To Myself (I)

Everybody's busy lately! You'd think it was Christmas or something...one friend hasn't blogged in six weeks, another--who tends to be a thrice-a-week girl--has gone a near-unprecedented six days. I'm one to talk--five days slithered by while I wasn't looking, or, rather, while I was looking everywhere but at this computer. Various blog topics suggested themselves. The Pickton trial? Nah--too depressing. The one-year anniversary of Conservative government in Canada? Blah. People either don't care or they care entirely too much. Work? It's just work--boring if you don't work where I do, and, for that matter, twice as boring if you do. I think it's fair to say I've got a mild case of writer's block.
Enter Marcus Aurelius.
If you haven't read his Meditations (actually titled "To Himself"), do yourself a favour and get hold of them. They are available online in several translations, not all of them eminently readable to even a moderately educated person of today. (The Casuabon's not bad; the Long is tortuous.) Back in my monied days, I was briefly a Folio Society member and the Staniforth Meditations was probably the only book I don't regret buying from them. It repays repeat readings. Aurelius was, as far as I am concerned, obsessed with death and dying--the topic rarely leaves his thoughts for long--but when he's not discoursing on dissolution he comes up with many remarkable insights and prescriptions for right living. Opening three pages at random:

What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee. (VI: 54)

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. (VII: 38)

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. (X: 16)

And the Ex-Lax:

If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.

Man, I'm wrong a lot. Just ask anyone. From the trivially wrong (I predicted a Ducks-Predators Stanley Cup final this year, which would necessitate realignment of the league sometime between now and June) to the deeply, profoundly wrong (I repeatedly predicted the price of oil to continue on up into the stratosphere, but it's fallen thirty percent seemingly just to spite me), I routinely fudge things despite my best efforts and even the odd bit of cheatery. (" 'Do you Cheetah, my son?' 'Yes, I Cheetah all the time.' ") From consulting the blogs of other, deeper minds to holding off on predictions until they're almost realities, I've been known to indulge in a little sleight-of-word every now and again.
But I still get it wrong. Almost as often as I get it right.

It's my prejudice, of course, that steers me wrong most of the time. Like everyone, I'm biased; unlike many, I wear (most of) my biases proudly.
I'm biased against the stupid: blatantly smartist, I am. My closest friend, Jason Van Dyke, once observed "it's not elitist if you're part of the elite", a sentiment I've echoed more than once since.
So when kids die in traffic "accidents" (they persist in using the term, even though the vast majority aren't accidents at all), and it turns out they were (a) drinking and/or (b) not wearing seatbelts, I go all cold inside. I look at the grieving parents and wish I could feel some shred of sympathy for their stupid offspring. And I wince when I hear the word "tragic", so often paired with the word "accident". There's nothing tragic about a drunk driver killing his passengers: not if they knew he was drunk, anyway, and who doesn't? There is something very tragic when that same drunk driver runs over an innocent bystander, of course; someone "in the wrong place at the wrong time"--another phrase I hate. The innocent are never in the wrong place, much less at the wrong time. It's the criminal who is wrong, always, by definition, full stop.
Yes, I'm biased against the lawless, too. In fact, I'm a bastion of tolerance for idiots by comparison. It comes, I think, from lionizing my father the peace officer for my whole life: cop good, bad guy...bad.
But there are rogue cops.
And there are quite a few people--probably all of us, including the smartest--who do stupid things without realizing it, on occasion. Like me, for instance.
I was very nearly fired from one job for an extremely offensive comment I made to a female co-worker. I meant absolutely no offense when I said it, but after her slack-jawed outraged reaction I very quickly figured out that what I meant and what I said were two entirely different things. Since then--it only took one mis-step--I've been very careful with my tongue around absolutely everyone of the female gender. But the point is, I should have been careful that first time, and I wasn't.

My first dance with a woman who became, briefly, my fiancee, the song was Meat Loaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad". You know the one: I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you. Prophetic man, that Mr. Loaf. And yet I went out and bought her a ring, hoping to shut up the voice in my head telling me don't go out and buy her a ring.

Well I've gone and done it, so what are you gonna say now?

You're a horse's ass, is what I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna keep saying it until you agree with me.

Took about six months. Six months of stubborn stupidity.

Next girlfriend. Suffered from chronic depression, which was, of course, all her fault. I couldn't cope with that, it being, of course, All About Me. So I treated her like utter dirt, then wondered why she wouldn't take me back once I did come to my senses. The truth--'cause she's smart, and you're stupid'--never crossed my mind until much later.

And that's just one breed of idiocy I've been prone to. Fact is I have no right to hate the stupid, not when I myself am one of their number.

Criminals? I've often said that they're made, not born, and decried excuses like poverty and familial dysfunction. But I shouldn't be so quick to deny the truth, not when so many criminals are poor and do come from broken homes. You pair such social factors with today's media, which perversely glorifies criminality at every turn (check out YouTube for today's random assault!) and you can (or should) forgive these people: they know not what they do. Or don't care, at least, which amounts to the same.

Sometimes my biases are almost criminal in themselves.

How barbarous, to deny men the privilege of pursuing what they imagine to be their proper concerns and interests! Yet, in a sense, this is just what you are doing when you allow your indignation to rise at their wrongdoing; for after all, they are only following their own apparent concerns and interests. You say they are mistaken? Why then, tell them so, and explain it to them, instead of being indignant.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI: 28