Years ago I happened to sit next to an archbishop in the Armenian Church on a plane from Seattle to Burbank. What started with me inquiring about the alphabet of the book he was reading turned into one of the more memorable conversations in my life.
It was one of those extended exchanges where you find yourself putting something together intellectually that resolves an almost spiritual discomfort. It was this: I told him I was not a Christian. I said I would rather face God as a non-believer and say I lived with integrity to a lack of faith than the other way around.
How could God desire anything other than integrity? If I do meet a Maker someday I hope that I have the courage to stand my ground in the face of a forbidding and incontrovertible rule book. The Archbishop was an extremely warm and generous man, but he did not or could not agree. On the way out of the plane, he turned to me and gave me a small cross he kept in his clothing. I'm guessing he kept a handful of them for exactly this kind of interaction.
I took it from him and thanked him genuinely - this after a pretty large fissure opened up between us on faith and integrity. And this is important. I disagreed with him in the chair and, in a fashion, agreed with him while filing out. Very different things mattered in each context.
You've written this essay so thoughtfully and with such care that I want your opinion on something if you have the time or are inclined to give it.
I don't know if I've made this up myself or borrowed it from somewhere, but there's an idea that character is what we choose when faced with conflicting values. If you are a writer of a story and you want to demonstrate something about a character's character - then force a decision between two values that are both resonant/valid but also in conflict with each other.
This is very much at odds with Solzhenitsyn's blanket - "never support lies!" This strikes me as a philosophical and dogmatic rigidity that looks at all choices as binary and in isolation from each other. There's something in the conservative temperament that's often hard here.
I can almost guarantee that there are times when "never support lies" for Solzhenitsyn himself would have come into conflict with an opposing value where "never support lies" lost out - on someone's death bed I'll use whatever pronoun somebody wants period full stop because not coming into conflict with someone's view of themselves and the world when they are leaving the world would be a higher value for me. In a courtroom a different value would win. I think you can establish my character, Solzhenitsyn's, your own based on this tension between values. One might not believe in God for example and still close your eyes for a prayer at the Thanksgiving table.
With the Archbishop when I was in my chair, I was ready to challenge his faith and his God, but when we were filing out I felt that the awkwardness of how he presented the small cross was a true act of kindness that I wanted to honor. So, I did. I'm consistent to my value system, even if my behaviors are not consistent to my emperor's clothing system. It forces me into a grey zone where I'm not consistent, but it also has - feels like - a more organic, nuanced relationship with my values: sometimes one value loses to another.
I think this nuance shows up with the other swimmers wanting the male swimmer to participate in the female competition. Some of this could be social fear, but some of it can be that it is genuinely more important to not shame someone in any way than to win an athletic competition. The parent of the swimmer and the coach might have exactly the same two values in play but come out emphatically on the opposite side.
Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find "telling the truth" to be secondary to another value? Or is this fairly black and white? What am I missing? What can you add? Subtract?
You've done your mental homework here and there is goodwill in your work (I've only read one other article, but you have my attention), and I'd love your thoughts. You are reasoned and insightful. I'm just finding the Solzhenytsin insistence on truth "off" somehow, rigid, missing something. That even the black and white Emperor's issues aren't so cleanly dispatched.
This is an extremely moving, and thought-provoking essay. You've covered a lot of very complex issues in this piece and raised some very important points. I certainly am not sure what the solution is, if there is one. I think it's going to take a lot of effort on a variety of fronts to change the tide. One such effort would be a series of very vigorous, high profile, high dollar lawsuits against the medical practitioners of these gratuitous surgeries.
Your opening point — that we have to stand up for what we think is right — is certainly true. However, for a variety of reasons, for some that's not possible. Those who can, should. And those others should support those who stand up. Thank you for this very interesting piece, Frederick
Years ago I happened to sit next to an archbishop in the Armenian Church on a plane from Seattle to Burbank. What started with me inquiring about the alphabet of the book he was reading turned into one of the more memorable conversations in my life.
It was one of those extended exchanges where you find yourself putting something together intellectually that resolves an almost spiritual discomfort. It was this: I told him I was not a Christian. I said I would rather face God as a non-believer and say I lived with integrity to a lack of faith than the other way around.
How could God desire anything other than integrity? If I do meet a Maker someday I hope that I have the courage to stand my ground in the face of a forbidding and incontrovertible rule book. The Archbishop was an extremely warm and generous man, but he did not or could not agree. On the way out of the plane, he turned to me and gave me a small cross he kept in his clothing. I'm guessing he kept a handful of them for exactly this kind of interaction.
I took it from him and thanked him genuinely - this after a pretty large fissure opened up between us on faith and integrity. And this is important. I disagreed with him in the chair and, in a fashion, agreed with him while filing out. Very different things mattered in each context.
You've written this essay so thoughtfully and with such care that I want your opinion on something if you have the time or are inclined to give it.
I don't know if I've made this up myself or borrowed it from somewhere, but there's an idea that character is what we choose when faced with conflicting values. If you are a writer of a story and you want to demonstrate something about a character's character - then force a decision between two values that are both resonant/valid but also in conflict with each other.
This is very much at odds with Solzhenitsyn's blanket - "never support lies!" This strikes me as a philosophical and dogmatic rigidity that looks at all choices as binary and in isolation from each other. There's something in the conservative temperament that's often hard here.
I can almost guarantee that there are times when "never support lies" for Solzhenitsyn himself would have come into conflict with an opposing value where "never support lies" lost out - on someone's death bed I'll use whatever pronoun somebody wants period full stop because not coming into conflict with someone's view of themselves and the world when they are leaving the world would be a higher value for me. In a courtroom a different value would win. I think you can establish my character, Solzhenitsyn's, your own based on this tension between values. One might not believe in God for example and still close your eyes for a prayer at the Thanksgiving table.
With the Archbishop when I was in my chair, I was ready to challenge his faith and his God, but when we were filing out I felt that the awkwardness of how he presented the small cross was a true act of kindness that I wanted to honor. So, I did. I'm consistent to my value system, even if my behaviors are not consistent to my emperor's clothing system. It forces me into a grey zone where I'm not consistent, but it also has - feels like - a more organic, nuanced relationship with my values: sometimes one value loses to another.
I think this nuance shows up with the other swimmers wanting the male swimmer to participate in the female competition. Some of this could be social fear, but some of it can be that it is genuinely more important to not shame someone in any way than to win an athletic competition. The parent of the swimmer and the coach might have exactly the same two values in play but come out emphatically on the opposite side.
Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find "telling the truth" to be secondary to another value? Or is this fairly black and white? What am I missing? What can you add? Subtract?
You've done your mental homework here and there is goodwill in your work (I've only read one other article, but you have my attention), and I'd love your thoughts. You are reasoned and insightful. I'm just finding the Solzhenytsin insistence on truth "off" somehow, rigid, missing something. That even the black and white Emperor's issues aren't so cleanly dispatched.
This is an extremely moving, and thought-provoking essay. You've covered a lot of very complex issues in this piece and raised some very important points. I certainly am not sure what the solution is, if there is one. I think it's going to take a lot of effort on a variety of fronts to change the tide. One such effort would be a series of very vigorous, high profile, high dollar lawsuits against the medical practitioners of these gratuitous surgeries.
Your opening point — that we have to stand up for what we think is right — is certainly true. However, for a variety of reasons, for some that's not possible. Those who can, should. And those others should support those who stand up. Thank you for this very interesting piece, Frederick