In Defense of Piracy
“We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore – except to make our lives into a work of art.” - Lana Del Rey
Fear & Greed
Fear and greed. At the heart of it all, this is what we are up against as individuals and societies. These are the unholy gemini, the root of all evil – something to lose and something to gain.
Fear is the unwillingness to lose what we have. Whether it’s health, possessions, reputation, relationships, or even our lives, many of the decisions we make every day are driven by fear of what we may lose. This is understandable because we are deeply vulnerable, constantly at the mercy of our mortality and the myriad dangers lurking behind every corner. We make compromises large and small to combat this fragility and give ourselves some sense of security that we can keep what we have.
We spend an inordinate amount of our lives working jobs we hate because we’re afraid of losing a standard of living or health insurance. We are over-accommodating and unassertive because we fear losing relationships. We play the roles and live the lives we are expected to, denying the wildness in our souls, in order to retain the favor of those around us. These are not small compromises. Every day in many ways we sell pieces of ourselves for fear of what we might otherwise lose.
Greed is the other side of the coin – the idea that we have something to gain.
All of us have something we want: a feeling, status, comfort. We are incomplete, but we tasted something once that made us almost feel whole; something that made us want to live forever. Maybe if we pursue it and get more of it, we will be content. I feel good after depositing money in my bank account; I want to feel better, so I need more money. The audience’s applause feeds my soul; I need more. Not everyone is a materialist or a hedonist, but we are all greedy for more of something.
Fear tells us to play it safe, compromise, and protect ourselves because of what we might lose. Greed tells us to stay in the game, make sacrifices, hustle and grind because of what we might gain.
Think about your motivations: What gets you out of bed and keeps you going? How much of it can be distilled down to fear and greed?
The Failure of Fear & Greed
Fear tells us we can avoid loss, but the inescapable fact is one day we will lose everything. We will lose our possessions, our health, influence, relationships, and status. Our thoughts and plans, the ability to read another book, or feel the warmth of the sun. There is nothing we can do to escape this fate – it has already happened. Each one of us will die, naked and alone, on some battlefield not of our own choosing.*
Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Speirs fought in World War II as part of the legendary E Company of the 101st Airborne. He understood that none of us make it out alive. He said, “The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.”** All life depends on it, too. The only way we can live as we should is if we embrace the fact that we are already dead. Any time and anything we have is just bonus.
Tennessee Williams wrote: “We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
This is an unpleasant truth we desperately try to avoid. We cling to anything that might distract us from the fire that’s already licking at the door. We think the survival instinct will save us, but it is not our friend. It is a false hope feeding the lie we want to believe: that if we stay at the table long enough, we might win. We won’t. Happy endings, as Mrs. Smith said, are just stories that haven’t finished yet.
I know this sounds terribly dark and pessimistic, but it would only be a tragedy if the purpose of our existence was to win the game and live happily ever after. We are just travelers passing through. We’ve been given a set amount of time at the table and dealt a particular hand. Everything we have is not ours to possess, but rather to be stewarded for purposes greater than ourselves for however long we’ve been given. More on this later.
Our mortality informs not only fear, but also greed. If the things we have are not ours to obtain or retain, there’s little use in chasing them.
We pursue so many things: a family, a job, a standard of living, retirement, the American Dream. These are not bad things, but if we build a life around them, making countless sacrifices and compromises to achieve them only to have everything blown to pieces in a moment by something beyond our control (a car accident, a recession, an affair) this is a tragedy. And it is the unavoidable tragedy for anyone who operates out of greed.
Even if we hold onto what we have for a few years, or even a lifetime, it never really satisfies. The feast was exceptional but we are hungry in the morning. Whatever we hoard is never enough to make us whole or save our souls. We were made for something greater than anything this world has to offer. We were made for God Himself and will be satisfied with nothing less. Money, power, sex, and prestige are poor substitutes, often leaving us emptier than before.
Fear and greed are powerful motivators, but they are neither healthy nor sustainable in the longterm. Those who operate out of fear will eventually lose everything despite their best efforts and those operating out of greed will find themselves with an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure.***
We need new motivation, a deeper drive, a higher calling than our own survival and success. Our current ambitions fail us, but not because they are too large. They are too small – focused inward, wrapped up in ourselves. Our fear and greed have promised to save us, but they are what we need to be saved from.
Freedom
After the cancellation of The OA, Brit Marling wrote an essay in which she said: “The more news I take in of the world, the more I often feel terrifyingly certain that we are on the brink of moral and ecological collapse. Sometimes I feel paralyzed by the forces we are up against–greed, fear, vanity. And I can’t help but long for someone to rescue us from ourselves–a politician, an outlaw, a tech baron, an angel. Someone who might take our hand, as if taking the hand of an errant toddler, and gently guide us away from the lunatic precipice that the “logic” of profit unguided by the compass of feeling has brought us to.”
She knows what we are up against, both in ourselves as individuals and in the greater society we built. (If fear and greed are unhealthy and unsustainable on the individual level, imagine the havoc they wreck at scale when a whole society is built on self-interest. But of course, you won’t have to imagine very hard).
The impossibly good news is the Savior she is looking for has come. “Christ died for all, that we who live should no longer live for ourselves.”† Christ has set us free from greed, and fear, and ourselves.
We were made by God and for Him. We don’t get to pursue our own plans or what we think we want – we are here for His purposes. He has created good works beforehand that we should walk in. He will do what He wants in and through us. In the meantime, we don’t have to look out for ourselves, because God will provide everything we need.††
Christ has set us free from the futility of chasing what we can not gain or keep. He has set us free for something far greater.
…and Piracy
These are the options: either we continue to live in the self-interest we have known and see everywhere around us, or we grow apart like misfits, outlaws, and angels until our lives are as strange to our family and friends as their lives are to us.
There can be no looking back, no half-hearted attempt to gain a little more, no single, solitary piece of anything we’re holding onto. We can’t have one foot in the old way and one in the new. Jesus said, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”††† We have lived long enough. Let the fire take the house, our past and future, everything we have or hope to acquire.
If we are no longer motivated by fear or greed, then what shall we die for?
Our God, certainly. He asks nothing less than everything. Many times He says some variation of, “Leave everything, take up your cross, and follow Me. None of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”‡ This is the call, not just to a few special saints and martyrs, but to all of us.
He’s left us here, not to look out for ourselves, but to love one another and worship Him in everything we do. To bring beauty out of ugliness and order out of chaos, to create art and explore the wild. To feast and sing the ancient songs even as the barbarians storm the gates. To sail far beyond the safety of the known harbor in search of treasure greater than silver and gold. Give me a better title than ‘pirate’ and I’ll take it.
What would a life look like completely free of self-interest, whose only desire is to put good out into the world, to be a conduit of God’s presence? What would that life look like if it was yours? Or mine?
It’s easy to articulate these ideas, to think about them or put them into words. But in the end, words count for very little. What matters is the way we live. Our lives will stand in testament or judgement to what we really believed. May our lives be a monument, more eloquent than any words, to the Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love for which we have been left here. It may look radically different than the way anyone around us is living. I think it should. Christian Bale said, “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy.” May we be that example. We who have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art.
J.
*How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill
**Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose
***The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
†2 Corinthians 5:15
††Verses referenced here include Colossians 1:16, Ephesians 2:10, and Psalm 34:10
†††Matthew 16:25
‡Matthew 16:24, Matthew 19:21, and Luke 14:33
April 19, 2022