Selfishness is the Primary Evil at the Heart of the Anti-Stewardship Mindset.
Perhaps one of the most unpleasant passages I’ve ever read in a novel is found in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Within this particular passage, Raskolnikov, the story’s main protagonist, is dreaming.
Raskolnikov’s dream puts him in a marketplace with his father where a big cart and a scrawny, aged horse wait outside a tavern. Suddenly a large, unruly group bursts out of the tavern, one of its members commanding the others to, “Hop on, all of yer!” The man doing the commanding, Mikolka, is the owner of the horse and cart.
Mikolka is angry with his horse, complaining that, “she’s not galloped for ten years or more”, insisting that, “She will now!”, before commanding others in the group to grab their whips and flog her.
What follows is an unsavoury scene of wanton abuse, as the horse is brutally beaten for not galloping with her impossible load. Some bemused onlookers challenge Mikolka, “When’s a mare like that ever hauled such a load?”
At Mikolka’s command (“Flog ‘er till she drops!”), the beating administered to the horse gets nastier and more intense until Mikolka himself deals fatal blows to the horse with a crowbar.
What could Mikolka’s justification for such barbarous, malevolent, and disturbingly gratuitous, cruelty possibly be?
His response to the onlookers who challenged his beating of the horse speaks volumes: “Stay out of it! She’s my property! I’ll do what I like.”
As an animal lover, reading the passage was unpleasant. Nevertheless, there’s valuable insight to be gleaned from Mikolka’s justification of his repugnant behaviour. It clarifies and encapsulates what I call an Anti-Stewardship mindset.
“‘My property!’ shouts Mikolka, standing there with the bar in his hands and bloodshot eyes. He seems sorry not to have anyone left to hit.” – Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Breaking Down the Anti-Stewardship Mindset
If Stewardship is voluntarily taking responsibility to care for someone or something (including and beyond oneself) then Anti-Stewardship is the diametric opposite: selfishness and instant gratification are at the heart of it. Care doesn’t feature, especially care for others.
Taking the example of Mikolka’s brutal murder of his horse in Raskolnikov’s dream, we can identify some core features of the Anti-Stewardship mindset:
Selfishness and entitlement: ‘Others are there to serve me however I want them to do so in any given moment. And if they fail to do so then they ought to be discarded without compunction.'
Lack of care: ‘It isn’t my responsibility to care for others whatsoever – not my problem! I’ll get what I can from them by whatever means necessary until they’re no longer useful to me. Simple.’
Myopia and short-termism: ‘Give me what I want NOW or else! I’m not interested in the longer term consequences.’
Of course, there are more granular features and broader applications of the Anti-Stewardship mindset than the above, such as greed, sexual lust, more general hedonism and pleasure-seeking, and the will to power, but it fundamentally boils down to selfishness and a cruel (often reckless) disregard for others.
Groaning Under the Weight of Anti-Stewardship
Sadly, there are no shortage of examples of the Anti-Stewardship mindset at play in our lives, whether involving extra-marital affairs, corporate fraud, abuse of vulnerable (or at least less powerful) others, or simply failing to care as one should in their respective roles.
The world is groaning under the weight of the Anti-Stewardship mindset. Every time a scandal, act of fraud or betrayal is perpetrated by someone is a position of authority for selfish ends, whether in the home, the company or the government, trust is destroyed and people’s lives are damaged in significant ways.
If I advocate for Stewardship then I must be wholeheartedly against Anti-Stewardship. I am in the process of counting the costs of Anti-Stewardship – and they’re huge! They’re borne at individual, communal and even societal levels. Sometimes the details of those costs are no less heart-rending than Mikolka’s brutal murder of his horse.
Whilst Stewardship is a central principle to the pursuit of sustainable success, Anti-Stewardship sabotages success at every level.
This dichotomy cannot be ignored – it will determine the extent and sustainability of our individual and collective successes in the home, the community and the wider world.
Stewardship and Anti-Stewardship
This coming Wednesday (28/04/21), I will be giving a speech entitled Stewardship and Anti-Stewardship (online) to explore the dichotomy further. If you’d like to attend then please register through the following link: https://www.modernmindgroup.co.uk/event-details/outlook-from-inlook-virtual-mindset-club-6.
If you would like to learn how to develop the Stewardship Mindset in creating a life of purpose, meaning and fulfilment for your unique pursuit of sustainable success then drop me a line: tom@3stewardships.com.
For those who have been following previous posts, the first episode of my podcast Real Clear Values with Tom English will be released on Thursday (29/04/21). Stay tuned.