On Having Thick Skin
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us — or a wise human being, even — and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we value other people’s opinions — instead of our own.” — Marcus Aurelius
I’m not a person with particularly thin skin. I’m not exactly a fan of being poked and prodded, and I try not to do that to others until I’ve established the sort of relationship where they know it’s loving, but I’m not sure I’d claim I’m a person with thick skin either. I surely don’t meet the Marcus Aurelius ideal of not caring what other people think.
I think I’m getting better though. I’m not like my 69-year-old dad who quite literally doesn’t care what other people think, but I’ve come a long way from the 14-year-old version of myself. I grew up in the Texas Panhandle and I played sports. Those are two places where giving someone a bit of hell is more of a test of what they can tolerate than it is an insult.
But, man, do we not live in that sort of a world anymore. It’s pretty often you have an instinct to say something that will be viewed as lacking in political correctness, or you have to staple your mouth shut because you aren’t aware of what the reaction will be to something you want to say.
These realities are only exasperated in my case. I don’t believe anything outrageous, but I do believe in the truths of Christianity and lean conservative. (Which in 2019 are considered outrageous stances.)
In all reality anyone who knows me could probably attest that I’m fairly moderate, probably more libertarian than anything else, and I don’t think that conversations about the metaphysics of Christ’s resurrection should get in the way of Christianity’s practical utility. As Nassim Taleb would say, Christianity is Lindy. (Here’s a great article on Christianity from a Taleb train of thought.)
But I also don’t view the western world as the creation of patriarchal and tyrannical white men, and then through that lens make the radical claim that because of that fact we should do away with the laws, precedents, and customs that they didn’t even fully come up with. (Some of their influences were Jewish, Greek, and Roman traditions. But people don’t know that, because what’s the point of reading the history when another documentary about deconstructing the west is on Netflix?)
Even in a post I wrote about George Washington I was told that any positive aspect of his character doesn’t matter because he was also complicit in wrong. And that’s a fair point, the part about doing wrong, but all in all the opinion lacks nuance. People can do egregious things and still have other redeemable characteristics. People are indeed that complicated. The lack of nuance in that opinion for the sake of outrage is astounding.
There aren’t many people who read my writing, but I’m sure if there were, someone would decide not to take the moderate approach in their reading of this post and instead find a way to explain to me why the west is indeed evil and I need to change my historical lens. (Hopefully they at least read the last sentence to realize what they did and didn’t just skip to the comment section.)
Our political climate seems to only continue to move toward echo chambers and lack of nuance. To praise, accept, or even worse, be happy with any of the traditions or inherited values of the west is apparently an abomination. One that I’m supposedly complicit it. (Even though the undefined alternative doesn’t exist.)
So, I guess for now and until the west regains its sanity, the goal is to be like Cato the Younger, falling on the sword and staying true to conviction.
