Pyrrhic Victories
[#20] 100-word story: How a moral compass get reversed
For those who care to count…this is 100-word story #20! Woo hoo!
Pyrrhic Victories
Twins Ram and Shyam’s father died, leaving them penniless young men. Ram worked hard, saved, bought a small business, which grew, creating many livelihoods.
Shyam fooled around, avoided work, continually asking Ram to bail him out. Finally Ram stopped helping Shyam.
Shyam entered politics. He asserted people like Ram were powerful, exploitative. He urged the village to pass laws to stymie their growth, redistribute their earnings. Village politicians, smelling potential windfall, agreed. The laws passed.
Slowly, many businesses moved out. Numerous jobs disappeared. Life got harder. Ambitious young people started leaving the village.
Shyam celebrated this victory for the powerless.
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reena | 11-21-2023
A thief enters a home and steals. He’s caught and brought before a judge. Instead of being contrite, the thief accuses the owner he stole from and the judge who’s about to read him his sentence of being all powerful. He claims he’s just a powerless victim.
A student refuses to put in work or ask for help. He does poorly at school. The professor awards him a failing grade. The student files a complaint claiming the professor has all the power, while he’s just a helpless victim.
…we routinely employ and confuse a power compass with a moral compass.
What should we do in such cases? Are those with less power always right, virtuous or ethically on higher ground? And should we abide by their demands simply because of their claim to victimhood?
I feel there’s a strange notion afoot in modern America where we routinely employ and confuse a power compass with a moral compass. We’re being exhorted to not judge the merits of a situation, or a person’s values, actions, motivations, but simply use their power status as a proxy for their virtue. In short powerful = evil, powerless = virtuous!
We do this, I think, because power of any kind can be corrupted and must be monitored. Similarly, it behooves us to pay attention to legitimate grievances of those with less power.
But my thought is that power alone is not a reliable metric.
For example, in a healthy society, criminals, fraudsters, murderers, terrorists are thankfully and ultimately powerless. A conflation of their powerlessness with virtue would lead to disastrous implications.
Such conflation can also lead to a culture of self-pity and an abdication of agency. Jonathan Haidt, in his seminal book The Coddling of the American Mind, shares alarming evidence for how this is already happening. And how social media exacerbates these neuroses.
I wrote a longer post about confusing neither inborn/ inherited talents nor victimhood with virtue, a while ago. You can read it here—
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Oh, this is good... this is real good 🫡
I'm not sure we confuse powerlessness with virtue. But people definitely confuse self-proclaimed victimhood with virtue and by extention, all who support them as virtuous. We also confuse victimhood with merit and this, I think, has far more reaching consequences for all of us, as people end up in places of power they didn't rightfully earn.