I spent Labor Day Weekend with my in-laws in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. We spent our time out on the water enjoying each other’s company, celebrating a birthday, an engagement, and an anniversary.
My wife and I had a layover at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas on our way home. I have a habit of descending into a bad mood when I get on a plane and walk through the first class section, the implicit economic disparity displayed in microcosm fashion right in front of me. I reinforce this habit by noting the demographics as I walk through. On this flight, 16 out of the 18 first class travelers were white men and women 40 years old and over. The rest of the flight was approximately 50% white and 50% Hispanic, Asian, or black. Statistics lie, but they are often indicative of larger trends. Clear disparity. Instead of a bad mood I acquired a spiteful mood.
I arrived at my aisle seat to find an older woman sitting in the window seat with an empty seat between us. I asked her if anyone was sitting in the middle. She said, “no, and I’m hoping no one comes so my husband can move up with me.” Marriage is the unity of two souls, which means a couple should be together as much as possible. I promptly told her I would switch with her. Her husband had a window seat a few rows back. Sitting next to him was a 55 year old male in relaxed golf attire. I sat down next to him as he grumbled about getting up to let me in. I noticed that he was not travelling alone; he had three friends with him across the aisle. All were white males over 55 years old. I soon found out that they were very drunk; one of them was bragging about drinking an entire bottle of vodka before getting on the plane and cat calling the married flight attendant. As they discussed their gambling, excessive drinking, and sexual conquests (none had wedding rings on: not married or married with rings off? I do not know which) I sat reading a book.
The book, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, chronicles the life and work of Dr. Paul Farmer, the medical anthropologist and physician who splits his time between combating Tuberculosis (TB) in Haiti and Peru, teaching at Harvard Medical School, and working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, among other things. I was specifically reading about how he came down with Hepatitis A as a result of working to combat a vicious strain of TB, called Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR), in the slums of Lima, Peru.
I couldn’t help but compare the intoxicated philanderer to Dr. Farmer. Both were roughly the same age and ethnicity. The narcissistic seemingly amoral white male versus the selfless morally driven white male brought up a question: which one of them is the rule and which one of them is the exception? The answer lies on a spectrum. The black and white answer, if we split the spectrum in half and use the narcissistic philanderer as the ‘bad’ half representative, is that the narcissistic philanderer is the rule. Most people will probably say that this is a gross simplification. That may be the case, but children unnecessarily die every day, inequality reigns, and money buys power.
A black and white answer is often necessary to keep us from paralysis. The answer is that narcissistic philandering is the rule in our culture and selfless morality is the exception. Should we spend our free time helping others or spend it feeding our selfish amoral cravings?
Food for thought.