bktheirregular (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bktheirregular) wrote2007-05-26 01:35 pm
bktheirregular) wrote2007-05-26 01:35 pm
Entry tags:
Questions of honor
More self-psychoanalysis.
Dug into a drawer looking for a shirt this morning, and what I came up with were a couple of T-shirts with the crest of my old ambulance corps on them. Now, there was a time when I would have worn that crest proudly; after all, it was the symbol of a volunteer outfit dedicated to helping people in need. Doesn't get much more honorable than that.
Except that underneath all that, it was fraught with petty politics. You know the joke that university politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small? Well, with a volunteer ambulance corps, it's just as bad, if not worse. Factionalism, back-biting, betrayals, it was like a soap opera behind the scenes. There were two major factions that boiled out.
Well, three, actually; I was part of the "plague on both your houses" faction. I didn't give a damn about who was running the squad, just so long as it was running okay, just so long as there were enough people around to get a rig out when the alarms sounded.
Right about the time I left, things went from bad to worse, and then to even worse. After I was gone, there were battles in courtrooms, between the squad and the town, lawsuits, and the threat of criminal prosecutions. And the people involved were absolutely convinced that there were only two sides to the conflict: either you were on one side, or you were on the other.
(Remarkably like reading the newspaper, actually.)
Anyway ... the squad lost. The organization I'd been part of was disbanded, wiped out of existence, and the town took the equipment left in the wreckage and formed a new organization around it. Nothing left of the corps the way it had once been.
Except for a couple of T-shirts in my shirt drawer, that I can't wear with good conscience again. Because the honor of the organization I was part of is gone, replaced by a shame I want no part of.
Matters of honor can be quite important, sometimes. It's a nebulous thing, different for everyone: a promise to someone or something you hold holy, someone or something that holds your allegiance, or even sometimes just a promise to the person in the mirror who stares at you while you're shaving (or applying makeup as the case may be).
It's why I feel compelled to stick out a job that's left me hanging on the edge of a precipice, half a world away. It's why I reject the advice that if I don't like the direction my nation's headed, then I can pack up and leave.
It's why I can't wear the crest of an organization that's collapsed in disgrace.
Does that make me insane?
Dug into a drawer looking for a shirt this morning, and what I came up with were a couple of T-shirts with the crest of my old ambulance corps on them. Now, there was a time when I would have worn that crest proudly; after all, it was the symbol of a volunteer outfit dedicated to helping people in need. Doesn't get much more honorable than that.
Except that underneath all that, it was fraught with petty politics. You know the joke that university politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small? Well, with a volunteer ambulance corps, it's just as bad, if not worse. Factionalism, back-biting, betrayals, it was like a soap opera behind the scenes. There were two major factions that boiled out.
Well, three, actually; I was part of the "plague on both your houses" faction. I didn't give a damn about who was running the squad, just so long as it was running okay, just so long as there were enough people around to get a rig out when the alarms sounded.
Right about the time I left, things went from bad to worse, and then to even worse. After I was gone, there were battles in courtrooms, between the squad and the town, lawsuits, and the threat of criminal prosecutions. And the people involved were absolutely convinced that there were only two sides to the conflict: either you were on one side, or you were on the other.
(Remarkably like reading the newspaper, actually.)
Anyway ... the squad lost. The organization I'd been part of was disbanded, wiped out of existence, and the town took the equipment left in the wreckage and formed a new organization around it. Nothing left of the corps the way it had once been.
Except for a couple of T-shirts in my shirt drawer, that I can't wear with good conscience again. Because the honor of the organization I was part of is gone, replaced by a shame I want no part of.
Matters of honor can be quite important, sometimes. It's a nebulous thing, different for everyone: a promise to someone or something you hold holy, someone or something that holds your allegiance, or even sometimes just a promise to the person in the mirror who stares at you while you're shaving (or applying makeup as the case may be).
It's why I feel compelled to stick out a job that's left me hanging on the edge of a precipice, half a world away. It's why I reject the advice that if I don't like the direction my nation's headed, then I can pack up and leave.
It's why I can't wear the crest of an organization that's collapsed in disgrace.
Does that make me insane?
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