Chapter 4: Agency, Abuse It
and Lose It
At a best-of-state banquet in Salt
Lake City, Utah, popular radio and television personalities announced winners
in various categories to the hum of conversation and the clink of glass and
silverware. When the winner in the Arts and Entertainment category was
announced, scenes from the movie Forever
Strong appeared on two large screens. As the winner, Larry Gelwix, walked
to the podium an electric current sparked attention and the thousand or so
attendees stood and applauded with enthusiasm and respect.
Larry Gelwix owns a local travel
agency and hosts a travel talk show Saturdays on the radio. His radio persona
is friendly and unassuming and the travel tours he and his wife guide fill up quickly.
But these are not the reasons the audience gave him a standing ovation. Larry
Gelwix coached the Highland High School rugby team for thrity-three years.
Since 1975, he amassed three-hundred seventy-nine wins with only nine losses
and the movie Forever Strong is based
on actual events from his coaching career. Yes, the audience applauded his
impressive coaching record, but more importantly, they applauded Larry Gelwix
because he spent thirty-three years teaching his players how to actively avoid
longcuts. The virtues he taught—honesty, integrity, fair play, team play,
obeying the laws of the land and the rules of the game, no alcohol, no drugs,
no sex, no lying, no cheating, respect for parents, hard work, doing the right
thing even if no one is watching—he lives and to be on his team, his players do
too. His strong, ethical, courageous way of life gave his rugby team the
winning edge 97.6% of the time. Even in the 2.4% of the games the Highland
rugby team lost, they still won. Coach Gelwix lives the old maxim: “Winners
never cheat and cheaters never win.” His philosophy of life wins in the game of
rugby and in the game of life because he knows that anything illegal or immoral
is always a longcut. He teaches his student to cherish their agency and use it
for good.
Viktor Frankl, prisoner number 119,104,
was a young doctor and recently married when he, his wife, his parents and
brother were arrested in Vienna, Austria in 1942. He spent the next almost
three years in different concentration camps. His concentration camps became
contemplation camps, camps of service and opportunity. During this time of
great learning, he realized the meaningfulness of life. He wrote: “I understood
how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss.” He
discovered these fragmentary moments of bliss provided moments of peace,
beauty, and hope, giving him reason to live. He learned for himself that
“without suffering and death human life cannot be complete” (Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 106). He wrote
of this dawning thought: “We
stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along
the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us
and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet
supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind
did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man
marching next to me whispered suddenly: ‘If our wives could see us now! I do
hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to
us.’
“That brought thoughts of my own
wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots,
supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward,
nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife.
Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink
light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But
my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I
heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or
not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
“A
thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is
set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many
thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which
man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human
poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is
through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in
this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the
contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man
cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may
consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a
position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his
beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to
understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual
contemplation of an infinite glory...." Man's Search for
Meaning, Part One, "Experiences in a Concentration
Camp", Viktor Frankl, pages 56-57 in the Pocket Books edition; ISBN 978-0-671-02337-9).
During what could be termed, his
graduate school of experience as a prisoner, Dr. Frankl discovered there are
only two races of men: decent ones and unprincipled ones. These were to be
found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups. Following this line of thinking,
he once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on
the East coast of the US be
complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West coast” Man’s Search for Meaning, Part One, "Experiences in a
Concentration Camp", Viktor Frankl, p. 137). Dr. Frankl teaches us to
cherish the fact that there is a freedom that can never be taken from us and
begs us to be responsible and cherish and preserve that freedom, which is our
individual agency.
Viktor Frankl’s journey is similar
to C.S. Lewis’ journey, which is similar to my own journey. C.S Lewis was a
mighty intellect and an atheist. His journey to believe not only in God but in
Jesus Christ is detailed in his book The
Problem of Pain. It seems ironic that the reason there is pain in the world
converted an atheist to Christianity, but it did. Lewis became an atheist about
age fifteen. In later life when he looked back on his atheistic teen years he
said, he was “very angry with God for not existing” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/transcript/leap.html).
In those years he saw religion as a duty, a chore. He was mad at the God that
didn’t exist for allowing pain and suffering in the world. He said when he
finally had to admit to himself that God did exist, he came to Christianity
“kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a
chance to escape” (http://www.biographyonline.net/writers/cs-lewis.html).
My personal copy of The Problem of Pain is one of my
treasured possessions because of the underlinings and words I’ve written in the
margins. I, too, was troubled by the fact that there is pain in the world. I
couldn’t understand if God loved us, why He would allow His children, you and
me, to suffer to one degree or another every day, and why really bad things do
happen to really good people. As I read the book, I came to enjoy the
miraculous plan of a God who reveals Himself individual by individual and allows
them to experience pain and suffering as an invitation to come to know Him,
revere Him, and love Him. In the preface Lewis wrote: “I must add, too, that
the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by
suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was
never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my
readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage
helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage,
and the least tincture of the love of God more than all” (The Problem of Pain, 10).
One of his most profound insights
is: “We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of
[the] abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden
beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to
obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or
insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible,
and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the
principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thought would be
impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its
task when we attempted to frame them…. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering
which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find
that you have excluded life itself” (Lewis, 30-31).
He wrote: “What would really satisfy
us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it
matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father
in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say,
‘Like to see young people enjoying themselves whose plan for the universe was
simply that it might be truly said of the end of each day, a good time was had
by all’” (Lewis, 35). His conclusion about pain in the world is that man not God causes the pain.
Some of my favorite quotes are:
· “Pain
is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (83);
· Pain
“plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul” (85).
· “We
regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but
he hopes he’ll never have to use it.” (85).
· It
is a poor thing to come to God as a last resort. (86).
Dr.
Lewis confesses that he’d crawl through sewers to avoid pain and then explains
the why of the whole matter of pain
and suffering. He asked the question that I asked myself. Since God knows
everything, then He knows how I will react in every situation. So why put me
through pain and suffering so God can find out what He already knows? And
here’s the beautiful answer, which, no doubt, you came to long before I did.
God knows how I will react, what I will do, in every situation. But I don’t
know. The purpose of pain and suffering is for me to learn about me and then to
look heavenward, trusting Him. I remember a day I scribbled in my journal, “The
most terrible day of my life.” Gradually, gradually as the terribleness
unfolded, I realized it was actually a day of rescue that changed the course of
events in a positive way. I didn’t noticed the hand of God until a couple years
later. The benevolent grandfather in heaven I wanted would have hoped a good
time was had by all, but my Father in Heaven provided a needed change that began
with a gigantic jolt. The purpose, then, of my adversities is to teach me about
myself. And learn we must “for you will certainly carry out God’s purpose,
however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas
or like John.” (99) Dr. Lewis concluded by saying that we all have a duty to
leave the world better than we found it, and if we are no better because of the
pain we experience, it is our loss. (See The
Problem of Pain, 109-110). He understood that agency, “free will” as he
calls it, blossoms as we make right choices.
In the New Testament, Jesus Christ
asks the question: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul” (Matthew 16:26)? Do you choose to be honest because you feel it is the
right thing to do, or do high stake outcomes make dishonesty worthwhile,
tempting you to lie, cheat, or steal so that you can “gain the whole world?”
For several years the name Bernie Madoff (pronounced like
“made-off,” which is exactly what he did) has been in the news. Currently he is
serving a one hundred and fifty year sentence in a federal prison for
securities fraud. He may have perpetrated "the largest investment fraud in Wall Street
history," according to Joshua Brockman of National
Public Radio. In March of 2009,
after admitting to the Ponzi scheme wherein
he swindled thousands of investors out of almost sixty-five billion dollars, he
pled guilty to eleven felonies. Before he was caught, he lived lavishly, owning
three homes in New York, one in France, a mansion in Florida, several yachts,
had $45 million in securities, and $17 million in cash. That’s a very short
list of his total assets, all of which were auctioned off by the U.S.
government. It would be impossible to record or understand the effect his crimes
have had on individuals, families, businesses, and charities. Bernie said he
started his defrauding scheme in 1990, but federal authorities think he could
have begun in the 1980s. 60 Minutes reported,
“His investment operations may never have been legitimate.” Do you think he
start defrauding friends, family, and neighbors in the 1990s or 1980s? If the
truth is ever known, we will most likely find out he began lying, stealing, and
cheating as a child. Did he get away with taking penny candy from the corner
grocery store? Did he copy answers from a classmate in school? Ultimately, his
abuse of his agency sent him to prison where he will live for the rest of his
life with greatly restricted agency.
After
I had bought three or four copies of Forever
Strong, which won the 2008
Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award, I returned to the bookstore to buy
another copy. I went to the display but found just empty DVD cases with a note
that read: “DVD not inside. See clerk.” I had one of these empty DVD cases in
my hand when a clerk approached me and said: “I’ve got them under the counter. We’ve
had to secure them because we were losing about one per day to shoplifters.”
What would motivate a person to shoplift a movie about integrity? Parents who
look the other way when a child lies, steals, or cheats do them a great
disservice. Parents who figuratively “hold the child’s feet to the fire,” by
making them accountable for their actions, do them the greatest kindness.
Children need to be taught honesty. They need to know that if they lie and
cheat, their parents will find out, and they will be punished appropriately.
By the time Jan Hendrick
Schön was thirty-one, he was on the fast track to a Nobel Prize in physics. His
breakthrough research showed that organic (living) molecules could be used to
create an electric current, which would function like a transistor. For his
discovery of a one-molecule transistor, he received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank
Prize for Physics and the Braunschweig Prize in 2001. During that same year his
name was listed in scientific journals an average of every eight days. And in
2002, he accepted the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials
Research Society. It was said of him, “A blazing superstar of physics had been
launched” ("Organic Research Goes into Overdrive" Physics World,
January 2001, 9).
However, this
superstar soon sunk when a physicist from Princeton University noticed
that Schön used the same graph in two publications to illustrate two different
experiments. Once she notified the magazine editors of “their” mistake, the
house of cards that Schön built began to sway. The magazines contacted Schön.
He apologized for his “mistake,” but didn’t supply the “correct” information.
His employer at Bell Labs learned of the circumstances and began to
investigate. Four months later he was fired for "reckless disregard for
the sanctity of data in science." The prestigious Science,
Nature, and Physical Review Journals
withdrew papers he had written. His PhD from the University of Konstanz was
revoked. (See Eugenie Samuel Reich, “The
Rise and Fall of a Physics Fraudster,” Physics World, May 1, 2009.) The spokesman for the department of
physics called the Schön situation the "biggest fraud in physics in the
last 50 years" and said that the "credibility of science had been
brought into disrepute" (Wikipedia.com). An article written by Charles
Arthur was titled, “Scientist Tipped for Nobel Prize Sacked for Fiddling the
Figures.” Mr. Arthur wrote: “Some scientists thought Jan Hendrik Schön was
headed for the Nobel physics prize. Among the scores of papers he published in
just three years, in a field where only a handful annually count as productive,
was one saying that he had created a single-molecule transistor. It would allow
computers to shrink by factors of many thousands, and revolutionize our world”
(www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientist-tipped-for-nobel-prize-sacked-for-fiddling-the-figures-643915.html
).
Schön’s intellect is not in question; he has a brilliant
mind. So why did he think he could shortcut his way to fame and a Nobel Prize?
Was pressure to produce too intense? Was he fearful his career depended on it?
Was he too hurried, harried, and sloppy or was he truly on the verge of
changing the world? Was he egotistical and over-zealous or just a cheat, a
liar, and a perpetrator of fraud? In his defense he wrote: "I have
observed experimentally the various physical effects...such as the quantum Hall
effect [and] superconductivity in various materials...I believe that these
results will be reproduced in the future." Time will tell. But this we
know for certain: Jan Hendrick Schön’s fall from grace is a lesson that there
is no shortcut to fame, fortune and the Nobel Prize and definitely no shortcut
to noble deeds. Perhaps Dr. Schön would have been better off if he had spent
his high school years at Highland High playing rugby with Coach Gelwix or
college years playing basketball for Danny Miles at the Oregon Institute of
Technology. Comparing the legacies of Larry Gelwix, Viktor Frankl, C.S. Lewis,
Bernie Madoff, and Jan Hendrick Schön gives us an up close and personal look at
ways agency is used, abused, and lost.
To
avoid longcuts:
1. Take wisdom and counsel from those who have walked
the road of life before you
2. Never believe you will be the exception to the laws
of nature
3. Know you will harvest what you sow
4. Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat
the same mistakes
5. Find
the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification
6. Develop
personal integrity and make moral decisions.
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