Image credit: Psalter, Flanders 13th century. Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 49, fol. 64v
part 1 of a series
Dog in a manger
Editors’ note: Yet again we found ourselves attempting to persuade the author to prescind from embarking on yet another tiresome topic, likely to be developed at interminable length, suggesting instead more tractable (and likely more entertaining) topics for consideration. Perhaps the history of badminton, or the amusing feats of octopi in captivity. Alas, to no effect. As ever, contractual obligations govern our choices as to publication; they do not, however, govern the requirements of readers, whom we would advise to adopt, in this case, a different appellation.
A DOG was lying upon a manger full of hay. An Ox, being hungry, came near, and offered to eat of the hay; but the envious, ill-natured cur, getting up and snarling at him, would not suffer him to touch it, Upon which the Ox, in the bitterness of his heart, said, A curse light on thee, for a malicious wretch, who wilt neither eat hay thyself, nor suffers others to do it.
– Samuel Croxall, Fables of Æsop and others (London: T. Longma, et al.,1790).
Imagine yourself a billionaire. But, you can’t. Too many zeros. You can imagine yourself a millionaire, even a multi-millionaire. You can imagine how many millions it might take to eliminate all financial care. Even provide for things beyond care, for yourself, first and foremost, then maybe for your kin. And the number of millions will vary depending on where you’re imagining yourself (cost of living and all that).
Likely your impoverished imagination starts with where you actually live. And depending on that, you think to yourself (which itself is strange), I could be very happy with [insert number] millions. All the golf trips your mortal coil can endure. Not a care in the world, you think, wistfully. Offspring with silver spoons in mouths, in all the modern ways (aka, brats), likely headed for Dartmouth for further inculcation.
Until a fruit of your loins1 gets childhood leukemia….
But a billion? Multiple billions? A billion is a thousand millions (or milliard for educated subjects of the King). That might be selfish, you further consider, more than you and yours could reasonably consume. On the other hand…
Self-ish. -ish? Sadly, Fowler2 overlooked this pesky suffix, moving from -ise straight to -ism and -ity in his classic Dictionary of Modern English Usage, published by the illustrious Oxford University Press. A rare oversight. Fortunately, the competing university, Cambridge, offers the palliative in its Cambridge Dictionary:
–ish, suffix (from PLACE)
used to form adjectives and nouns that say what country or area a person, thing, or language comes from
- Spanish dancing
- Are you English?
- I’ve always liked the Irish (= people from Ireland)
- Do you speak Swedish?
-ish suffix (LIKE)
used to form adjectives that say what a person, thing, or action is like:
- foolish
- childish
(Wasn’t Fowler Engl-ish?3)
To paraphrase then,4 self-ish is all about you (LIKE) and where you are situated (PLACE). Not unlike ἴδιος, Greek for one’s own, whence idiot. That and all your strange mutterings to yourself.
In sum, you’ve managed to imagine to yourself that, if in the impossible circumstance you became a billionaire, you may well be (likely would be) a self-absorbed, selfish idiot. Truer thoughts were never thunk. Congratulations.
What does it mean to do the right thing?
Imagine you’re in a car, and your cousin is driving. Why, why, why? Your cousin is not a particular friend of yours (you can pick your friends but not your family), but somehow you find yourself in a car, with your cousin, you in the passenger seat. And you probably had no choice in that. Things bumping into things.
And then this happens: someone is walking in a clearly marked crosswalk (also not their choice), but your cousin (who you have little fondness for—but here you are) is not paying attention, for whatever reason, and hits the person in the crosswalk. Hard. So hard, in fact, that the person is killed.
And then all the things happen: police, ambulance, fire trucks, exchange of papers, interviews. Finally, it goes to court. You’re called as a witness. What to do? What is the right thing to do? Tell the truth and testify against your cousin, or lie to protect your kin (however irritating)?
Maybe … it’s complicated.
What you are likely to do may have more to do with the culture you grew up in (PLACE) than your nature (LIKE). That is, maybe the PLACE has more to do with LIKE than you might like to admit. Or, maybe the PLACE (in a geological sense—the Late Pleistocene5) where your species evolved into its modern iteration governs LIKE more significantly than you might like to know. Either way (or in combination), so much for you being the captain of your sorry ship.
Maybe what distinguishes the bitter-hearted ox from the ill-natured cur is a matter of contingent reality, morality finding no purchase in the dispute.
Or maybe morality itself is simply one characteristic of a particular species that emerged under particular conditions, having no more ontological priority than, say, the rigid pelvic girdle. Thus, the bitter-hearted ox (expecting altruism), the ill-natured cur (exhibiting selfishness), the moralizing human (wanting it both ways, between LIKE and PLACE).
- What is a loin anyway? Technically, “a piece of meat from the back of an animal near the tail or from the top part of the back legs” (Cambridge Dictionary). Its literary meaning is more … pregnant: “the region of the sexual organs, especially when regarded as the source of erotic or procreative power: “he felt a stirring in his loins at the thought” (Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English). Need more be said? ↩︎
- For those of you who are unaware of H. G. Fowler’s monument work, in all of its editions, Woe upon you. ↩︎
- Raising a question as to -ish: For the British, we have Engl-ish, Ir-ish, Scott-ish and … Welsh. Really? Why not Wel-ish? This needs further investigation. ↩︎
- The endless work of philologists. ↩︎
- Roughly 45,000 years BP. ↩︎