What I Call Victory

One reason I prefer to tell the truth is that I do not want to carry a lie.

A lie can give me work long after the conversation has ended. I must remember what I said, to whom I said it, and which parts of the world must now be kept apart so that the masquerade remains intact. A second conversation may require further revision. An innocent question may become something against which I must prepare.

I dislike this debt upon my attention. I would rather deal with what happened than maintain a separate account of what I have claimed happened.

Someone observing this preference might call me honest.

He would not necessarily be wrong. But he might imagine that he had seen something in me which he had not yet established. He would have observed my conduct. But he would not have been privy to the whole of my reasoning.

Perhaps I told the truth because I believed he deserved it. Perhaps I told it because I wished to remain someone whose word could be trusted. Perhaps I simply did not want the labour of lying.

The answer he received could have been the same in every case.

What, then, should become of his judgement when he discovers that my honesty served me also?

Should the truth become less useful to him? Should he wish that I had suffered more in the giving of it?

I find the same question waiting in other ordinary parts of life.

I may be polite because unnecessary conflict consumes time and attention that I would rather spend elsewhere. I may keep my promises because I value the trust that allows people to deal with me without suspicion. I may refuse to take what belongs to another because I do not wish to live among people who consider possession an invitation to wrongdoing.

I need not feel affection for every stranger in order to recognise the advantages of living among people who leave one another reasonably safe. Having recognised those advantages, I can accept the restraints that make them possible.

There is self-interest in this.

But where, precisely, does the presence of self-interest diminish the moral value of the conduct?

Consider a man who lives this way for seventy years. He honours his commitments, treats people fairly, refrains from unnecessary cruelty, and tells the truth. He does these things partly because he likes the life they make possible. He prefers trust to suspicion, peace to quarrels, and the company of people who are pleased rather than afraid to see him.

He also prefers himself when he behaves this way.

At the end of his life, someone discovers that much of his decency was supported by these preferences. He was not continually sacrificing himself upon an altar of goodness. He had arranged his life so that what he wanted and what others reasonably needed from him were seldom enemies.

Must we now revise seventy years of conduct into a fraud?

I recognise enough of myself in that man to take the question seriously.

Not because I wish to excuse him. Because I am uncertain what, in this account, requires an excuse.

What I hoped to gain, what I intended to do, what I actually did, and what followed are different things. They may support one another. They may also come apart.

I can sincerely try to help and make a situation worse. My intention matters when considering how I acted, but it does not repair what I damaged. I must still ask whether I listened, whether I understood enough to intervene, and whether the harm was something I should have anticipated.

I can also act from vanity and nevertheless provide something useful. The vanity does not disappear because the result was welcome. Neither does the benefit disappear because vanity helped produce it.

Neither my motives nor my results can be asked to tell the whole story.

Yet I am not persuaded that good conduct must begin in a place untouched by personal interest before it can possess moral value.

Suppose I refuse to betray a friend because I could not respect myself afterwards.

There is plainly something personal in that refusal. I am protecting a relationship with myself. But what has made betrayal a threat to that relationship?

I have accepted that another person’s trust places a claim upon my conduct. I have decided that certain advantages are not worth what I must become to obtain them. Money, convenience, or approval might be available, but they do not settle the matter merely by being desirable.

I have not stopped wanting things.

I have decided that some things are no longer available to me as victories.

This differs from refusing to steal because someone is watching.

When the witness leaves, the second man must calculate again. But when becoming a thief is itself something I count as a loss, then the absence of witnesses does not remove my reason for restraint.

There is still an interest at work. It has simply ceased to depend entirely upon what other people can reward or punish.

Perhaps some of what I call selfishness is only the fact that my values matter to me. That is not the same as believing that nothing beyond me matters.

If I call every chosen act selfish merely because the choosing was mine, I have made a definition rather than a discovery. If every satisfaction I receive from doing good is admitted as evidence that I did it for the satisfaction, then goodness becomes something only misery can prove.

There is a difference between wanting another person to be well and wanting the pleasure of being congratulated for helping him. The two desires may accompany one another, but they are not identical.

Nor does receiving satisfaction prove that satisfaction was all I sought.

When someone I love becomes happier, I may become happier also. I do not see why either happiness must be treated as evidence against the other. Their welfare can matter to me directly, while also making my own life better.

I need not prove that all goodness is disguised selfishness.

It is enough to question why goodness should be disqualified whenever it also serves the person practising it.

Indeed, what am I trying to accomplish when I work upon my character?

Surely part of the work is to bring what I want into better agreement with what I have judged worth doing. I do not wish to spend the remainder of my life requiring a great act of conquest every time I ought to keep my word. I would rather become someone for whom keeping it is ordinary.

There will still be difficult days. But I need not regret the days on which decent conduct has become easier.

It would be a strange discipline that became less worthy whenever it began to work. If goodness becomes less worthy as I learn to desire it, then the man who longs to be cruel and continually restrains himself must somehow be morally superior to the man who no longer desires cruelty and therefore has little need of restraint.

There is, however, a danger here.

I could make my own satisfaction the final judge and then call whatever preserves it a moral code. I could learn to admire my stubbornness, excuse my cruelty, and congratulate myself for remaining consistent. I could become very comfortable with myself while becoming increasingly difficult for everyone around me.

The mere possession of a code proves little. Its contents must also be examined.

Nor is public approval enough. I might be praised for conduct that deserves correction. Agreement between my conscience and an audience does not settle what happened to the person upon whom I acted.

My self-respect must therefore remain answerable to something beyond my ability to feel it.

I must look at the people affected by my decisions. I must allow their experience to disturb my own account of myself. When I call something helpful, they must be permitted to tell me that it was not. When I call something fair, I must be willing to examine whose burden I have omitted.

If I give assistance and later use it to demand obedience, I cannot count the assistance while leaving the demand out of the reckoning. If I tell the truth in order to humiliate, the accuracy of my words does not make the humiliation irrelevant.

What I wanted matters because it may reveal something my description of the good act has concealed.

And when I have caused harm, preserving the belief that I am a good man must not become more important than responding to the person I harmed.

A moral code that permits me to correct everyone except myself is not doing the work I require of it.

This is where intention retains its importance.

It can help reveal what sustains my conduct, what might cause it to change, and what I am asking another person to endure beneath an agreeable surface. Help offered to establish control cannot be judged only on the good it did.

There are also relationships in which the motive is part of what we value. I want more from a friend than a reliable exchange of useful services. I want him to care whether I am well. I would not regard affection and its careful imitation as the same thing merely because they had produced the same pleasant afternoon.

But I need not demand affection from everyone.

The stranger who deals fairly with me need not love me. His fairness can be enough for the business before us. I can value an honest answer without requiring it to emerge from a heart entirely free of convenience, habit, pride, or personal benefit.

I can also be grateful for what someone has done without pretending that gratitude has given me complete knowledge of who he is.

These are different judgements. I need not force them into one word.

And I must be equally careful with myself.

Choosing integrity does not make every other loss imaginary. I may lose money by refusing an advantage. I may lose an opportunity by keeping faith. I may do what I believe is right and receive no reward that pays the rent or makes the disappointment easier.

Calling something a moral victory does not place the money back in my hand.

It simply means that money was not the only thing I was unwilling to lose.

I do not need to pretend that decent conduct always profits me in every sense. I need only decide which interests I will permit to govern when my interests disagree.

My peace matters. So does whether I purchased it by leaving someone else to carry a burden that belonged to me. My reputation matters. So does whether preserving it requires another lie. My satisfaction matters. So does what I have done to obtain it.

The work is not completed by making goodness feel profitable. I must remain willing to examine what I have taught myself to find profitable, and to change it when the account is wrong.

Still, I see no reason to despise a well-formed preference merely because it belongs to me.

If honesty spares me the labour of deceit, I need not manufacture a love of lying so that restraint will look more impressive. If keeping faith allows me to respect myself, I need not surrender that respect to make the act more generous. If kindness brings me pleasure, I need not become miserable before the kindness can be trusted.

The benefit I receive need not be stolen from the value of what I give.

So let me examine my motives without demanding that I disappear from them. Let me take satisfaction in decent conduct without treating satisfaction as proof that the conduct was decent. Let me welcome the places where my interests and another person’s welfare agree, and look carefully at what I do when they do not.

I need not settle, once and for all, whether I am a good man.

Perhaps “a good man” is the wrong unit of measurement. Yesterday’s honesty does not purchase tomorrow’s lie. A lifetime of restraint does not grant cruelty on credit. Whatever I have been until now, the next choice still arrives unpaid for.

And besides, I have more immediate work.

I can ask whether my word is becoming more reliable. Whether people are freer to speak honestly in my presence. Whether I can hear that I was wrong without making the speaker pay for telling me. Whether the rules by which I govern myself leave room for lives other than my own.

I will still have interests. I will still prefer some outcomes to others. And I will still want to win.

Let me then be careful what I teach myself to name as victory.

Fuistine vir bonus? Non semper.
Interdum crudelis, interdum violentus.
Sed tandem satis fuisti.

Were you a good man? Not always.
Sometimes cruel, sometimes violent.
But in the end, you were enough.

— Dr Stephen D. Jones

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