The Cause and the Individual
I can support a cause and yet be completely put off by a person who is fighting for the cause. The cause itself is an ideal, isn’t it? The cause of anti-racism, the cause of religious acceptance, the cause of erasing student debt. There is an almost objective quality to the cause because everyone fighting for the cause has a similar idea of what one is fighting for. The means and methods by which they wish to fight for the cause may be different. But the cause itself remains certain, unblemished.
But the person fighting for the cause is anything but unblemished, anything but ideal. The person is riddled with everything the makes the human being endearing and admirable, but also annoying and pathetic.
And so, this person may be fighting for a cause which I wholly endorse. But this person also has a shrill voice that I find unbearable. They have eyes that seem devoid of warmth. They speak in a way that sounds pedantic and patronizing. And they post way too many tik-tok videos of them dancing. All in all, I cannot stand this person. But, this seems like a “me” problem. This is how the person is, and I need to accept them the way they are. And if I can’t, well, it’s just too bad.
However, because I endorse the cause, it hardly matters to me whether or not this person annoys me. But what if I’m not the only one who finds them annoying and pompous and disgustingly excitable. What if others who don’t endorse the cause, or maybe even oppose the cause, feel the same way about this person. And what if this person is one of the more visible figures of the fight for the cause?
Isn’t the fight for the cause weakened in some way by having this person at the helm? Maybe people would be more open to examining the terms of the cause if there were a more personable person speaking for the cause.
I realize that this probably shouldn’t matter. The cause itself should be enough to justify the fight for it. But this is what happens when you bring human subjectivity to a seemingly objective cause. You put the cause in the hands of people who may or may not be the ideal candidates to be the voices of it. Of course, it isn’t the responsibility of those fighting for the cause to also be personable and appealing. But, am I also more willing to listen to someone who is personable and appealing? Yes. Both of these truths can co-exist without either of them being wrong.
It seems to me that what we see is rarely one cause against another cause, but rather a handful of individuals against each other. A handful of individuals become the visible and verbal faces of their causes and the causes themselves become seen through the lenses of the individuals who fight for them.
It is essentially ego versus ego. Because if it were cause versus cause, that fight would happen in a utopic land where reason and rationality and objectivity are as important as emotional appeal. And even if agreement and resolution were not fully possible, at least there would be an accurate understanding of each cause.
It’s why I believe that so many individuals are actually able to change their positions on socio-political issues. As I see it, one does not simply and suddenly start supporting one cause over another. They do so because they have come in contact with at least one individual who was able to make them see the importance of the cause in a way that other individuals hadn’t previously been able to do.
