Now and then, I quote or discuss a person who is less than a perfect exemplar of my noble ideals.

Some readers rage at me for doing so. Don’t I know, they scold, that so-and-so is a jerk?

I usually do know. And I certainly don’t approve of the quoted or discussed person being a creep. I wish they weren’t. I’m mad at them for the dreadful things they have done.

On the other hand, if I refused to learn from people unless I agreed with and liked everything they had ever said and done, I would never learn from anyone.

If I condemned to oblivion everyone who didn’t reflect all my noble ideals, if I crossed everyone off my list unless they were immaculate angels, I would be bereft of influences except for Mickey, my beloved stuffed bunny from childhood. He is irreproachable.

My general philosophy is that everyone on the planet, including me, is a jerk at least some of the time. In fact, I’m suspicious of people who are apparently so flawlessly well-behaved that they are never jerks.

Here’s the key to making a deeper assessment: How sizable is each person’s Jerk Quotient? If it’s below 15 percent—maybe even below 20 percent—I’ll probably give them a chance to be influences in my life—especially if they’re smart and interesting and wild and kind a majority of the time.

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I’m not sure there’s anyone in public life whose influence hasn’t been at least somewhat harmful, even if they have mostly bestowed blessings. A person’s noble intentions don’t guarantee the intentions are interpreted and used with love and intelligence. Even the Buddha’s followers commit crimes against humanity, as we see in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

What about you? I invite you to cultivate a capacity to derive insight from people who are not untainted saints. Have fun learning from 15-percent jerks or imperfect thinkers you partially disagree with.

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Here are examples of people from whom I have drawn teachings despite their offences:

Dr. Seuss had an affair with another woman while his wife was suffering from cancer, and his wife subsequently committed suicide.

Einstein cheated on his wife and treated her horrendously.

William Blake lived in filth.

Gertrude Stein arrogantly declared she was as important a writer as Shakespeare and Homer.

Early feminist author George Sand cheated on her husband.

Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 26.

Pema Chödrön did nothing about the sexual abuse going on within the leadership of the Shambhala community over the years.
Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized parts of his PhD dissertation.

The painter Peter Paul Rubens married a 16-year-old female when he was 53.

Walt Whitman had temper tantrums.

Many of the needy causes that Mother Teresa raised money for never received much help. Just seven percent of the donations she raised went to the organizations to which they were donated.

In his older age, Gandhi slept with young women in his bed to test his resolve to remain “pure.” Among these women was his grandniece.

John Lennon battered women. He was also a cranky guy who was chronically annoyed.

Kurt Vonnegut had a dark, sad, cruel side.

Bob Marley spawned many children and didn’t financially support any of them.

Some of my readers even find fault with people I have considered wonderful, like Dolly Parton and Thich Nhat Hanh. I don’t have the heart to repeat the claims, but here are links if you want to read:

Dolly.

Thich Nhat Hanh

More Thich Nhat Hanh

Two readers challenged me to track down something unseemly about Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who is one of their (and my) favorite authors. In two minutes, I found this: An editor at Ballantine Books, which published Women Who Run with the Wolves, says this: “Estés acted like a complete asshole. Her visits to the office were ludicrous; she used to prance around, puffed up like a little marshmallow, waiting for everyone to fall at her feet.”

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How about me? What’s my Jerk Quotient? Here are some awful facts: When I was younger, I broke up with one of my girlfriends in an unconscious and insensitive way, and I still regret it.

Again, when I was younger, an older friend of mine was dying of cancer, and I couldn’t bring myself to go see her. This is the most shameful thing I’ve ever done.

Would you care to confess the sins of any of your heroes, teachers, and role models? Or yourself?

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Naturalist Charles Darwin called clergyman Thomas Malthus a “great philosopher.” In his magnum opus The Origin of the Species, he said his theory of evolution was based on Malthus’ ideas.

As Darwin knew well, Malthus advocated genocidal measures to control population growth. In his famous “Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society,” Malthus proposed killing off underprivileged people.

“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor,” he wrote, “we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build villages near stagnant pools, and encourage settlement in marshy and unwholesome situations.

“But above all,” he continued, “we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.”

The evidence is clear that Darwin’s theory of evolution had a grotesque pedigree. It was rooted in the work of a would-be mass murderer. Should we therefore dismiss it altogether? Not in my opinion. What’s useful is not always derived from what’s good.

At the same time, we shouldn’t regard this fact as inconsequential. To evaluate all the implicit impacts of Darwinian ideas, we need to know the influences they emerged from. It’s crucial to acknowledge the pathology that may color a perspective that’s so central to Western culture.

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Is there a comparable situation in your own life? Are there essentials you benefit from even though their origins are problematical?

You could be a leader in the effort to be conscientious about investigating the origins of key ideas at the heart of our culture. You could help people you know to become aware of unconscious biases and bigotry they may have absorbed in taking on those ideas as our own.


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