“As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It’s essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle to all.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.63
When people are missing what you might consider a basic human virtue, when they’re missing the internal guidance or compass to guide them toward doing what’s right and good, it’s not generally because they’ve intended to be like that. It’s usually against their will, like Marcus Aurelius said above.
Nobody intentionally says “I’d like to have only false ideas in my brain, and to be incapable of being kind to others please.” This isn’t something that people seek out. It generally happens to them, whether via chemical or genetic imbalance, or via poor upbringing and lack of love and guidance from their parents. They aren’t trying to come up short in any particular department (and usually it’s the opposite), they just do.
If these people could somehow objectively see where they were falling short, and they could clearly see the unequivocal truth and understand it as the truth, they would likely change course! However, it is not our role to help them ‘see the light’ or course-correct them, as we are each meant to be masters of our own domain.
An example from an unlikely source
Author Ryan Holiday references a quote from Jesus in today’s entry of The Daily Stoic, and it’s a good one. Regardless of your opinion of Jesus and Christianity in general, he did say some true and rather stoic-like things that are objectively profound in their own right.
As he was being crucified, and suffering incredible pain and unfair treatment at the hands of the Romans, he said:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
JESUS CHRIST, LUKE 23:24
Wow. Even as he was being brutally killed, Jesus had the grace to forgive his tormentors. Selfless grace. He understood that the Roman soldiers were “deprived of truth” and didn’t understand, and really at the core it wasn’t their fault because they didn’t know better.
People who do wrong — even little things which aren’t as intense as a crucifixion, like stealing for example — they generally don’t understand how wrong it is, or why it’s wrong, or what the impact is. They can’t comprehend, they have a deficiency. They’re truth-impaired. If they truly had the truth, fully embedded in their soul, they wouldn’t do it. They would act differently.
Now I’m not advocating for forgiving every hardened criminal, and just letting people take advantage of you. (Although, Jesus did also talk about turning the other cheek, and that suddenly makes more sense, hmmm.)
But there is something to be said for understanding that these people are just truth-deprived. They don’t know better. Feel pity for them. Feel patience for them. They are lost! Show them grace, where you can.
A lesson for my children
As my young children grow up, I’ve never shied away from difficult topics. One of those topics is “bad people”.
My kids know that bad people are to be avoided, that bad people go to jail.
But they also know that bad people are usually that way because they had a rough upbringing. Perhaps they never had anyone to show them the right way to act. Or perhaps someone hurt them gravely, and that affected and warped their growth.
I also teach my children that anyone could make a mistake, and that “bad people” aren’t bad to the core, and that they are redeemable. They know that even good people go to jail sometimes if they make a mistake. Any one of us could make a mistake that lands us in jail, and that doesn’t make us bad.
To me, this feels similar to what Holiday and Marcus Aurelius are teaching us in today’s entry. That people who do the wrong thing aren’t to be hated, despised, reviled. Rather, they are to be pitied, and helped, and forgiven. They are deprived of virtue against their will, and they deserve grace and patience, as much as we can spare it.
