To pontificate and preach, but stoop to any level no more

"The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched will not become cool."
- Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet known as Ovid in the English-speaking world

To pontificate, apart from its religious meaning, is to express one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic. This for sure has been the practice amongst many of our politicians; and perhaps, some of my readers think the same of me even though

I am no politician. I consider politics the main preoccupation of the morally inferior; even if, some better men are in it. However, even if my readers think I too pontificate and preach, I would let it be. It is a free world for thought. However, it is true that as a columnist, it is easy to sound off than it is to find out; it is more elegant to pontificate and moralise, and be hypocritical.

It is easy to sit in relative luxury and peace, and pontificate on any subject. Yet, I am not one of those who say or do anything just to pontificate because I am not a fool who thinks he is a prophet. Everything I write and talk about, I actually make an effort to do myself and live by it. The fact is, we try, we fail, we posture, and we aspire.

Pleasure

So what need is there to pontificate? Even those who indulge in deceptive pontification, still age, shrink, die, and vanish. That is an inalienable fact of not only this occupation, but also of life. If anything, kindness and consideration for others, besides for my self, is what I think that keeps my thoughts and feelings young and healthy.

It is a habit, I learned young from my animal friends; because they do not ask a bunch of stupid questions about how I felt, or why I did what I did.

They just let me be who I am. I wish people were more like animals. Animals do not try to change you or make you fit in. They just enjoy the pleasure of your company. Animals are not conditional about friendships. Animals like you, just the way you are. They listen to your problems, they comfort you when you are sad, and all they ask in return is a little kindness. Thus, only when we have become compassionate towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.

Compassion is something intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be, confidently asserted, that he who is cruel to others - human or animal - cannot be a good man.

A good man will never stop doing little things for others. Sometimes, those little things occupy the biggest part of their hearts.

We have seen how morally low this country had descended in the past. Many were the people who would stoop to any level to gain a few crumbs in order that they may enjoy the benefits of a good life.

Not that there is anything wrong in wanting a good life; but the question is how one achieves it - especially by people in authority; for they abandoned their own reason and were content to rely upon higher authority resulting in no end of our troubles.

All authority must always be, guided by the moral law. All of its dignity derives from it being exercised within the context of the moral order. It is from the moral order that authority derives its moral legitimacy, its power to impose obligations; and to translate this order into achieving the common good - not from some arbitrary will or thirst for power.

Some may indeed go far as to deny the existence of a moral order that is transcendent, absolute, universal and equally binding; but that is nothing more than an ostrich syndrome: denying or refusing to acknowledge something that is blatantly obvious as if your head were in the sand like an ostrich. If all people refuse to adhere to the same law of justice, a nation cannot hope to come to open and full agreement on vital issues. Hence, authority must recognise, respect, and promote essential human and moral values.

Values

These are innate and flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person; values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy. These values do not have their foundation in, provisional changeable "majority" opinions.

They must simply be recognised, respected, and promoted as elements of an objective moral law, the natural law written in the human heart, and as the normative point of reference for civil law itself.

Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the disposition cement, the habits of mind and culture, which binds men to systems of authority. At a time of transition from the depths pf depravity to justice and purity in politics and public affairs; at a time when we are looking to amend, change, and introduce new laws; authority, instead of pontificating, must enact just laws: Laws that correspond to the dignity of the human person and to what is required by right reason.

It is sine qua non that human law corresponds to right reason; and therefore, must derive from the eternal law.

When, however, a law is contrary to reason and not uniformly applicable; it becomes an unjust law; in such a case, it ceases to be law and transforms instead, into an act of violence.

Scepticism

It is then that, in its place, scepticism succeeds in casting doubt on the basic principles of all laws - moral and human - and results in the legal structure of the State being, shaken to its very foundations; reduced to nothing more than a mechanism for different and opposing interests. This is what happened in the past and we ought to be ever vigilant that the past does not repeat itself, though it often tends to.

To pontificate and preach, but stoop to any level has been the order of the past. They stooped to such levels as to praise where praise was not due without realising that false praise will lead the praised to the grave sooner than due.

It was satire in disguise, and hypocrisy at its worst when even the custodians of law contradicted the direct principles of the moral code of humanity. If indeed the need to preach arises, its object ought to be to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions and not to supply or correct the defects of human intellect.

Every pontificating man who aspires to and want to end being superior, will always begin with being inferior - that being the nature of pontification. The superior seek righteousness, while the inferior will only seek personal gain.

Thus, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is not those in authority or the superior; but those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand...those who care.

In the final analysis, as much as great men can hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time, pompous authority which only pontificates and preaches, can degrade a people when the caliber and character, traits and attributes, of authority itself is degraded.

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