too harshly people who believe that the Republicans really will bring an end to bloated and/or immoral government, or that the Democrats really will eliminate poverty or social injustice. They're appealing fantasies. I'd love to believe them, too -- except that I've learned my lesson. There are no Jedi, there is no Chosen One to bring balance to the Force. There's only us: a bunch of people who are, more or less, out of touch with reality.

This is the lesson I take from Newman, and from my own experience: if I act based on a false idea of what's real, then I'm going to end up doing stupid or even horribly harmful things. So my first duty, the basis of all my moral decisions, has to be to check out what's really real. That's more effort than I usually want to expend, and I often don't have time to sort out every last aspect of the situation I have to deal with. But I do the best I can, and I try to learn from my mistakes. I try to take a step closer to reality.