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My Cane
 Two
years ago, after foot surgery, I
started walking with a cane. The ankle has healed, but I’ve kept the
cane. I like it. It helps my balance, it’s funny, and it strengthens my
faith.
 In
this allegedly Darwinian world, where
life is a ruthless competition for survival, my cane is magic. It causes young
people, fitter than I am for physical existence, to call me “sir”
and hold doors and show me a respect I’ve never enjoyed before.
Nobody ever told me a stick of wood could exert such spiritual power. I think
I’ll keep it.
Admit
it, you atheists: the sight of an old geezer with a cane brings out something
sweet in you that, according to Darwin, can’t be there. The truth is
that love for others is a profound instinct, a powerful atavism so to speak,
harder to resist than hate.
Of
course we all want to survive. But we want just as strongly for others to
survive too. Darwinism can’t explain the environmentalist movement
(though I think it’s misguided). Nor can it explain why we write wills
giving all we can to those who outlive us. Nor the Bill Gates foundation. Nor
the sacrifices of parents who give their lives for their children. Nor the
willingness of some people to suffer so that other people won’t kill
unborn children. Nor nuns and priests who consecrate themselves to God in
lives of charity and chastity (the pay isn’t all that good). Nor a
hundred other forms of altruism.
Altruism sticks in the craws of the reductionists who think man
is, and ought to be, selfish. Ayn Rand tried in vain to persuade us that Moses
and Jesus were wrong, that altruism is bad, and that selfishness is a virtue.
She failed to make much of a dent in the popularity of St. Francis of Assisi.
Frustrating, isn’t it? We’re all selfish by nature, but
we’re so sheepish about it that we reserve our most fervent
admiration for people like the man who, without even stopping to think,
throws himself in front of an onrushing subway train to save the life of a
total stranger. If, rationally speaking, he’s a fool, nobody says so; or
even thinks so.
Animals may do that sort of thing for their own young, but not
for other animals they’ve never met. The altruism of cows, for
example, is pretty narrowly circumscribed, and bulls leave even more to be
desired. Samuel Johnson once observed that if a bull could talk, it might say,
“Here I am with this cow and this grass; what being could enjoy better
felicity?” Touché.
![[Breaker quote for My Cane: A brief meditation]](2007breakers/070515.gif) Man
is separated from the beasts by the faculty
of reason, of course — the point the old philosophers used to harp on;
but I prefer to stress his capacity for praise and appreciation, disinterested
joy in things outside himself. A boy in love doesn’t just desire the girl;
he may not even desire her at all. He simply marvels that so lovely a
creature can exist, as he may marvel at Mozart’s music or
Shakespeare’s poetry, things that offer nothing beyond themselves
to desire.
As I
write these words, I’m listening to a stunning recording: Laurence
Olivier reading the Psalms in the King James translation. They tempt me to
superlatives, of course, but the real point is that I can’t think of, or
even imagine, anything comparable in the animal kingdom. There are no
analogies. Bulls don’t praise cows, let alone their Creator.
Explaining the phenomenon of praise is a real challenge for the
Darwinian; it doesn’t appear to confer any particular advantage in
that ruthless struggle for survival we’re always hearing about.
I can
understand why atheists think religion does a lot of evil, because sometimes
it surely does. But they never explain why man wastes so much time and
energy in activities they insist are pointless and have no biological utility. If
we found all the cattle in the pasture dancing and mooing in unison,
wouldn’t we be curious about why they were behaving in this
extraordinary fashion?
I
suppose killing your own children makes some sort of sense from an
atheistic and Darwinian point of view. If survival is a ruthless competition,
your kids are your competitors, right? No wonder Darwin’s legions are
in favor of this “choice.” It accords perfectly, methinks, with
Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness.”
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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