I am sure many slaveholders in the South were “self-made men” and perhaps never in their entire lives had to face a situation where they did not “succeed.” Such a refusal to fall kept them from awareness, empathy, and even basic human compassion. The price they paid for such succeeding was an inability to allow, join, or enjoy “the general dance.” They “gained the whole world, but lost their soul,” as Jesus put it. They did their survival dance, but never got to the sacred dance, which by necessity includes everybody else. If it is a sacred dance, it is always the general dance too.
