On Humanity

Like others have done before me, I fear for the decline of human society and social conscience. Generally, we are inconstant as the wind, often quick to judge, and too quick to dismiss or abandon others for their foibles. I have witnessed how quickly people will set aside their allegiances for some perceived benefit or personal gain, and although these gains are usually illusory, the perfidy through which they are attained is real, and permanent. These things I have done myself, and have lived with regret -- but have learned from my mistakes.

As you are aware, my successful career as a computer engineer came to a sudden halt with the onset of an insidious and unforgiving illness. Were it not for the benevolence of my fiance, I do not know what would have become of me -- but I know it would be very little. In the time since then, I have necessarily turned from a man of fortune and status into a man of virtue and humility, but not without a great deal of agonizing frustration and lament. Although I scrabbled desperately to hold onto my career while searching for a cure, it was a struggle against the inevitable, and I ultimately lost. However, what I suffered from most greatly was not my illness or its symptoms. It was realization that, when my career was gone, my fortune spent, my arrogant self-importance demolished, and my belief in myself as indestructable removed, all that remained was insubstantial, amorphous, and without merit. It was the realization that, up until that time, I represented a great deal of what is wrong with our society, and very little of what is right.

As I set out to design the coat of arms for my married House, I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about heraldric symbols and their meanings. I have encountered two essential questions as a result of this effort. The first: Does this symbol represent what I am, or does it represent what I would like to be? The second: Why is there a difference between what I am, and what I would like to be? The answer to the first is a matter of perspective and subjectivity, and will waver until there is no second question to ask. The answer to the second question is...the frailty of human conscience.

If we find there is a difference between who we are and who we wish to be, the cause can invariably be traced back to a failing of conscience. We are trained, in our corporate social upcoming, as predators who prey not only upon each other, but unwittingly upon ourselves as a result. We strip the flesh from the bones of integrity so that we may dominate over the skeletal, wasted remains of society, and in our predation, arrive at destinations at which we have neither reason nor desire to be. We only seem to realize these things when they are presented to us as reflections of ourselves, mirrored in the eyes and hearts of those from whom integrity has not fled, or whom we regard as superior, not because they are socially elite, but because their tenacity to basic human virtue remains. The second question IS this reflection, and if it requires an answer, the answer will always be the fragility of human conscience. By making decisions in our lives with human conscience as the most important consideration, we most reliably assure that there is not, and will not be, a difference between the person we are and the person we would like to be -- not because we fail to perceive a difference, but because we know in our hearts that they are the same.

A friend of mine said to me, "It is easy to stand upon principle when principle is all that remains for one to stand upon." Her point was that, because I am no longer faced with a barrage of daily challenges to my ethics (I'm pretty sheltered), I am placed in a position to unfairly judge the actions of others. We must not judge others, though, as that is very certainly the pathway to hypocrisy. However, if we believe that someone has acted unethically or without conscience, we must not allow it to pass without remark. This is not meant as judgment, but is designed to raise the question in that person's mind as to whether they have followed their own conscience in their actions, and allow them to judge themselves. If, by this mechanism, that person later scruples over a decision of ethics, then humanity has benefitted. Unethical actions persist in our society because we allow them to persist. Every time we turn a blind eye, we signify our acceptance, give a stronger foothold to unethical behavior, and encourage those who act without conscience. Denying them this victory is one of the most difficult challenges to human conscience, as it is usually accompanied by tremendous personal sacrifice.