The Weal of the Convert

You know what they say: Ain't no zealot like a newly-found zealot, cos a newly-found zealot don't stop.¹ Someone raised in a non-Christian household may become born again and dazzle congregations of lifelong Christians. Someone raised in a fundamentalist Christian household may become a hardcore occultist and shock everyone into mistaking him for a Satanist.

The zeal of the convert is not a phenomenon exclusive to religion, but can occur when someone chooses any new group identity for themselves. One argument for why converts practise so strongly is that they want to prove themselves to others in the group.

This argument was advanced in the landmark court case, N.W.A v. The Police Department (1988). In testimony to the presiding Judge Dre, Ice Cube exhorted everyone to disrespect law enforcement officers, particularly if pulled over for a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion, but made one exception –

... don't let it be a black and a white one
'Cause they'll slam ya down to the street top
Black police showing out for the white cop

The 'convert' in this case is a black man in a historically white police force. Mr Cube suggested that because the officer is himself a targeted racial minority, he will use excessive force to demonstrate he's of one mind with the majority of police, and "police think they have the authority to kill a minority". No police officers testified before Judge Dre, so we can only speculate about a black officer's defense for assaulting a black "teenager with a bit of gold and a pager". But I reckon the black cop acts to prove his loyalty not only to white cops but to himself.

I think this because of the way Scots reacted to American independence in 1776. "Many influential Scots" showed out for the white cop – i.e. the English – and "seized on the American war as a means to underline their political reliability to London, deliberately contrasting their own ostentatious loyalty with American disobedience..." (Colley, pp. 138–9).

The Scottish were new to Parliament because the British parliament was new. It was only 70 years prior that Scotland united with England² to form Great Britain, and Scotland waged armed rebellion against Great Britain only 40 years before the Americans did. Many English³ sympathised with the American cause, but the Scots who felt themselves a suspicious minority expressed "ostentatious loyalty" to demonstrate they were of one mind with the greater nation.

Scots weren't just showing out, though. They were working out their new citizenship⁴ with the English in different ways:

[1] Some returned home as soon as they could, deeply alienated and disillusioned. [2] Others stayed on as foreign mercenaries, taking what advantage they could from their new surroundings while remaining fundamentally aloof. [3] Still others ... were turned into perpetual exiles by the experience, feeling themselves too Scottish to settle comfortably in England, yet becoming too English ever to return to their native land. [4] But some, particularly the most successful, were able to reconcile their Scottish past with their English present by the expedient of regarding themselves as British (Colley, p. 125).

I'm an American. I haven't returned home from Britain as soon as I could have [1], and I don't want turn into a perpetual exile [3]. It's fun for me to pretend I'm a scab [2]:

"Those fellows peculated our erstwhile positions of employment!"

But that's only a way to hide my anxiety. I don't regard myself as British and don't plan to [4], but I do want to reconcile my American past to my British present.⁵ I feel fundamentally unsettled and will remain a little aloof until I figure out how to reconcile my nationality with my residency.⁶

Being black and a police officer or being Scottish and British are not mutually exclusive identities, and it's not necessary for a black Scotsman to resort to violence to prove himself:

Our social practices elaborate, for us and others, who we are in the world. We exercise ourselves to know who we are where we are, but belief itself can power our practice – because, thank God, our selves precede police and passports:

For essential beauty is infinite, and, as the soul of Nature needs an endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, at every one of her heart-throbs; so the individual form needs an infinite change of its environments, to enable it to uncover all the phases of its loveliness.

George MacDonald, Phantastes

<sub>1. I've never heard anybody say this.
2. & Wales
3. & Welsh
4. subjecthood
5. Sometimes, I do this by professing my London present. It's easier to claim belonging in a world-class city than a new country. In fairness to my cop-out, I don't want to live anywhere else in England and would, in fact, rather live in Scotland than not-London England.
6. Employer sponsorship of a Tier 2 general visa would help.</sub>

Acting essentially: How, too

On 18 August, I flew southwest on Southwest. First, I flew from Chicago to Phoenix. It was there that I boarded an essentially Southwest flight. That plane flew me from Phoenix to Orange County and then went on to San Jose.

My flight from Phoenix to Orange County was miles better than my flight from Chicago to Phoenix, and I don’t think that’s just because it was many miles shorter. In fact, I think it’s because Southwest was flying an essentially Southwest route when it took me from Phoenix to Orange County. The chief flight attendant spoke an unmistakably southwestern English. She sarcastically explained the procedures for a water landing to a cabin of people who would soon pass over the Sonoran Desert and dropped a “y’all” that said “This ain’t my first rodeo, Cowboy.” She’d probably flown that route a thousand times before.

The flight couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Granted, it was only an hour long, but I’ve never walked off a plane feeling rejuvenated. I had been delayed for three hours trying to leave Chicago, and that flight refreshed me. I think it’s because Southwest Airlines was acting essentially, and acting essentially is a paragon of how.

People doing what they do best, or acting essentially, gets the job done well. The doer acts with confidence and care, in the spirit of muscle memory. This helps others as only jobs well done can and prevents logistics from overwhelming the doer.

“That’s great, Nathan, but your pleasant flight means nothing to me.” Well it should, because you too can act essentially! (Putting all four of the requisite commas in that last sentence renders it unreadable.)

Malcolm Gladwell observes in Outliers that most people reach peak competence with jobs in their tenth year. Thus, he says that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect a job. Why were the Beatles so successful? They logged their 10,000 hours of rock and roll before any other four-piece British band by playing eight-hour sets in a Hamburg strip club. Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? He had access to a computer years before most and spent his youth running programs through it well into the night. So, both the Beatles and Bill Gates were content to toil in obscurity. Providence just had it that they struck it rich.

But not only were the Beatles and Bill toiling in obscurity, they were acting essentially. (The Beetles and Bill is a straight-to-video entomological production of Bill Nye the Science Guy.) We now consider the Beatles as essentially rock and roll, and Bill Gates is essentially a computer nerd. Sometimes, however, your essential activity may not be what pays the bills.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone made obscene cartoons in college, but those cartoons got in the hands of Hollywood higher-ups. Soon, Trey and Matt were writing, producing and voicing South Park. They’re still doing so fourteen, going on fifteen years later.

But Trey is a lover of musicals at heart. That’s why, four years before South Park, Trey and Matt made Cannibal! The Musical. This year, they won nine Tonys for The Book of Mormon. I’m going to go ahead and claim those Tonys as a triumph for essential acting.

Can you imagine the sheer logistical weight of scoring, producing and directing a Broadway musical? Now, imagine doing all that while you have a weekly animated show to write, voice and direct. Why haven’t Trey and Matt collapsed? Trey, at least, wasn’t hampered by logistics in working on The Book of Mormon. Logistics aren’t overwhelming when you’re confident — i.e., not thinking about yourself — and have an abiding care for what you’re doing. That care is quiet, too. The excitement may have subsided some, but something deeper is there in its place. Also, Trey drinks Dayquil to pull all-nighters.

And while professors can fret about lesson plans well into the night, conveying information in an engaging way is no problem when they’re talking about their pet subjects. Just let Sonia Sorrell talk about Galla Placidia or John Struloeff go off on Leo Tolstoy. The logistics of lesson plans don’t matter when they’re explaining what’s essential to them. If professors act essentially, the information teaches itself.

“So, discover what you love to do and do it a lot! You’ll make lots of money! You’ll be famous!” No. Find activity that makes you forget yourself. That’s a good sign you’re enjoying what you’re doing. Even if you’re not doing it better than other people, you’re doing it for a decent reason. But just because you’re doing something well doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing something good.