Everyone wants to be a martyr

“The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one,” Wilhelm Stekelonce said, as quoted in “The Catcher in the Rye”. This quote has been on my mind since I declared myself a political science major last month. When my political science classes first began, I was excited. I was happily consuming loads of information about the historic-structural causes of poverty and violence, as well as the failures and successes of foreign aid. It was only a matter of time, however, as the piles of readings started to accumulate up to my ears, that I began to wonder what exactly I could do with this reservoir of academic knowledge.

I could work in an international institution like the U.N., armed with ideals and zealous for reform, but I fear that I would find myself tied down by incessant politics and complicated bureaucracy. If political science has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is purely humanitarian and that everything is selfishly political. I could try to keep my idealism and work at a nonprofit, building local schools or giving medical aid, but first, my sphere of influence would be quite small, and second, what use would my academic knowledge be? I could return to academia and be free to criticize and analyze, build my reputation by writing a few books, and advise policymakers on the side, but I would still be distant from the “action.” In summation, I’ve become frustrated with the overload of academic “inputs” and the scarcity of tangible “outputs.”

But I’ve realized that I’ve been thinking the wrong way. Notice the plethora of “I”s, “my”s and “me”s I’ve used so far. I’ve become a little too absorbed with how I feel. There is a subtle strain of egoism even in the nonprofit industry, I believe. Deep down, as altruistic as I call myself, I want to be Somebody worthwhile. I call it the Savior complex—it’s the need to feel like you are making a difference and are being recognized for it in order to justify your worth. It’s the secret desire to write columns on Africa in order to inspire action … and gain millions of followers and win the Pulitzer Prize. Of course, we’re all so humanitarian because we’re working in the nonprofit industry—at least we’re not sacrificing ourselves to Wall Street, we say as we pat ourselves on the back.

To paraphrase what Cornel West, a prominent philosopher known for his commitment to social justice, said in a panel on Mumia Abu-Jamal on April 3, “In universities, you train and live the life of the mind. But you don’t learn courage—you learn that in struggle.”

Everyone secretly wants to live gloriously and die as a martyr. The question is: Do I have the courage to lead an anonymous life, serving others? It’s a question I have been hiding from.

Besides the motivation of recognition, there is the motivation of feeling useful. Nietzsche’s criticism of charity rings partly true here: We humanitarians thrive in problems and crises when others need us—we need to be needed, in an odd way, to feel useful and validated. Philosophical questions of human worth aside, on a practical level, going into humanitarian work partly because you relish the feeling of being useful (in more familiar language, you want to “make a difference”) seems like a quick route toward burnout because too much focus is placed on what you can do and not why you are needed.

Indeed, the next question after motivations is that of sustainability: How can we sustain activism for the long haul? Cornel West will be speaking again at 7 p.m. tonight at Lerner Cinema on how one can sustain activism, after the headlines of a crisis have passed, and I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

I suspect that sustainability has to be rooted in hope. But such hope cannot rest on the labor of man—man is too flawed and limited. Personally, my hope is based on the divine. It’s rooted on my trust that my redeemer, for I believe in Christianity, will return to complete his redemption of suffering, of every ounce of pain that’s been soaked in this earth’s soil. In the meantime, I’ll try to be a part of his ongoing redemption plan. This is, as Bob Marley sings, my redemption song.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in Political Science.