The Affliction

I'm talking about self-righteousness here.

In The Memory of Time, Bridget Fenerty says, "If the government could figure out how to generate electricity from self-righteousness, well, then, they wouldn't be damming up the Tennessee."

And I would add to that, Miss Bridget, that if self-righteousness were a product, it would be shipped in railroad tank cars and barges and sold to the public in sizes ranging from fifty-five gallon drums to two liter family size to three ounce travel packets so you could take it on the road with you. But what am I saying? Most of us make our own self-righteousness from scratch.

If electricity could be generated from it, as Miss Fenerty suggested, we could end our need for fracking and our dependency on foreign oil. The supply would be inexhaustible.

"People want you to be something," Steinbeck wrote, "preferably what they are."

Yessir, believe so.

Our way is the best way. Our way is the only way. Our way is the right way. And don't tell me your opinion because if it's different from mine, it's wrong. How do I know? Because I'm right. The world will not be perfect until everyone in it is exactly like us.

Look around you. You'll see self-righteousness everywhere. It drips from our computer screens. It wafts out noxiously from the smokestacks of the twenty-four hour news channels (all makes and models).

Neither of two talking heads on a television split screen ever uttered the words, "You know, I never thought of it that way. I think you might be right." No, what they do instead is raise their voices, frequently trying to talk over each other. It becomes a pissing contest, something that my daddy might have defined as a competition in which nobody wins, but everybody gets wet.

The only antidote for self-righteousness is, of course, humility, which is taken off a spoon holding your nose against the unpleasant aftertaste.

But there I go, railing against self-righteousness while ironically indulging in it myself. This stuff really sticks to you.

C.H.Lawler is the author of The Saints of Lost Things, The Memory of Time, and Living Among the Dead. He is currently working on his fourth novel.