BACK NINE

THE AUSTIN GOLF CLUB STORIES

THE MORAL TRILEMMA

The afternoon was absolutely still. Even the cicadas had stopped rubbing their legs together. It was too hot for the wind to be bothered to so much as whisper. The humidity was up. This was when July in Austin made you wonder why you lived there. This was when everyone kept indoors and tried to stay as still as possible, to avoid breaking into a sweat.

As Barney Funky-Phyffe and Major Saul V. trudged up the final fairway, their shirts drenched and their golf gloves so wet they could barely grip the clubs, they both felt great. Each had lined a dead-straight drive into the middle of the fairway, and felt with every confidence that his approach shot would land softly on the green within a birdie’s reach of the pin. There is no better feeling. Which is why it is so intellectually challenging to understand why that approach shot duck-hooked left of the sandtrap and came to rest cheek by jowl with the trunk of a bramble bush.

Fortunately both Barney and the Major loved intellectual challenges, and as they sat on the rickety verandah overlooking the implausibly green 9^th fairway, there was much to discuss, at least two beers’ worth.

But Barney seemed distracted. The Major could tell that something was bothering the young buck, especially when the Major asked Barney to tell him for the third time how he had saved double bogie on that last hole, but Barney seemed content to rest after two tellings. It was unheard of at the Austin Golf Club for a member not to tell the story of his day’s great escapes less than six times before two beers had been dispensed with.

“Tell me, my friend, what seems to be the matter,” coaxed the Major, who suspected it could have something to do with Barney’s having lost the Nathalia Vengethique sweepstakes to his rival Jimmy Bingey-Purge. 

“Oh, Major, it’s hard to talk about…”

“Come, son, we’re here to do the hard things,” said the Major, harking back to his days as a management consultant to the Army to roll out one of his better inspirational mottoes. 

“It’s my moral dilemma!” Barney suddenly enounced.

“Moral dilemma, eh? Well, we’ve dealt with those before, and quite nicely, by and large. Bring ‘er out here into the light and let gives ‘er a look.” 

“OK, but I’m warning you, you asked for it.” Barney leaned forward in his chair and reached down to fiddle with his shoelaces, and to give the golfhound Geronimo a much appreciated scratch as she lay in her customary spot beneath the Major’s deckchair. Barney didn’t know how to broach it. He’d thought about it so much, but it had never occurred to him that he might talk to someone about it. “You know how sometimes when you do something for another person, you feel good about it?”

The Major paused a moment, recollecting if (1) there were any occasions that he had done something for another person, and (2) how he had felt about it. It seemed to him that he had probably done (1), but never (2). He decided to ask for more input. 

“You mean, like something GOOD for another person? Or just anything at all, whether good, bad, or indifferent?”

“Well,” Barney said hesitantly, “that’s sort of just it. You think it’s good, and probably it is good, at least the other person thanks you and makes you think it was good. But if you think it was good, then can it really be GOOD, I mean, doesn’t knowing it’s a good thing make your motivation for doing it selfish? I mean, I feel good for doing it, so probably the reason I did it was to make myself feel good, and what’s good about that?” Barney had been speaking in a rush and now settled back into his chair, spent. 

“Hmmm, I see,” the Major muttered thoughtfully, thinking that this poor lad was even more screwed up than he’d previously suspected. What kind of thought process was this? The boy needed something else to think about! “I tell you what, Barney old clam. I am deeply impressed with the complexity and high moral turpitude of your dilemma. Your inner monologue—“

“How did you know?” Barney exclaimed and leaned toward the Major. “How did you know that I have an inner monologue?” Barney narrowed his eyes and inspected the Major. He knew the Major had done dark and secret things for The Government, and now he wondered what this Major knew that he shouldn’t know. Who was he to know that Barney had an inner monologue? Barney’s inner monologue was special, and as far as he knew, he was the only person that had one. 

“My boy, settle down. Everyone has an inner monologue, although they might not call it that, indeed they might not even know they have one, so deaf are they to their own voice crying out for attention. But for the most part—“

“How can you listen to my inner monologue?” blurted Barney. He stood and looked down at the Major, facing down this challenge to his own privacy. 

The Major chuckled. He had half a mind to play with this nitwit by starting to talk about how he did indeed listen to the lad’s inner monologue. “Easy, boy, easy. I cannot listen to your inner monologue. But I have rich evidence of it from the words that you speak and the body language that you evince. My special training in PsyOps from the Taliban, back in the double agent days, makes it relatively easy for me to read your open book. So please just relax, and we can either get back to your moral dilemma, or we can change the subject.”

Barney had gotten lost during the Major’s last speech He felt suddenly tired, and sank back into his chair. His mind returned to his moral dilemma, which was titled his Moral Dilemma About Being Good in his mind. How could he know that he was doing good, or being good? Was it not possible for him to do or be good without stroking his own ego? Was everything about him sullied? Surely he couldn’t talk to the Major, or anyone else, about this, or about the further depths of self-degradation that this line of reasoning led him down.

There was a pause, as both men pursued their private musings. 

Finally the Major resumed the conversation. “I particularly enjoyed your decision not to take an unplayable lie, but rather to hack away. Moving the ball an inch and a half while breaking the head off your 9-iron proved to be the turning point of the hole for you,” he said encouragingly, trying to bring the subject back Barney’s triumphant 6 on the 9^th.

Barney stared distractedly at the Major, having not heard or not understood his words. Barney was still picking his moral scab. “Sorry Major, I’m still thinking about my Moral Dilemma About Being Good.” The words startled him. To hear himself say these capitalized words from his deepest thoughts, to hear those words out in the world, this was a shock. 

“Alright then, let’s examine the problem. You do good, you feel good about doing good, therefore you have not done good, you have only made yourself feel good. I suppose we should accept the idea that doing good and feeling good are mutually exclusive?”

“Only when the one causes the other.” 

“Then I shall reveal to you one of the darkest secrets of the Democratic Party Secret Police: Triangulation!”

“Triangulation? You mean like, um,  Bill Clinton?” 

“But where do you think that Bill Clinton learned his dark arts? Think of it this way: When two things are in direct conflict, then a third thing must be added, to muddy the distinction between Things 1 and 2. Thing 3 will ideally share the best parts of 1 and 2, except for those best parts that are considered the worst by the other. Here, let me draw you a diagram.”

The Major took a scorecard pencil, unfolded a paper napkin to its full size, and began drawing circles. “Circle 1 is the best parts of Thing 1, and Circle 2 the best parts of Thing 2. You see that these two circles overlap. But within the overlap, a section of it is comprised by Best Things that are Worst Things from the other’s perspective.” The Major shaded in about half of the area that overlapped between Circles 1 and 2. “This unshaded area of the overlap is Thing 3. This is the space where all three things agree. Now, you will observe that Thing 3 is much smaller than Things 1 or 2, and you may wonder where the rest of Thing 3 is, because this is only the part of Thing 3 that is best but not worst according to the other two.”

The Major paused and peered attentively at Barney. “Are you with me, kid?” 

Barney looked up from the napkin and nodded slowly to the Major, “I, uh, think so, maybe. Things 1, 2, and 3, like Dr. Seuss, huh?”

“Exactly like Dr. Seuss. Well, the thing is, this shaded area is an artificial construct. Thing 3 does not need to make sense. It just needs to masquerade as something that plausibly contains this unshaded area of the overlap. Thing 3’s lifespan is exactly as long as it needs to be conjured in order to get 1 and 2 to recognize their mutual characteristics, and hence their inherent bond as fellows. Thus humanized, they can agree to disagree, at least until the present crisis is forgotten about, and then they can resume their warring ways, but by that time Bill Clinton will be on to his next crisis, which will involve entirely different Things 1 and 2, and the triangulation method can be repurposed again.” 

“So, uh, what does this got to do with my Moral Dilemma?” Barney was thinking it was time to leave. For a moment he’d had a hope that this old coot was going to say something useful, but this seemed like the overly clever and incomprehensible plotting of a political spinmeister.

“OK, let me spell it out for you. You do good. You feel good. These two things conflict. Where do they overlap? The good bit. But good is bad because you shouldn’t do good to feel good. But let’s find the unshaded part of that good bit. Let me give you an example. It’s the 8^th hole, and your playing partner is in the left trap. The 9^th tee as we know is to the right of the 8^th green. She blasts out to the far right edge of the green, close to the pin. She grabs her putter, walks across the green, and holes out. Meanwhile, you perceive that she has left her bag outside the trap, so you carry it across to the right side of the green so she doesn’t have to go out of her way to retrieve it. With me?”

“Yes.”

“’Thank you, Barney,’ she says.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you feel good?”

“No. I’m thinking about my tee-shot on the 9^th.”

“Precisely. Voila.”  

“What. I don’t get it.”

“You done good, but you don’t feel good.”

“Well, of course not, any sap would do the same. You just do it.”

The Major paused, to let those words hang in the air between them. “What you said. You just do it. It’s not about you.” The Major leaned back in his chair and watched Barney’s face.

Barney’s face seemed to be going through phases of thought, as he stared above the Major at the ceiling fan circling slowly. Little muscles caused faint patterns of motion to run from Barney’s brow to his jaw. Finally his gaze lowered back to the Major.

“You just do it,” Barney said slowly, “it’s not about you.” Barney began to grin.

© Craig Van Dyck
March 2008