A Deed's Punishment
No good deed goes unpunished. Clare Booth Luce
Educated collegiately in the state of Connecticut as I was, I know a good bit about Clare. She served as a Congressional rep for that state -- ironically, perhaps, since she was famously conservative and Connecticut has been more liberal historically than she was personally. That said, she was a formidable woman, a virulent "anti-Communist," and quite before her time concerning her personal life (she was divorced before it was conscionable, and it did not derail her career as a journalist or politically) and her career in general.
Clare has the pleasure of saying what may be the phrase I repeat more often than any other. I may utter these words regarding "good deeds" many times in a single day. Perhaps because I often (1) commit good deeds, or make the attempt, only to regret it, or (2) talk myself out of good deeds because I know they will go unnoticed, unappreciated, or be the means to make me regret what I've done.
I will never understand the motivations (or lack thereof) of mankind. For example: we claim to care about a cause, vigorously waving a banner of that cause, feeling noble and righteous in the waving of said flag, and then turn and gainsay and backtrack and cause consternation and trouble in the ranks of that cause. Does the species pause to say -- ever -- "How is my behaviour helping this cause I love so much?"
No. Seems we don't ever collectively take that pause and think critically about ourselves. Cuz that kind of probing questioning of self would require some measure of self-awareness, and when has THAT ever been a common trait in our intellectual makeup? Oh, no, we are much better known for laying waste to things, leaving scorched earth and detritus in our wakes, making things political and about "turf" instead of just fighting a good fight or doing what's really best for the most, or what is consistently logical. We have created countless fables to encourage ourselves to do better than this, to "mind the logs in our own eyes before fussing with the mote in our neighbor's," and yet still ... we flail, we flog, we flagellate. We make messes instead of progress.
I've spent entirely too much time in the last year trying to figure out how to extricate myself from such misguided collaborations with the Clueless. It makes me wish I could better identify those who've done the work and figured out how to be Of Use instead of Of Useless. It's too often a guessing game, where I try to surmise a person's commitment or prowess based solely on manifested behaviours. It's never so easy as just being able to ask, "Do you have any damn idea what you are doing? Do you LISTEN to yourself? Do you ever bother to ask yourself if you even know why you are doing x, y, or z?"
For whatever reasons, thankfully I don't seem to need to be reminded too often of Why I'm Here, of why I care about a movement I get involved in (and how best to help it flourish), of why I like or dislike something or someone. Why don't people know themselves better? Why don't we do better as a species about seeing ourselves and how we interact with the world? Is it that hard to know ourselves? (I am certain that Pythagoras, and by extension Socrates, and a whole lineage of Delphic Oracles are rolling in their graves over the dearth of "knowing thyself.")
Perhaps the reason is ignoble, just simple, silly habit -- we just spend so much time blowing sunshine up everyone else's ass that we don't even notice when we start blowing it up our own.