Value for value

All healthy human relationships are based in trade, value for value.

The beggar has nothing to trade. He capitalizes on your acceptance of the altruist code and guilts you into sacrificing your possessions. The thief has no desire to trade. He too capitalizes on the altruist code when at gunpoint he forces you to sacrifice your possession.

The altruist code creates beggars and thieves. Incompetence and immorality are excused by the altruist for whom love is unconditional.

When I encounter someone for the first time, my eyes and ears are turned on and my mind is open. I am always hopeful that I am meeting a future friend. I expect they are thinking the same thing. I listen carefully. I make judgments about them. I expect they are judging me as well.

Sometimes I know immediately: “There’s no future here,” or “I really like this person,” or “I could really learn a lot from this person,” or “This person is a jackass!” or a hundred other things. But, I am conscious of the fact that a mutual evaluation is going on every time I encounter anyone new.

The bible says “judge not!” to which I reply, “huh?” How am I to know who is friend and who is foe? How do I sift through the multitude to discover my friends if I am forbidden to judge? Am I immoral if I refuse to suffer fools?

Weeks ago I sat at the corner bar drinking a beer pretending to watch Nascar when a local man of about sixty sat down next to me and ordered a sandwich. He was very friendly and introduced himself immediately. His name was Don. He asked how the race was going, and I replied that I was only pretending to watch, that I’m not much of a racing fan. He had the good sense to change the subject—to football—so I thought for a moment there was some hope here. [I prefer a good conversation with a stranger to pretending to watch Nascar in silence.] Don was a Titans fan. I explained to him that I had lived the first 40 years of my life in Miami, Florida, and that I was a die-hard Dolphin fan. Don knew quite a bit about my home town. A retired construction super, he had worked some contracts down in Miami after Hurricane Andrew in ‘92. We were sharing our hurricane stories when his sandwich arrived. Don was irreverent and very funny. He laughed a lot, before, during, and after taking huge bites out of his sandwich. It was pretty disgusting to watch…mayo gluing little bits of lettuce all over his face, in his beard and mustache…but funny. Don displayed the kind of indifference to his personal appearance that shows up in young people only when they are very drunk. He wasn’t drunk. Nor was he completely oblivious to the room around him. Our conversation had shifted back to football when I expressed my condolences to Don and the Titans for losing Pac Man Jones for the season. Don set his sandwich down, scanned the bar to his left and right, and then broke into a racist monologue that if I were tasked to attach a headline would read: “Niggers got no sense.”

The “Jackass” light on his forehead flashed as he spoke reminding me that he would be wrapping up his stupidity momentarily, and I’d be expected to respond. What do I say to somebody like this?

Should I smile and say nothing…Change the subject and continue our conversation? Maybe I should try to educate him…explain the whole 60’s thing…how people no longer judge other people by the color of their skin. Should I become enraged like Steve Martin in The Jerk and shout “I’m a nigger!” and start a huge bar fight?

What would you do?

The problem with the first option is that silence is often misunderstood as sanction. I will not sanction fools. The problem with the other options is that they require me to sacrifice time and energy to someone with whom I share no values. I will not suffer fools.

In the end I said, “excuse me,” walked to the men’s room and then out the back door.