The Few and the Many

Beware of one of the Few for he has seen heaven and become as a god. So often history tells us he becomes so resilient, so truly human, he knows he is created in the divine image. Having achieved this self-image of absolute knowledge he must then disperse his Truth to those of the Many who are worthy of him so that they too may follow his path to resilience, even if they die in that effort, as many of those so driven do. So says the old man from his dotage in a faint whisper of response to the wisdom of the good Reverend Dr. Symeon Rodger in his website article, The Many and the Few on August 14, 2012, which you may read at http://globalresiliencesolutions.com/the-many-and-the-few. 

The old man is incapable of such single-minded passion. He never has, could have or desired to achieve the dedication to become a RESILIENT person, who is defined in the Reverend’s article as “someone who is on the way to becoming a true human being, to exploring and living out the full potential of a being created in the divine image. [sic]… a warrior with great courage.”

The Few absolutely know the Truth and are so persuasive as Leaders, so strong as Teachers, the passion about the possibilities they see so inflames their souls that “you can’t talk to one of these people about their passion without coming away with some of that flame yourself… if, of course, they think you’re worthy to hear about it.” At least so says the Reverend Dr. Symeon Rodger in his article. To help us recognize the Few (and they are many indeed throughout history) Dr. Rodger describes them as beyond self-interest, principled, demanding brutal honesty and truth and described by the cowards (the many) who surround them as disruptive, “loose cannons”, dangerous and inconvenient. He includes in this number Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela “and many others”. One could add to the “good” side of that ledger such people as the Bhudda, Socrates, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism and even ancient Confucius, though he is one of my favourites because  he, like the old man, and perhaps even a little like Mahatma Gandhi, was unsure about the nature of the “divine image”. There could be many more among the Few on the debit side of that ledger who were equally persuaded of their Truth and determined to die for it, including Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and Osama bin Laden perhaps, though I doubt any of them would be chosen for Dr. Rodger’s list because they are not “beyond self interest” though they would have denied that.

A closer look at Mahatma Gandhi, the only example Dr. Rodger gives a few extra lines in his article, indicates that Gandhi certainly did not begin as the saint he was considered by most Indians and much of the world after his story became known. He was very slight in stature, very dependant on his parents and wealthy older brother and a devout follower of the Hindu holy books. In his twenties he tried to follow the teachings but could do so only by considering them allegory rather than history and rationally substituting non-violence to suit his belief for the right to kill the Gita taught. When he studied law at the Inner Temple and London University from the age of 18 to age 21 to become an attorney at law he tried very hard to become an English gentleman of fashion on the funding his brother provided for him in London while also looking after Gandhi’s child bride and his children financially in India. Gandhi’s father had been a state prime minister so the claim of no “social standing” in the article cannot be correct because Gandhi seems to have had an open sesame at all social levels in India, England and South Africa. That was so both before and after his voluntary assumption of personal poverty, so the force of his personality is evident, whatever his beginning. Apparently it was while on a case in South Africa at about age 24 that Gandhi had a sort of re-birth when he was thrown off a first class train coach for which he had a valid ticket and refused to move to third class, then sat up all night feeling resentful and sorry for himself. Apparently he spent the next 20 years in Africa fighting legally and politically for the rights of Indians in South Africa to be considered something other than coloured labourers. Those are just a few snippets from the 1950 biography by Louis Fischer, which includes on the back cover Gandhi’s own late in life statement, “People describe me as a saint trying to be a politician but the truth is the other way around.”

In retrospect how well did Gandhi do in his return to the simple life activism of non-violence in his fight for Indian independence? He was shot dead by an assassin on January 30, 1948, a wasted figure of 79, while fasting and conducting his daily public prayer meeting for peace among the warring factions in the divided India his efforts had wrought. He was surrounded by crowds of those who worshiped him as the father of their country. The Mahatma’s followers of the Congress Party, by virtue of his saintliness, effectively became the ruling party of the country and his successor family, cohorts and hangers-on became more political than saintly.

The sub-continent’s divisions persist, have worsened and become ever more violent. Machinery, or technology, which Gandhi decried as tools of the powerful few to ride on the backs of the millions, has become the principle reason for being of India’s millions and their diaspora. The Mahatma’s dreams of non-violence and village simplicity as a country’s way of life have been dashed to disaster in western notions of “Progress” in the so-called global village.

So it has been with nearly all our “good” examples of the Few. Even during their respective lifetimes, including beggarly rabbis like Jesus, the Buddha and Confucius, the Few suffered converts and rivals who tried to replace them or kill them, or varied their simple creeds into complex and rigid belief systems dividing into ever more sects and hierarchies. Thus the work of the Few has proceeded through the millennia to often violently pursue their separate and exclusive destiny in the Land of Infinity.

Christianity is a prime example. The original Jewish group of disciples was totally pre-empted by the Saul of Tarsus who had previously persecuted them after an allegorical conversion on the road to Damascus. As Paul the Apostle he effectively converted the simple message of Jesus, the itinerant rabbi, to a tool of Empire. There has been little peace ever since.

So the old man, with no genetic or self-taught leadership qualities, chooses to remain one of the Many, to seek his own truth in each day, to repent when in error and to defend and publish his choice when called upon in as kind and inoffensive a way as possible without being too much of a coward.

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