Where’s the Outrage?

Loyalty is an important quality.

What are possible grounds for loyalty? Who merits loyalty and for what reasons?

I see loyalty as coming from personal circumstance and experiences and ,also, from the broader context of shared values.

Loyalty also requires acceptance of people’s faults as you see them. This because, if for no other reason, so that others will accept you and your faults as well.

Here are some possible grounds for loyalty—

1. A Shared Past— I give some stock to people who were in the some of the same places I was at certain points in life. For example, people who hung out in the same punk rock clubs and bars as I did in college.

I feel these people felt many of the same things I did at that age, and that they may now be people I can trust as an adult.  Also, more personally, I want my past to matter and to be recalled. I value the people who comprise my past.

Here is a line of John Kennedy’s Inaugural address that expresses this feeling—

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share: we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.

2. A Shared Present—People we work with or live near may have a shared set of experiences or circumstances  that are a basis for loyalty.

It doesn’t always work out, and loyalty here may be limited to the shared experiences, but it is good to enter relationships with co-workers and neighbors with the hope that trust can be established.

Also, proximity can require that we look past what be a few negative traits and focus on what is best in a person. Here is an example of this feeling from The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas–

But, never mind, he is a neighbor who has done us a service on a time, so he’s welcome.

3. Gut Instinct Guided By Experience —Sometimes you have just have a feeling that someone on your side—A gut feeling guided by experience. When I have such a feeling I go with it until I have a reason not to.

Here is a sentence from a Jack London book called Before Adam that expresses this idea—

We felt the prod of gregarious instinct, the drawing together as though for united action, the impulse toward cooperation.

4. Someone Who Has Done Something For You—What I mean here is a more than “one hand washing the other.” I  mean that if someone has done you a good turn for the right reasons, you should remember the favor and return it out of fairness and as a means, over some period of time if need be, of deepening a relationship.

The way we return a good deed may be no more than a sincere thank you.

Here is an example from an article by a Kelly White in the magazine Girl’s Life—

Before long, your sister will follow your good example, and you’ll both be masters at the art of sisterly give-and-take.

5.  Shared viewpoints—Relationships have a larger context than then the interactions of the people in the relationship. Someone who sees the world as you do, may share a set of values that is as important or more important to you than simply personal concerns.

Relationships have a context as large as the people in the relationship decide it should have.

Here is an example of this from Turn Of The Screw by Henry James–

I was queer company enough– quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us.

There are other grounds for loyalty that you may know or adhere to based on your own experiences in life or what you have observed in life.

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