First Unitarian Church

Portland, OR

March 7, 1999

PRELIMINARY PROVOCATION

from Robert Moulthrop, NYC -- The Sun (1996)

One balmy spring Saturday in New York City, I was sitting on the steps of a church on Fifth Avenue, basking in the sun, when I noticed a man in a wheelchair down on the sidewalk. He was sitting with his arms askew, legs dangling, head lolling back, eyes focused on nothing, a tin cup in his lap. Every so often a person would drop a coin or bill into the cup, and quickly move on. Now and then, when no one was nearby, the man's hand would jerk into the cup, grab the bills, and shove them into his pocket, while the rest of him remained completely inert.

He was shaved, dressed in a freshly laundered shirt and clean pants, hair neatly combed. I figured someone must have kept him clean, and set him out to earn his keep. (I was wrong.)

Suddenly, his attention focused on a woman walking down the sidewalk: Young, attractive, wearing a tight blouse, short skirt, high heels going click, click, click. The man lifted his head and took in everything about her. Then, when she was out of range, his eyes glazed over again and his head rolled back into position.

I walked down the steps, put a dollar into his cup, and said quietly, "She was really something." He abruptly looked me in the eye, raised his eyebrows, and made a sound I interpreted as "You bet."

He told me his name was Jim. From then on, I noticed him in that same place -- on the sidewalk in front of the church -- at least once a week. I came to think of it as "Jim's space."

One day, I asked if he wanted to get a drink, and he said yes. At five o'clock, I followed him as he pushed himself backward down the sidewalk with his deformed yet strong legs. We ordered drinks at an outdoor cafe frequented by off-duty bond traders. He asked me to pour his rum and Coke into a plastic cup with a straw, which he carried with him.

We talked about our families: my wife and kids in the suburbs; Jim's married brother in New Jersey. I had to listen carefully to decipher his speech, which was sometimes only hollow vowel sounds. I told him about my marketing job; he told me about his begging job.

"Why do you do it?" I asked.

He replied using the alphabet board in his lap to make sure I understood. Putting a finger on each letter, he spelled out: "I need the money."

As our friendship has grown, we've helped each other out in various ways. I've made phone calls for Jim -- to the doctor, the landlord, Medicaid -- helped him write a personal ad, and acted as middleman when he had someone arrested for harassing him. He's helped me through my divorce, counseled patience with my kids, taught me how to attract women, and most of all showed me how to be actively present, minute by minute, in the circumstances of my life.

If begging involves asking people for money, then Jim doesn't beg; he just sits in his chair on the sidewalk with his cup, letting people make of him what they will, being present for people who want or need to be reminded of their own good health, their arms' suppleness, their limbs' strength.

PRELIMINARY PROVOCATION (II)

from David Bumbaugh, Summit NJ

The fall from grace,

the great disruption

of primordial order,

the original sin

had nothing to do

with eating apples

or talking with snakes.

The instrument of our fall

was a wooden back-scratcher,

that piece of wood,

bent at the end

so one can reach the unreachable spot--

there, between the shoulder blades,

down just a little lower,

now up a little bit,

there where the most persistent itch

always takes up residence--

and find some precious relief.

Before the back-scratcher,

before that simple, infernal device,

we, like all our primate kin,

depended on others to do for us

what we could not do for ourselves:

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

Before the back-scratcher,

before that simple, infernal machine,

we needed each other

to scratch the unreachable itch.

With a back-scratcher

we needed no one;

now, no itch was unreachable.

The wooden back-scratcher

dissolved the bonds of reciprocity,

unraveled the ties of community

and tempted us to believe

in our own god-like self-sufficiency.

And God walked in the cool of the Garden,

and saw a primate standing alone.

"What have you done," God asked, "that you stand alone?"

"I have found a back-scratcher," said the beast,

"and now I need no one."

"Poor beast," said God, "now you must leave this garden;

in Eden, none stands alone:

all depend on each other."

And thus began our wandering,

walking up and down upon the earth,

trying to scratch our own itches,

pretending to self-sufficiency,

trying to ignore the persistent sense of loss,

the vague yearning for a primordial order,

a world where you scratched my back and I scratched yours.

Pity the beasts seduced by a piece of wood bent at the end.

A wooden back-scratcher is poor compensation

for the gentle touch of a living hand.

** REFLECTIONS **

Rabbi Wayne Dosick tells of a passenger who was waiting at O'Hare's busy airline ticket counter. The queue, she thought, had been moving exceptionally slowly, but finally she was next in line to see a ticket agent. Unfortunately, the party just in front of her had apparently already lost his patience, and he was yelling, grousing, running the hapless clerk up one side and down the other. He scolded her, berated the airline, threatened to call her supervisor, demanded complete satisfaction.

Finally, having drawn the attention of practically everyone within a twenty-yard radius, the customer finished his tirade, grabbed his ticket and huffed away from the counter -- a look of triumph spread across his ruddy features.

Heaving her luggage into the bay beside the counter, the closest witness to this spectacle looked up at the clerk and said, "I want to compliment you. That man was a real jerk. He wasn't just angry or frustrated, he was abusive. He really put you through the ringer, yet through it all you never lost control. You smiled, kept your voice low, tried to meet his needs. You really handled yourself like a saint!"

"Thank you, Ma'am," the clerk replied. I really appreciate your supportive words. But don't worry about me. It's all right. The situation is fine."

"But it's not all right," the passenger exclaimed. That man treated you like dirt. How can it be all right?"

The ticket clerk looked at the face of the stricken passenger, smiled sweetly and said: "It's all right because, you see, that man is going to Cleveland. But his luggage is going to Miami."

Now, I have no way of knowing whether this encounter really took place or whether Rabbi Dosick meant it to serve, like the parables of Jesus, as an apocryphal teaching story. Either way, it hardly comports with the ethical mandate of the Gospels. Not to return evil for evil, but to return good for evil -- that was and is a core principle of Christian morality. The point is driven home with exceptional force in the fifth chapter of Matthew:

 
You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles....

You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.... For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If there is any message in the Gospels that seems problematic, any moral tonic that even well-meaning people find hard to swallow, it undoubtedly is this one. To requite evil with good feels positively "unnatural." A more paradoxical, counter-intuitive approach to human conflict is hard to imagine. And that, of course, is precisely Jesus' point. He urges his followers to resist their natural impulses, to shake off the shackles of conventional, common-sense morality that prevent them from ascending to a higher level of being. If the principle of retributive justice is sufficient for civil servants, soldiers, tradesmen, and all who build up and maintain the kingdoms of this world, it is not good enough for those who are sworn to uphold the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus's demand in the Gospel of Matthew is unambiguous: any disciple of his must aspire to and strive for moral impeccability -- to be as perfect as the One God whom they worship. But that perfection was not to consist in slavish obedience to a catalogue of formal rules. According to Jesus, the morality of God supersedes all rules; or, more accurately, all particular edicts are to be subsumed under one universal principle: that human beings are to have unconditional regard for one another. "You are to love your enemies," Jesus admonished, "and pray for your persecutors."

I would not be honest if I didn't admit that I, too, struggle with a morality as uncompromising and idealistic as this one. Now, if this were an unprecedented principle, an ethical singularity unsupported by any other wisdom tradition, one might have sufficient grounds for dismissing it. Then we could assume that Jesus didn't really mean what he said, that this bit of purposeful exaggeration wasn't intended to be taken at face value.

There are correlatives, however.

 Those who beat you with fists,

Do not pay them in the same coin,

But go to their homes and kiss their feet.

This teaching is found in the Sikh tradition. Then too, The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most authoritative text in Mahayana Buddhism, offers an approving portrait of a gentle monk who never took umbrage at any offense. "Because he paid respect to and commended everybody", the Lotus Sutra says, "he was called 'Never Despise.'"

 
"Never Despise" did not devote himself to reading and reciting the sutras, but only to paying respect, so that when he saw...any disciple he would make a point to say, "I dare not slight you, because you are to become a Buddha." There were, of course, those who reviled and abused him, saying, "Where does this ignorant monk come from, who presumes to say, `I do not slight you,' and who predicts that we will become Buddhas?" Sometimes when he spoke in this way, they beat him with clubs, sticks, trash or stones. But when "Never Despise" had escaped their blows, from a safe distance he would still call to them, "I dare not slight you. You are all to become Buddhas."

To see everyone as a child of God, or as a potential Buddha and to honor them as such; to accord as much if not more value to others' lives as to one's own -- this may indeed represent the highest degree of moral consciousness of which a human being is capable. It is the standard recommended by Jesus, underscored by Adi Granth and the composer of the Lotus Sutra, re-confirmed in our own era by Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

And yet it is fair to question the utility of this teaching in the real world, and to ask whether it represents a substantial improvement over an axiom by which communities and cultures have ordered their affairs since the dawn of history. The Chinese word for this ancient moral concept is "shu" and Confucius commends it to us as the true basis for all harmonious relations. The term Socrates used -- "justice" -- meant pretty much the same thing. Justice, he said, involves giving to people their due" -- that which they truly deserve, in other words. The closest English equivalent is "reciprocity", and it is the principle the airline ticket clerk applied at the beginning of this discourse.

Although Jesus wasn't enamored of it, reciprocity has been the moral theory of choice for human communities almost as long as records have been kept. It is enshrined in the 4000 year-old Amoritic Code of Hammurabi, and from there found its way into Hebrew scripture. Although people today recall only the harsh, retributive elements of these codes -- "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" -- they dealt with rewards as well as punishments. Proper levels of compensation for services rendered and favors bestowed were established. These archaic legal codes attempted, in other words, to substitute equity for caprice in legal and ethical matters. In order to achieve a more stable social order, they institutionalized a "quid pro quo" system of exchange.

Such codes weren't altogether equitable, however. Relations between members of the aristocracy were mediated through reciprocity, but Hammurabi imposed an entirely different standard upon commoners. If one noble knocked out the tooth of another, the offender lost his tooth as well. But if a commoner experienced a similar injury, only a monetary fine was imposed. Ancient social critics like the Hebrew prophets Micah and Amos railed against such status-based distinctions, arguing that all citizens -- even the king -- should be subject to a single standard of justice.

Nevertheless, if we were to search for commonalities in diverse history of human moralities, this is one of the few constants we would come up with. As Matt Ridley points out in his book The Origins of Virtue, from Australia to equatorial Africa; from North America to the Middle East; from China to southern Chile people exchange presents of comparable value as a means of cultivating good will and cementing relationships. As a legal and moral concept, reciprocity is very old and very deep. A gift deserves a gift; a blow deserves a blow.

What we are discussing here may be more than an "idea". Reciprocity could very well qualify as a basic instinct -- a pre-ideational pattern of behavior. Recent research suggests that "quid pro quo" plays a significant role in the social life of certain monkey and ape species. The eminent primatologist Franz de Waal:

...the actions of our ancestors were guided by gratitude, obligation, retribution and indignation long before they developed enough language capacity for moral discourse.

Reciprocity, then, is obviously an older and more widespread code of behavior than the principle of unconditional altruism advocated by the Gospel writers. But is the latter superior to the former? Despite my admiration of Jesus and respect for what he taught, I would have to say "no."

An ethic of unconditional altruism suffers from two limitations. First, without any standard of accountability, goodness can and will be exploited. Aristotle recognized this, and emphasized the importance of mutuality in friendship -- which for him was the ideal human relationship. True friendship, Aristotle said, is never a one-way street. Parents and children may be able to co-exist despite the inequity of the relationship, but friends cannot. A friend who refuses to reciprocate is soon resented and summarily cast aside. As Phillip Hallie remarked, "You cannot be a friend of someone who is not a friend of yours" -- who does not respond appropriately to your own goodwill, in other words.

An ethic of unconditional altruism might well make sense for a superior being, one who does not need friends and who is not affected by abuse or exploitation. But in a world of ordinary human beings, it is best to maintain minimal rules of accountability and fair exchange.

And there is a second reason for preferring reciprocity over perfect altruism: it preserves honor and dignity. Once in a while people like to be "treated." We appreciate getting a gift, a favor, a compliment, a gratuity with no strings attached -- for which we need offer nothing in return. But what if life were like this all the time? For how many of us would this represent a perfect state of affairs? Initially, we might think we'd died and gone to heaven. Pretty soon, however, we would know we were in hell.

The principle of "quid pro quo" is so deeply ingrained in human beings that to be denied the opportunity to reciprocate can feel downright painful. Before long, we begin to feel guilty, undeserving, dissatisfied, superfluous. In her book Counting on Kindness, geriatric social worker Wendy Lustbader reports that she encounters this sadness all the time in nursing homes. Forced by their infirmities into the unfamiliar and unwanted pose of dependency, residents struggle to maintain their dignity. If they are surly toward their caregivers, often as not is it because they have lost the power to reciprocate. Mutuality -- the principle on which they had heretofore ordered their lives -- is no longer relevant, and this is morally offensive to many older people.

And not just to the elderly. Persons with severe disabilities, or who are mired in poverty, can be just as sensitive. The problem with unconditional altruism is that it is seldom as benign in delivery as it is in intent. "Give a man or woman a coin with a...self-congratulatory look on your face," Philip Hallie says, "and you are giving an insult as surely as you are giving money. There is way of helping people that fills their hands but breaks their hearts."

So is reciprocity a better, more workable approach to interpersonal ethics than altruism? Perhaps neither should be presented as an absolute, a perfect solution. What I would prefer -- and what research says works best -- is a system that combines the best of both strategies. A social scientist by the name of Robert Alexrod claims to have found that strategy, and he calls it "Tit for Tat."

Alexrod used a values clarification problem called "The Prisoner's dilemma" to test the efficacy of a number of ethical/behavioral theories. The "Prisoner's Dilemma" forces players to choose between selfish, altruistic and cooperative behaviors, in order to find an approach that works to both our own and the other players’ advantage. After he had performed computer simulations of dozens of different strategies, Axelrod identified "Tit for Tat" as the most successful by far. The premises are simple.

On the first move, cooperate completely. "Be nice; do the right thing," to the other player. On every subsequent move, do whatever your counterpart did on his previous move. Emulate his behavior, in other words. If he is nice, you are nice; if he begins to act mean, you act mean. However, as soon as he is nice again, you reenforce that behavior by responding in kind. On Axelrod's computer simulations, "Tit for Tat" routinely out-performed both the more purely selfish and the altruistic strategies.

In a way, I think "Tit for Tat" was what Jesus was really recommending to us, for here we have a moral strategy which requires accountability without sacrificing goodwill or precluding forgiveness. Applying "Tit for Tat", one always starts out assuming the best about the other party; his or her goodness and sense of fair play are credited. If our trust is betrayed, we give that other party a dose of their own medicine. However, we do not hold a grudge or try to seek vengeance. The moment offenders mend their ways, we again embrace them -- even as the father welcomed home his prodigal son in Jesus' most memorable parable.

We have to understand that Jesus lived in a society governed by rather rigid rules; one which offered little opportunity for grace or forgiveness. He was trying to tell his followers always to put the person ahead of the rule; to make flesh and blood human beings their first and highest consideration.

Reciprocity, quid pro quo, Tit for Tat -- whatever you care to call it, this ancient and venerable principle not only has survived the test of time, but the acid test of empirical analysis. Still, it should never be used mechanically, as a coldly objective management tool. It must be constantly tempered by mercy, endlessly qualified by forgiveness. It must always provide an opportunity for a traveler and his luggage to end up in the same place.

Copyright 1999, Rev. Dr. Michael Schuler. All rights reserved.