Many males will relate to one of the contests, which, I suspect, boys have been participating in since they began to walk on all fours. The contest is to see who can urinate the longest distance. This is otherwise known as a pissing contest. This may or may not accompany the comparison of the size of the male members being used to spread one’s urine as far as possible. As we boys become chronologically older the games continues only now it is a contest to see who can make the most money, drive the baddest car, command the highest CEO salary, prosecute the most people as the district attorney, be the president who heads the country with the biggest weapons, or in some other juvenile way outdistances other males. Often the culture rewards those who engage in such pissing contests. Occasionally, there is a line crossed and then we prosecute and jail the loser in this contest. Sometimes who gets caught or the often seemingly arbitrary line which is crossed, determines the loser. It is not always easy to determine the line because seemingly there is no shared logic, which determines the lines. Actually, that is not true. There is a fairly widely published set of guidelines. It is quite okay to move a company to a foreign country and pay workers very little and even ignore decent working conditions. It is, however a no no to get caught as did Apple in China some time ago. It is quite okay to pay a CEO millions of dollars and refuse to pay for maternity or paternity leave. It is laudatory to become a philanthropist with money made at the expense of decent working conditions even in plants in the United States. It is not okay to be to be stupid enough to get caught blatantly endangering the lives of people by selling a product which you know may contain salmonella as was the case with Peanut Corporation of American. This behavior resulted in at least 9 people dying and many others getting sick from tainted peanut butter in 2008 and 2009. Last year Michael Parnell and Mary Wilkerson were respectively sentenced to 20 and 5 years in prison for their role in this “food poisoning case”.
On September 22, 2015 The St. Petersburg Tribune carried the story of the sentencing of the former President of the Peanut Corporation of America Steward Parnell to 28 years in prison. Ignoring for the moment the fact that he may get time off for “good behavior” or there may be some complicated formulas which determine exactly how much time he serves, at the 2012 figures of $19, 326.00 per annum to house someone on a minimum security federal prison we, the taxpayers could pay a total of $541, 128.00 to “punish” this man. If he is let out earlier, we the taxpayer will pay the parole officer and others to keep track of this man. Considering the fact that Mr. Parnell is now age 61 and in 28 years he will be 89 we can assume the medical care of this aging man will also be considerable.
One might ask what we the taxpayer will gain for this expenditure of money. We will get the satisfaction of knowing that “justice has been done” or we will know that we, the tax payer, have shown “the criminal” who has the power. In other words we, the taxpayer will have won the pissing contest. Despite the fact that all of us or most of us, as a culture, have done our part to promulgate the terms for the winning criteria in this game of self worth and importance, he was responsible for knowing where the line was. In this case the line he violated was not even subtle. In other words he was not as subtle as the manufactures of Volkswagen who were recently exposed as creatively fooling the inspectors and those who purchased their cars into thinking that they could get great gas mileage and keep pollution levels low. It would seem that some creative soul found a way to change how the car functioned post inspection. Oh dear!
The reader might be wandering where I am going with this blog. Surely, the reader might be saying, he is not going to suggest that we say, “Bless our heart Stewart. You fell for our collective ruse of the pissing contest.” Surely I am not suggesting that we, like Jesus with Judas, hold our arms and say, “Oh come here Steward. We knew you were human and, thus, vulnerable to this trap. Let me give you a hug and a kiss.” Perhaps we could just have him say 1000 “Hail Marys. “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen”
What if the goal in dealing with our fellow “sinner’ was more spiritual and not just to show him we can win the contest. “Oh no, not that!”
What might it mean to have a more spiritual goal? Again we are forced to think in terms of the spirit or some call the soul. Some might define essence of the soul as the core of our humanness – what survives forever whether one thinks of that from the standpoint of physics, religion or a spiritual philosophy. The goal would then have to be concerned with the diagnosed issues or offense. What is the offense of Stewart? Perhaps we can call him Stewie- little Stewie! What do we want little Stewie to learn so that he is not a 61-year-old going to prison for 28 years? The goal is not to say that he needs to have a different career. Even if he had chosen to be a priest, minister, a Buddha apprentice, or whatever he could easily have fallen prey to the same lies about how one becomes a winner. Many ministers and priests have also been revealed to have fallen prey to the same contest. No, the spiritual goal for little Stewie would be for him to learn to trust that he is already a sacred, worthwhile, valuable, person worthy of love and respect. It is out of the acceptance of this “truth” that little Stewie could become the President of Peanut Corporation of American with the goal of creating a workplace where all employees were expected to take care of each other, get paid well, take time off for parenting, and create a product which was healthy and good for its customers. In other words, what if little Stewie had created a Peanut Corporation of American which functioned as companies such as Trader Joes seems to function? From everything I can find out the goal of Trader Joes is indeed that spiritual.
If the goal for Stewie was spiritual we could also have him live and work with those who rebuilding a city following an earthquake, those who are taking care of the homeless, those who are feeding the hungry or those, such as Habitat for Humanity, who are building houses for families who do not make a CEO salary – for those who have not won the pissing contest. Who would lose if we did this? What if, in love, we helped to guide Stewie to embracing his sacred self as is reflected in the lives of others who have not won the context? It is possible that this could be a win-win for Stewie, the folks he learns from and co-helps, and the Peanut Corporation of America and even the tax payer?
Perhaps there are many options which would cost less and serve everyone affected more effectively.
Written September 22, 2015
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