Losing An Uncle, Gaining A Family

I'm not sure why it takes a death in the family to spur us to reconnect with loved ones we've lost track of, but that's what the last few days has been like for me. My beloved Uncle Stan died on Valentine's day and I traveled to his part of the country to attend the memorial service held in his honor last weekend.

Stan lived a long and interesting life and he was rich in the areas that count most, love and life experiences - as well as being well off materially. Like a star, his homestead attracted the nearby dwelling places of his natural and extended families. His own fascinating house commands an incredible view at the top of a low summit aptly named "Love's Hill". It's tempting to write about the cool cars he drove and raced, his pilot's license, his professional ascent to Chief of Medicine at the hospital where he worked, as well as the less auspicious but satisfying medical work he did at local schools and prisons. My dad says that his brother "Wanted to do everything, try everything." It's pretty clear from my life history that I inherited that part of the family's genetic sequence myself.

Whether it was the turbulent transition from the sixties to the seventies or personal transitions in their own lives, my father and uncle left the wives of their 20s and 30s at a similar time, stranding cousins and aunts from the regular contact that would have happened if it had not been so. We all went by nicknames back then. I was "Buddy" (Bernard II), Stan Jr. was "Chummy", and his brother John was "Johnny". My paternal grandparents were a hub of occasional re-uniting, and it was always fun to get together. Well fun for me anyway, I was the youngest of us three. I'm sure I was a bit of a pain in the butt to Chummy and Johnny, but it was the good kind of pain in the butt - they got back at me whenever we went outside and played catch. Guess who got to be the eternal and everlasting monkey in the middle? Good times.

And then the inevitable high school commencements and goings out into the world, some to college, some to the military. We were spread out all over the country. Every once in a while one of us would make an effort and re-establish contact. But like in the parable of the sower, "the cares of this world" took their toll and it would often be years before we would hear from one another.

So last weekend, I got the chance to hug the necks of some dear people I hadn't seen in a good long while, not just Chummy and Johnny and their mother, but Stan's second family and friends of the family as well. Miss Baltimore came with me (I had been visiting her for Valentine's weekend when I got the news) and it was a delight to introduce her to them and vice versa. It felt so good to be so connected again after all the years. I hope we all make the effort to keep in touch and visit from time to time.

The Questionable Value Of Loyalty

Loyalty. Even the sound of the word carries a certain gravitas. Loyalty is comfortably ensconced in a league with other golden virtues such as honor, dignity, and integrity. It is used as a final line of demarcation in character judgments. We've all heard variations on the line, "If there's one thing I will not tolerate, it is disloyalty." Loyalty seems to be the bedrock beneath society's most cherished arrangements: family, friendship, and patriotism.

I say this is all a bunch of nonsense.

Suppose you were going to try to do something really big and you needed the help of many other people to pull it off. You've got (basically) two powers of persuasion at your disposal to secure their cooperation: coercion or inspiration. For example, during the space race of the 50s and 60s, John F. Kennedy declared the goal of sending a man to the moon. America was inspired by this vision of scientific progress and made it happen with scant to none evidence of coercion. On the other hand, Kennedy's meddling in Vietnam (out of loyalty to a European ally) precipitated the military draft under President Johnson. Evidently, inspiration was not enough to secure the participation of enough of our citizens for that venture.

Loyalty is a form of moral coercion. It is a tool used by bullies to hoodwink those they perceive to be weak. Think back to your childhood days on the playground or in the neighborhood. Some older kid wants you to do something you know you don't want to do. And what does he or she say to you? "Aw, come on, you're not going to chicken out on me now are you?" So you do this thing that will get you grounded for two weeks because you're afraid of being thought of as a deficient friend. At least you were loyal and not a coward! But what do your parents say to you in these situations? "If he asked you to jump off a cliff, would you?" This is exactly the crux of the matter of loyalty being hogwash.

It is a healthy sign for an adult of the human species to be independent, ambitious, and self-reliant. Indeed, an important part of adolescence and young adulthood is experiencing peer pressure and learning to break free of its grasp. It is not that easy to consciously sever the cords of belonging that lay claim to our individuality. But sever them we must if we are to grow up. We open ourselves up to charges of being disloyal or of feeling superior to others. Yet, where do these charges originate? Why would anyone ever accuse another person of disloyalty?

The root cause is fear. Fear of scarcity. Scarcity of love, of friendship, of a sense of societal safety, of whatever it is that one wishes to have. If I feel that you, and you alone, have the thing I need, I will do whatever is in my power to persuade you to give it to me. (including coerce you) I have to - you've got what I need! If I feel that I can obtain what I want from any number of people, I'm more willing to let the law of averages play out by spreading my persuasive energy among more prospects. Upon discovering that everything I truly need - love, joy, peace, fulfillment - is available within myself, I am finally set free from the illusion that I ever have to coerce anybody for anything. Now I get to propose my intentions and discover, to my delight, that some people are inspired by what I have in mind. You've experienced both coercion and inspiration in your lifetime. To which of these do you respond better?

Do we really need coercive ties to bind us together? Is the cost of such arrangements worth the purported benefits? What would we call loyalty if it were based purely on heart-felt preference instead of duty or obligation?

This is probably enough to chew on for one blog column. It's worth considering the implications of so-called loyalty on religion, socio-economic class, politics, management/labor relations, marriage... oh dear, I've discovered yet another lack of scarcity!