Big water in better days.
Hamlet says, “What a piece of work is a man.” I go back and forth between seeing a slab of meat hanging in a butcher shop—that’s a man—and more positive images—say, the artist if he’s striving for honest as well as elegant utterances, or the martyr if his cause is just (MLK or Gandhi, to be obvious).
Where do Tony Wayward, and the Enron boys, and other sociopaths among our elite, present and past, fit into “what a piece of work” man is? On the Great Chain of Being, what link do they occupy? What link do they think they occupy?
In an effort not to be arrogant about arrogance, I try once more to imagine myself in charge of an operation that could inflict the damage BP is doing. Here is my translation:
“On my watch, the lads have had more violations than any other oil company (which are not known for the choir boys among them). I ignored warnings from my underlings about imminent danger. At each stage of the explosion's aftermath, I lie and evade. I deliver sanitized bromides of regret to the millions of little guys on the Gulf, waiting for me to make it all (sound) better.
“That’s enough to make even a slick, hardened sociopath tired. I need to get away, so I'm off to a sailing thingy, with our kind of people, safely across a sea into which my machinery hasn’t yet defecated. But I’m really not a bad sort, not an arrogant bloke. With my boyish face, I'm rather liked in the circles I choose.”
So can I see myself as that guy, as Tony Wayward? I honestly cannot, and if that sounds sanctimonious, so be it. Maybe it means I sit in safe havens, lacking the stuff of leadership in a major enterprise, which by definition risks both nature and humanity by the thousands of units. Maybe I’m a short-necked gander with no honk.
But no, I cannot see myself as that Tony-guy. And no, I don't have anything like envy for his daring or his life of luxury. (Or his absence of conscience, diligence, compassion). I don't want to be an empty suit when I grow up. Or is it a vacancy of soul we're trying to measure here?
Maybe we should all write lists of whom and what we cannot imagine being or doing, both the positive and negative models. Tony is not in my list of ways I can see myself. I'm sure it's my fault.
A World War II air combat poem might seem an unlikely companion to the above, but when I think of arrogance, I envision people who think of others as servants or objects. How would some of the high rollers in industry esteem this speaker, a mere ball turret gunner, dead, who hung in the belly of his bomber, exposed to enemy fighter planes in his transparent bubble? Are those the chunks of flesh the high roller sees when he regards the people and animals of the Gulf Coast? Wash 'em out with a hose.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More
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