Aces and Eights

"An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness."

So wrote Elbert Hubbard more than a century ago, believing that loyalty - borne of trust - was a virtue that should be and would be rewarded to those who demonstrated it. Objectively, Hubbard was right - loyalty is one of many virtues that bind a society together, and historically "high trust" societies have been far more stable than "low trust" societies.

In The Last Centurion, which I am currently reading, John Ringo points out that American society is historically "high trust." More often than not, Americans tend to interact with strangers, people beyond the bounds of family, in a manner whereby they treat them fairly and expect to be treated fairly in return. So historically ingrained is this in our society, that Americans are often surprised at how uncommon such social behavior is worldwide.

A nineteenth century Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted this exceptional aspect of American society and wrote of it in his seminal Democracy in America. Of particular interest to de Tocqueville was the prevalence of what he called "voluntary associations," whereby citizens of a community would come together and provide help to those in need without being bound by familial or governmental obligation. A barn-raising, something which was a common feature of rural nineteenth-century American life, was one such example de Tocqueville cited. Nowhere else in in the world, in no other society, has such a feature existed.

Thus, American society has developed over the course of two centuries as a society in which there has been and continues to be a relatively high expectation of trust from amongst one's fellow citizens. I wonder, though, how long that will continue to be the case.

These days, true loyalty seems to be a rare commodity. Public and private institutions treat their employees as disposable commodities, marriage rates are declining, divorce rates are rising, dating increasingly resembles the navigating of a minefield, and the expectation of trustworthiness amongst our public officials is at at an all-time low. Such trends are socially corrosive - perhaps in a manner not readily visible in the short term, but definitely so in the long.

How long can the "high trust" nature of American society be expected to last if loyalty is not regularly reciprocated? If in fact, loyalty is regularly dismissed, as a quaint, foolish virtue and not rewarded, over time it will fade away as a widely adhered-to social more. It should be obvious why. One-way loyalty is a virtual Dead Man's Hand and ultimately an individual has to look out for his or her well-being first and foremost.

Academia is one such institution where loyalty is effectively dead and iniquities of many a type are rewarded. When faced with such a demoralizing truth, it is easy for any career academic to fall into despair. Some, like David Lodge, have addressed this dark side of the academy by way of satire and humor. My fellow blogger Moxie has previously mentioned that she is working on a book of her own mocking academia.

In American Senryu, James Day Hodgson had some wise words that come to mind:

The blackness of truth
Needs humor's illumination
To lighten one's life.

Truth is indeed dark, and feelings of despair and cynicism from its seekers are not uncommon. Humor can lighten the search for truth by not only inducing feelings of happiness, but also by providing an alternate path along which truth can be sought. Thus, one can be "lightened" not only by laughter, but also by having the journey toward truth made much more clear.