great many people think nowadays, especially among the student population, that is pretty nearly impossible for persons to degrade themselves by engaging in a form of behavior given that they voluntarily chose to do so and know what they are getting themselves into.  And if one should add that money—especially a lot of money—is being earned, then this pretty much clinches the view, among many, that self-degradation is not taking place. 

This way of thinking constitutes a marked shift from the way in which people thought just a few decades ago.  People might have disagreed over what constituted self-degradation but just about everyone thought that such a thing could happen. 

To be degraded is to no longer be able to value oneself properly.  A person who is comfortable with others spitting upon him for instance has been degraded.  Self-degradation, then, would mean doing things of one’s own accord that bring it about that one no longer values oneself properly. 

Now, we should probably distinguish between a single instance of degrading or self-degrading behavior and the regular performance of such behavior over time.  The reason for this distinction is that there is fundamental difference between doing something on a single occasion and becoming accustomed to doing it.  To take a crude example: It is very unlikely that if I carry a bowl of feces about for one hour on a single occasion that I am going to become accustomed to doing so.  All sorts of things associated with doing so are still likely to bother me even after I have completed the hour.  The stench comes readily to mind as something that would continue to bother me.  But if day after day after day I carry feces about for an hour or so, it is very likely that the stench will bother much less. 

This is important because from the fact that a single instance of some form of behavior is not degrading, it does not follow at all that repeated instances of the behavior will not be degrading thereby resulting in the individual failing to value herself or himself properly.  For repeated instances typically dull our sensibilities. 

Suppose I let myself be spit upon for money.  Good money, as we say.  I will be the first to admit that a single instance of this for an hour for, say, 15 million dollars will hardly be degrading.  But suppose that the deal is that I must let myself be repeatedly spit upon every day for an entire year in order to gain the 15 million dollars.  I do not think that anyone can suffer this for an entire year and not have his moral personality profoundly damaged. 

Now, if the folks of yesteryear accorded way too much weight to a single instance, it must be said that persons nowadays accord way too little weight to repeated instances.  If this is right, then even in the throes of modernity the idea of self-degrading behavior still has substance.  There are things that people can do over time that undermine their ability to value themselves properly.  And money does not provide any immunity in this regard.

Some things should repulse us, then, because they are the sorts of things we should never want to become comfortable doing precisely because that would be our undoing in terms of our valuing ourselves properly.  And the truth is that no one can say that she or he is completely immune to such a thing.  

In my course, Ethics and Value Theory, we discussed the idea of “facials” in pornography.  As I have always said, this simply cannot be something that anyone naturally wants, any more than it can be said that a person naturally wants someone to spit upon her or him.  Many in my class, though, had very much of a laissez-faire attitude regarding the matter. 

However, if my remarks regarding repeated behavior are sound, then a person who subjects herself or himself repeatedly to “facials” is doing something that is self-degrading.  One acquires the habit of subordinating oneself to others in this way.  And there is absolutely nothing about this habit that is in keeping with having self-respect.  Whether or not pornography is necessarily self-degrading, surely there are aspects of it that are—a truth which is not diffused by the fact that the folks are being paid. 

We might make a similar point regarding degrading attire.  I, as much as the next individual, like to see an attractive looking person.  And we all know that the right attire can marvelously accentuate a body.  But the loss of modesty is about being numb to the fact that we are systematically presenting ourselves as none other than a sex object.  Presenting ourselves in a very attractive way is one thing; merely appealing to prurient interests is quite another.

Again, it is unlikely that moral numbness will occur as a result of a single instance of wearing clothes so revealing that nothing is left to the imagination.  But there is no way to do that regularly and not have moral numbness set in.  One might think that I only have women in mind.  Not so, however.  I think that it is equally possible for a man to dress in a “slutty” manner.  Why, just the other day I saw a man on the metro wearing pants so tight that the only way could not have seen that shape of his entire penis is if one were blind.  Just about everyone was made a little uncomfortable.  A set of parents, with children, moved to another car.  The man seemed utterly oblivious. 

In public, this man had been essentially reduced to the outline of his penis and he was completely indifferent to it.  I maintain that he was suffering from a considerable measure of moral self-degradation.  That no one was harmed is quite irrelevant.  For that truth does not change the fact that he failed to value himself properly.  I can imagine that the first time he so dressed himself he did so for the shock value that this would have.  No doubt he succeeded very well in doing that.  Judging from his behavior, however, not even having shock-value any longer served as an explanation for his attire.  That is how numb he had become.

This brings me to the symbolic significance of things.  As I have already said, a single instance of horrendous behavior will not in most cases result in any form of degradation.  But we should never lose sight of the wherewithal of various forms of behavior to do so when they are done repeatedly. 

If this is right, then we might be able to recast the thinking of old-timers in a more favorable light.  They perhaps understood that a single instance of this or that rarely degraded a person.  However, they were rather clear that repeated forms of such behavior would.  As a kind of moral barrier, then, symbolic significance was attached to not behaving in certain ways—a kind social road map, perhaps.  This, I believe, was a very good thing.  Not because I less value liberty less than others, but because for most of us it is not possible to live well in the absence of initial and solid guidance from those who have gone on before us. 

Thus, the future does not bode-well for humankind precisely because we have convinced ourselves that we can do it all on the spot; accordingly, we have become increasingly blind to our own moral vulnerabilities.  Alas, self-respect and its concomitant absence of self-degradation is becoming a rather precious commodity.  And guess what: it is a commodity that money cannot buy. 

any, but by no means all, feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it oppresses women.  Well, this strikes me as way too quick.  Surely, it is not the nature of pornography that it oppresses women.  The irrefutable proof that pornography does not by its very nature oppress women is the existence of gay porn.  Whatever else can be said, gay porn does not oppress women.  Is it the character of straight porn that it oppresses women?  Well, that depends on what goes on.  Obviously snuff films and the like are out on quite morally despicable grounds. 

However, the quite distinguished feminist, Catherine MacKinnon, argues that no self-respecting woman would choose to be in porn, no matter what kind it is.  This seems way too strong for the following rather simple reason: If sex by its very nature does not oppress women, then surely it must be possible for there to be pornographic films that do not do so.  It would be just silly to say that no self-respecting woman enjoys sex.  So it is not clear to me why it has to follow, as MacKinnon thinks it does, that no self-respecting woman would voluntarily make pornographic films in order to make money. 

Again, if men can want sex without love, it seems—well—downright sexist to insist that a woman has no self-respect if she, too, is interested in sex without love.

To be sure, we might all agree that sex without love renders sex utterly banal or, in any case, far less rich than it could be.  But it is not clear from this truth why self-respect is an issue.  And it is certainly not clear why it is only women and not men who lack self-respect if they should opt for sex without love in order to make money, as MacKinnon seems to think. 

No doubt MacKinnon’s fundamental point is that heterosexual pornography caters to primarily a male audience.  That seems rather incontrovertible.  In fact, it is arguable that although women enjoy sex they do not relate to it in quite the way that men do.  So we have an asymmetry here.  But does it follow from this that pornography by its very nature is sexist or that it is incompatible with a woman having self-respect? 

Now, it is certainly true that decent parents would surely not recommend pornography as a career-choice for their daughter.  But as far as I can tell the same holds true for sons.  When parents think about how they want their children to succeed in life, doing pornographic films is rarely what they entertain as even a remote possibility—a fallback career choice, if you will. 

Roughly the same thing holds for dates and marriages.  No one has ever said to me “I want you to meet my romantic partner who, as it happens, does pornographic films”.  When parents think of their children getting married, whether we are talking about a daughter or a son, the porno star is not even on the list of plausible candidates. 

I suppose that the man might have a slight advantage here in terms of overall reputation.  But the advantage seems to be so slender that it can hardly make for the kind of differentiation between women and men that feminists like MacKinnon attribute to pornography.  To hear them tell it, pornography utterly degrades women while leaving men totally unscathed.

There is certainly no equivalent in English for the word “slut” that applies to women; and some might think of a woman in pornography as a “slut”.  Yet, what is manifestly not the case is that we think of a male porno star as some kind of stud.  Notwithstanding the lack of a derisive term, male porno stars are not ideals towards which people generally aspire.   

Now, there is the issue of bodily stereotypes; and at first thought it might seem that surely women are affected here whereas men are not.  Alas, one would be quite wrong.  There are all sorts of men who worry about penis size just as there are women who worry about breast size.  Bigger breasts or a larger penis is the promise of so much of the SPAM that I get.  The reason why feminists miss this is that in general men do not talking about the penis in the way that women talk about breasts.  No doubt part of this has to do with the fact that the latter are ostensible whereas the former is not. 

Now, why would anyone choose porn?  It seems to me that the question presents itself with equal force for both women and men.  MacKinnon may be right that there has never been a good reason for a woman to go into porn.  However, it seems to me that this is no less true for a man, as well.  Surely, celebrity status ain’t it.  John Homes achieved a certain notoriety as did Marilyn Chambers and Linda Lovelace.  But most do not.  And while both of these women may be known for their breast size, it is also the case Holmes is known for his penis size.  All three were objectified. 

I am not about to argue that pornography is a good thing.  Rather, my point has been the simple one, namely that it seems quite false that by its very nature pornography targets the self-respect of women more so than men.  Has there been pornography that is utterly degrading to women but not men.  I am sure that there has been and that there continues to be such stuff out there.  But such stuff is not definitive of pornography as such.  Thus, such stuff cannot be countenanced by feminists as definitive of the very character of pornography.

Now, feminists have made the damning assertion that there is a link between pornography and such morally atrocious behavior as rape.  I have yet to see a sound demonstration of that link.  On any given semester that I talk about pornography, it is clear that most males in my class have seen a flick or two.  Yet, I have seen no reason whatsoever to believe that most of them would commit an act rape. 

Do rapists watch pornography?  I have no idea.  But the issue is not whether rapists watch pornography, but does pornography cause men to rape.  And that requires showing that a man who had no intentions whatsoever of raping a woman would be moved to do so as a result of watching a porn film or at least enough of them. 

It is unquestionably true that the social conception of women that once prevailed often resulted in the “No” on the part of women not being taken seriously by women.  But this social conception is surely independent of pornography since this unjust conception of women predated films.  Many sexist attitudes stem from an era that preceeded porno films by decades, if not centuries.

In an article that appeared in the New York Times Review of Books, Ronald Dworkin claimed that pornography has little redeeming social value.  Alas, that can be said of lots of things.  And, in any case, insofar as the point is true, it is no less true for men than it is for women. 

But now why exactly is it that I would not want my daughter or son to choose pornography for a career?  That is a topic for a different essay.

Most striking thing about love is that it is demanding.  And precisely because love can be demanding, it can be a source of great creativity.  As to the first point, it follows from the fact that to love another person is at the very least to take delight in that individual’s flourishing.  But to flourish is not just to do anything that comes along.  To flourish is to exhibit excellence in various ways.  And if everything counts as an excellence, then the very idea of an excellence has become eviscerated.  So to love another is to take delight in that person’s excelling at an excellence—as opposed to excelling at being lazy or sloppy or inconsiderate.  One can indeed excel at these things.  But surely they are not excellences. 

But love at its best is not just about taking delight in the fact that another is flourishing, it is about participating in another’s flourishing.  Needless to say, there is a multitude of ways in which we can contribute to another’s flourishing.  Therein lies the creative of love. 

It is silly in just about every conceivable way to think that there is only way to contribute to another’s flourishing.  What works masterfully for one, may be a disaster for another.  One person may need a running commentary.  Another may need only to know that he could get a commentary if he wanted one.  The one person makes inquiries all the time; whereas the other may make inquiries only upon occasion.  Yet, each is ever so grateful that when he made his inquiry you were there.  One needs encouragement; the other needs directions.  One needs a demonstration of how things should proceed at every turn; the other just wants to be able ask for instructions when things seem to get out of hand.

I sometimes think that we often do not let ourselves achieve the creativity that accords with our love.  Some of this, of course, is owing to the force of accumulated wisdom.  But wisdom is not oppressive.  It is always instructive.  And wisdom that ignores new forms of complexity is not that at all. 

Love at its best, I have said, is taking delight in contributing to the excellence of another.  It is not just about spending time with another; for that is easy enough to do.  It is about spending time with another that nourishes. 

On my view, this is one of the ways in which we know that we are the object of another’s love.  For it turns out time and time again that our spending time with that person is nourishing.  Sometimes, we can easily identify the forms of nourishment even in their most nascent form.  Sometimes, the nourishment takes a form that leaves us in awe.  In either case, the nourishment is ever so constant over time.

I used to wonder why we do not have different words for covering the different forms of love.  In particular, I use to wonder why isn’t there a word specifically for parental love and a word specifically for romantic love and a word specifically for the love of friendship?  I do not wonder that any more.  This is because in all of these instances what love has in common is indeed far more significant than the differences.  In all of these instances: love nourishes through mutual trust. 

Take nourishment through mutual trust out of romantic love and what one has left would not much inspire a comic book much less novel after novel. 

Take nourishment through mutual trust out of friendship and what one has left are two people who hang out together owing to mutual interests rather than mutual nourishment.

The parent child relationship would to be one where nourishment through mutual trust is absent.  Perhaps at the outset, yes.  But I suggest that things quickly change.  We more easily miss this precisely because children less able to articulate their feelings of being ill-at lease and vulnerable.  An adult is apt to say “You seem more interested in your car than in me or more interested in being at the bar than being with me”.  A child is not likely to be able to articulate similar concerns. 

But on my view, the child does show these concerns through her or his behavior.  And a well-loved child nourishes back in a way that a neglected child does not.  So we get reciprocity after all.  It just takes a different form.  But then as I remarked at the outset: Love is creative. 

We can put it quite simply: pockets of unarticulated pain are an impediment to feelings of warmth towards another.  This is true with any adult.  We are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise when it comes to children.  They are merely at a disadvantage when it comes to giving a rich articulation to their pain, whereas this is not so for the typical adult.  A beautifully responsive child has a most salubrious effect upon the parent child relationship. 

So as I have said: At the center of love is mutual nourishment through trust. 

I can imagine someone pointing out that romantic love without sex ceases to be romantic love.  I can concede this point.  For all, I need is the simple truth that trust through mutual nourishment is the cornerstone of romantic love upon which sexual expression builds its lodging.  Take away the trust through mutual nourishment and the sex act itself takes on a radically different character.   This is why hooking-up can never be virtuous; for the very nature of the beast is that it precludes the possibility of mutual nourishment through trust. 

We do not need another word for love to cover each of the three cases mentioned.  They are each fundamentally and unmistakably different in their own right.  Any confusion comes, not from the lack of a word specific to each form, but from being morally warped in various ways in the first place. 

On the one hand, I never had a moment’s confusion across these three categories.  On the other, my soul has been wondrously enriched owing to the trust and nourishment that occurs across each category.  In turn, love nourishes the hope that reason alone cannot grasp. 

Blaise Pascal remarked that ”La cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (The heart has its own reasons which reason cannot grasp).  Indeed, nothing occasions the hope of a better life, and the wherewithal to hope in the face of despair, like love itself.  That would be impossible were love not creative.

evenge may be sweet, but it is almost always costly—so costly in fact that, from a strictly cost benefit analysis, a person is very rarely better off on account of having sought and obtained revenge.  Indeed, it is often the case that persons make themselves worse-off in seeking revenge.  To be sure, there is much to be said for showing that one has fortitude and courage, and that one is willing to stand up for oneself.  But revenge is not exactly about doing these things.  Quite the contrary, it is often about using one’s resources in order to inflict a harm upon a person on account of the harm that one takes the person to have committed against one’s own person (or a member of one’s clan/community).  Let’s call this classical revenge.

The desire to want to inflict upon someone who has harmed us is perhaps natural enough.  The issue is whether acting upon it is rational.  My view is that classical revenge is rarely if ever rational.  And it is interesting that something that is so irrational can be so satisfying to folks.

My motto is very simple: “Don't get even.  Get ahead”.  In truth, I suggest that the sweetest revenge lies not in harming another but in getting ahead.  For there is no better evidence that one’s soul and spirit have not been vanquished than that one succeeds notwithstanding the damage that someone has done to one.  After all, if I hurt myself in order to hurt you, then what we end up with is two people who are hurt.  And the person whom I have harmed in the name of seeking revenge might very well say “Yea, he got me but look what it took for him to do that; things are pretty much awash for him now !” 

By contrast, if in the face of the harm you inflicted upon me, I nonetheless move ahead, then I have rather masterfully eviscerated the potency of your intended harm.  Why, I have barely left you with anything at all to boast about, as my very success evaporates the proof, as it were, of the harm that you inflicted.  Nothing makes the claim that someone has harmed another seem so utterly incredulous than that person who is said to have been harmed is flourishing mightily. 

Classical revenge, on the other hand, often leaves the first party with something to boast about even if the second party has, in the name of revenge, inflicted a harm and is now suffering on account of doing so.  For the first party can say “Yea, he got me but look what I did to him”.  And this, needless to say, takes away some of the glow, if you will, from one’s revenge.

So, as I have said, while the classical view of revenge has an initial appeal to it, owing to the ever so reasonable desire to harm someone that has harmed one, it turns out that acting on the desire is considerably less than optimal from a rational point of view.

In common parlance, classical revenge is often tied to having a sense of self-respect—and so of not being willing to put up with certain things.  There is much to be said for this mindset.  Indeed, it in fact seems to me that people put up with more things than they should. 

We should certainly not let people abuse and exploit us.  That said, classical revenge still seems to have things wrong.  If John has harmed me and rather than using my resources to harm him I advance myself—so much so that people cannot even imagine that he had actually harmed me—in what possible sense can it be said that I have put up with up with or accepting the fact that he has harmed me?  And why do I have to squander my resources harm John in order for it to be true that I am not putting up with or accepting his having harmed?

But in terms of revenge: What could be sweeter than doing so well that John’s claim to having harmed me simply has no credibility at all in the eyes of anyone?  This is revenge that upstages the person.  And I maintain that revenge that upstages is preferable any day—and on all accounts—to classical revenge.  As for underwriting one's self-respect: surely upstaging-revenge does wonders in this regard.

At first glance, classical revenge has the advantage of coming across as a direct response to the harm that one has done.  Classical revenge is indeed a sign that the person did get one’s attention.  It is proof par excellence that person had caused one pain.  But in the end upstaging-revenge is still so very much sweeter.  This is because in no time at all it becomes clear to the person that harmed one that he was, as it were, morally impotent, which is tantamount to nagging him from the inside out.  And when one’s continued success so disembowels his claim to having harmed one that the claim simply has no credibility, then one’s revenge is surely sweet if only because there is nothing else left for the person to but acknowledge one’s own successes.  And that, needless to say, is the last position in the world that he wanted to be in.

“Don’t Get Even.  Get Ahead”.  This is what rationality counsels.  Significantly, it does so without requiring us to ignore the reality that there is indeed something very satisfying about getting even.  This is because getting ahead is invariably the best way to get even, which points to another truth in life, namely that it is so often the case that how we go about doing something matters enormously. 

Squandering precious resources in order to get revenge is just plain silly.  Fortunately, no such thing is required of us provided that we are willing to exercise foresight and self-command.  The exercise of these two virtues together allows us to extract revenge will keeping our resources for ourselves.  If that is not a matter of having our cake and eating, too, then I do not know what is. 

ome of the most horrendous form of cruelty that I have both witnessed and experienced, short of brutal physical cruelty, can be properly characterized as black-on-black cruelty.  The viciousness that blacks can display towards one another over the issue of being “black” may have no parallel in social interaction.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that black-on-black viciousness can rival racism itself.  Only a fool would think that racism no longer exists.  I do not think that.  Indeed, there is no one I know who thinks that, although we no doubt differ as to its extensiveness and character. 

The thesis that black-on-black cruelty sometimes rivals racism itself hardly diminishes the reality of racism.  For evil is not impoverished.  One form of evil rarely precludes other forms. 

If racism, broadly speaking, can be characterized as the view that blacks are intellectual inferior, black-on-black cruelty is the view that a black person had better more importance to being black than she or he does to anything else.  And this a black had better do otherwise she or he will be ostracized and made the object of any number of fulsome characterizations.  Outright character assassination is perfectly acceptable. 

Sometimes, it seems to me that people are more interested what I shall black-grandstanding than substance itself.  Thus, a black who goes on and on and on and on about “the suffering of my people” can get more so-called respect blacks than the black who, without saying much of anything is working hard helping other black people to better themselves.

Two days ago, I was talking a black woman, call her Miriam—a bi-racial woman, in fact.  Just for the record, let me say that she did not choose to be bi-racial.  It turns out that she was born that way.  In a poignant conversation, Miriam spoke about how mean blacks have been to her—the utterly vicious name-calling to which she has been subjected.  “Zebra” was one of the examples that she gave. 

I have known Miriam for a number of years now; and every indication that I have is that she is a hard-working woman who enjoys life.  But her “fault” would seem to be that what matters to her first is not that a person is black, but that a person is decent. 

Surely, this is right.  On the one hand, there is nothing to be said for viciousness simply because its personification is by way of someone who is black.  On the other, there is everything to be said for a decent loyal friend, even if the friend should be the at the very opposite end of the color spectrum, given one’s own hue. 

Miriam will take decency any day over color.  And for a great many blacks that fact is a problem. 

As a professor at Syracuse University, one of the things that I find most striking is the number of black students who think that I favor white students over them.  By the behavior of some, one would think that I had office hours for “whites only”, that I gave my phone number to only the white students, and that tests were designed so that only white students would pass them. 

To the best of my knowledge here is what I do: I hold offices hours; and I will talk to any person who will make a visit during those office hours.

Judging from the behavior of some blacks on campus, I am nothing other than an Uncle Tom.  This is someone who, by definition, thinks that he is inferior to whites and who delights in being subordinate to whites and who is more than willing to abandon his views in favor of theirs. 

Unless I am utterly delusional, it seems to me impossible to have even an inkling of an idea as to who I am and yet think that I am Uncle Tom.  I know very few people who are more strong-willed than I am and whose convictions are deeper than mine.  I am, if anything, I am the UCA: The Uncle Tom Antithesis.  And, once ore, unless I am utterly delusional, it seems to pretty clear that every white professor on this campus understands all too well that I live by my own terms.

This brings me back to black-on-black cruelty.  Far from being respected for my fierce independence, I am something of a pariah.  Why is that?  Because it is not just that whites exert little control over how I live my life, but guess what: it is no less true that blacks exert little control over how I live my life.

Black-on-black cruelty is about nothing at all if it isn’t about control.  The need for this control is borne of an irrational fear.  Anyone, black or white, can betray blacks or be indifferent to the plight of black suffering.  But it is just absurd to suppose that the only way to prevent such undesirable states of affairs is by having some incredibly rigid conception of blackness that flies in the face of reality. 

What is more, the strategy is counter-productive.  If hostility and vituperative behavior worked, then Miriam and I should have long since taken on the cloak of blackness that is insisted upon.  But nothing of the sort has happened, each of us proceeded with all the more determination to maintain our independence.  This each of us does—she with her husband and I with my friends—all the while being ever so mindful of the reality of racism. 

Black-on-black cruelty is rather like wanting and having a sycophant for a friend.  The hallow praise is effective only because one does not allow oneself to attend to it.  Sometimes in life we need instructive and alternative points of view upon which to reflect and in order to become energized.  The sycophant is too busy being servile to provide these benefits. 

In a like manner black-on-black cruelty is so busy stifling creativity among blacks that the black experience has become more or less stagnant.  And this truth is altogether compatible with the truth that we hope for a yet more perfect world with regard to matters of race. 

A final comment of from a different direction: It always amazes me when blacks talk about not being sufficiently concerned with issues of racism.  Miriam runs a kick-ass business in the Syracuse University area, catering to folks of every stripe and persuasion.  I have successfully attracted 400 students to my Ethics & Value Theory course semester after semester for more than a decade.  Between the two of us, we have probably disabused more people of their racist notions than all the diatribes about racism that black-on-black cruelty has produced in the name of “caring about my people”. 

Every now and then I ask: What is really wanted?  Is it to call people racist or live so as to command the respect of all?  The best evidence would suggest that black-on-black cruelty is much more about the former than it is about the latter. 

hese two capacities, Hope and Rationality are distinctively human.  They some times operate in tandem; they often operate at odds with one another.  By rationality here, I am not just referring to the ability to determine how to get from one end to another.  Even animals exhibit this ability to varying degrees.  Rather, by rationality I mean the wherewithal to access the acceptability of the ends that we pursue.  Only human beings can decide, say, whether it is worth making the sacrifice of owning a car in order to put a child through college.  By hope, I mean simply the belief that even the most improbable excellence can become a reality if one should only persist.  Erik Weihenmayer is a most marvelous illustration of hope: He is a blind man who climbed Mt Everest.

Already, then, it should be easy enough to see why rationality and hope are sometimes at odds with one another.  In one sense nothing could be more irrational than a blind person attempting to scale MT. Everest—the tallest mountain in the world.  In another, what an incredible triumph!  Again, surely there are better uses to which a blind person can put his determination and energy than climbing Mt. Everest.  Just so, there is no greater testimony to human strength than the accomplishment of an excellence that seems all but impossible given a person’s point of departure.

From a rational point of a view, an end can be judged as ever so worthwhile but ever so improbable to achieve.  And this is the part that I find most fascinating: If human beings only did those things—pursued those ends—which rational assessment deemed very likely to meet with success, there is a host of incredibly majestic things that never would have been done.  If human beings pursued only those ends of which, at the outset, it was imminently rational to think that they would succeed in accomplishing: well, humanity itself would be ever so impoverished.

On the one hand, we need to be rational.  On the other, a world in which hope did not animate us would be a world bereft of an excellence that perhaps not even the gods can know. 

But if this is right, then the question is this: In what sense, if any, can hope against all odds be even remotely rational?  In what sense, if any, could it have been rational for a blind man, Erik Weihenmayer, to set out to climb Mt. Everest?  To date, he remains the only blind man ever to do so. 

With astonishing success, the town of Le Chambon stood up against the military might of Hitler’s army, saving thousands of Jews from either death or the concentration camps.  But again, what on earth would have possessed a small town of unarmed folks to think such a thing even remotely plausible? 

In the midst of slavery, Frederick Douglass set out to become, and succeeded in becoming, a free man.  Very visibly black, and so passing for white was out of the question, what on earth possessed this man to think that he, unlike nearly all the blacks around him, could succeed in becoming a free black man? 

There is a very straight forward sense in which hope at this level would appear to flirt with irrationality itself. 

I do not have an extremely satisfactory answer to this question, but I do have an insight here that is somewhat informative.  In every case that I can think of where a person has magisterially beat the odds, it turns that the individual has two things (or like wise in general for a group of individuals working together): considerable self-knowledge and considerable self-discipline.  And the truth appears to be that these two things working together will more often than not beat blind chance. 

Notice what this implies.  First of all, it is one thing to have a hope, it is quite another to be disciplined in the pursuit of that hope.  Success rarely if ever comes to those who act impulsively.  Second, constant discipline over time requires considerable preparation: layers of preparation, if you will.  Invariably, the preparations even have preparations. 

Erik Weihenmayer did not just run out one day and start climbing Mt. Everest.  That would surely have been his undoing.  Likewise for Frederic Douglass who freed himself from slavery.  And the people of Le Chambon grasped that through acting in unison they had a power that none of them possessed acting alone.  They were religious folks simply being religious.  This is key to how they presented themselves.  They did not flaunt their opposition to Hitler.  But knowing how not to flaunt power requires no small measure of self-knowledge.  Not flaunting power speaks to the truth that one is often able to get away with lots of things if only one is not too ostentatious in one’s doing so.  People with power do not like being shown up.  Douglass reports that he learnt how to spell by challenging white people to a spelling contest, knowing full well that they would take delight in spelling a word that he could not spell.  What their gloating blinded them to is that they were teaching him how to spell.  Douglass counted on that blindness occasioned by the arrogance here. 

Beating the odds requires a level of self-knowledge and self-discipline that few have.  It often separates the ordinary from the extraordinary.  And it speaks to the point that talk is indeed cheap. 

If this is right, then we are in the position to say something that is relatively important, namely that whether some hopes are reasonable or not depends on who one is.  Most blind people do not have the fortitude to climb Mt. Everest; most black slaves did not have the self-discipline of a Frederic Douglass.  And so on. 

Hope at its best speaks to who we are.  And it is a simple truth of life that we do not all bring to life’s circumstances the same set of moral gifts.  In this respect, of course, life is unfair.  Hope at its best, however, entails bringing to the moment that level of self-knowledge and self-discipline that cancels out the unfairness of life itself—or at least so very much so more than not. 

This is why, then, that hope at its best inspires us.  It inspires us to be what have not been, namely to exercise those virtues of which we are capable but have found one excuse after another not to realize in our lives.

For the weary and the faint of heart; for the easily discouraged; the ones who can see pitfalls at every turn; and for those who have not the wisdom to turn a stumbling block into an advantage (pace Douglass, for example): Hope is not really for their lives.  For them hope is not particularly rational. 

Hope at its best requires that, in terms of self-knowledge and self-discipline, an individual can rise to the occasion.  For those who can, the most extraordinary hopes are imminently rational.