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July 29, 2010
Real Heroes: Jonathan Swift
Are Americans "stand up" people anymore?
We live in a consensus society and, if you are a lawyer, or some other kind of Western "professional", it's perhaps even worse. You get patted on the head for making your thoughts and actions risk-averse and business as usual.
Who really leads? Any lawyers? Which lawyers? When?
Anglo-Irish, Angry and Wild. And now add Clergyman and Satirist. A unique mix. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver's Travels, was truly wild, but maybe not quite as sick and strange as his contemporary critics thought; they saw him through the lens of the many illnesses that plagued his last decade and put him in a permanently bad mood. Certainly, he had no fair shake from any of us in the last century, when we all went nuts on Freud.
Sure, Swift could be abrasive. And hyper-aggressive. He made enemies, both literary and political. But he was influential. We still talk about and, when at our best, emulate the purity underneath his anger and sarcasm. He is of course the man who, in his pursuit of Irish causes, and fighting the alternating apathy and arrogance of the English, suggested that Ireland's poorest address their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich.
Those who knew Dean Swift were impressed that he put his ideas and notions of wrongs to be righted ahead of all of his many simultaneous careers. He put ideas and the plights of others ahead of his own comfort and popularity.
Big Moxie--it fueled Swift's desire for justice and his need to end the suffering of others--had a life-long hold on Swift.
So who's brave these days?
Are Americans "stand up" people anymore? We live in a consensus society and, if you are a lawyer, or some other kind of Western "professional", it's perhaps even worse.
You get patted on the head for making your thoughts and actions risk-averse and business as usual. It's safe that way. You don't lead. And you are actually rewarded for it in the short term.
Who apart from clever publicity hounds thinks on their own, acts, embraces unpopular but sound ideas about new practice models, and are not afraid of the consequences in our conservative, conformist and essentially tradition-for-tradition's sake calling? Pro bono work for the poor and disenfranchised?
Give me a break. What about the 24/7 primacy of the main event: everyday clients as a focus which never changes?
Who really leads? Which lawyers? When?
Posted by JD Hull at July 29, 2010 11:50 PM