When I was a student at a French law school, I encountered a number of legal concepts designed to help us make sense of the unruly business of the real world. One of the most fundamental was the bon père de famille—the good father of a family—a useful little fiction employed to establish how an ordinary, conscientious person might be expected to behave in a given situation.
The expression was eventually retired in favour of personne raisonnable—the reasonable person—which sounded less like a patriarchal casting call and more like something one might find in a respectable legal textbook. The underlying concept, however, remained unchanged.
Law is littered with such inventions. They are theories, figments of our collective imagination, really, but remarkably useful ones. Humanity has spent centuries manufacturing conceptual scaffolding to make sense of reality, until we have largely forgotten that the scaffolding is not the building. A theory. An abstraction. A convenient fiction. Incredibly useful, certainly, but still a collection of words pretending to be the thing itself.
The Illusion of Doctrine
We flatter ourselves with the comforting delusion of ideology.
We produce dense, self-important treatises dissecting political dogmas, quibble over the finer gradations of morality, and congratulate ourselves on having discovered the grand intellectual machinery supposedly driving history. We prefer to believe that human beings act upon carefully reasoned philosophical convictions, consulting an internal ethical compass before choosing their allegiances, their words, and their deeds.
They do not.
Men do not serve doctrines; they inhabit systems. They serve architecture. And an architecture, properly calibrated, can make monstrosity taste remarkably like communion bread.
Do you imagine an SS officer lacing his jackboots in the morning while privately lamenting his role as the villain of the piece? Of course not. In his own mind, the smoke rising from the chimneys was merely the regrettable residue of administrative efficiency and civic duty. In nineteenth-century Charleston, gentlemen of impeccable manners sat on shaded verandas, reading scripture while human beings laboured under the lash in the sweltering heat a hundred yards away. To those gentlemen, this was not an atrocity. It was Tuesday. It was simply the prevailing currency of the world as they had inherited it, and which they saw no particular reason to return.
We scour the history books for the sadistic aberration, the solitary psychopath whose appetite for cruelty was so extravagant that even his fellow monsters found it embarrassing. It is a reassuring little parlour trick, allowing the rest of humanity to escape indictment. The historical atrocity was rarely an exception to the prevailing order; it was often its logical consequence. And it happened not because a sudden epidemic of demonic evil descended upon an otherwise respectable population, but because the machinery surrounding ordinary people rewarded their participation.
Most human beings are neither saints nor devils. They are water, obediently assuming the shape of whatever vessel society pours them into. A carefully constructed environment may cultivate restraint, quiet generosity, and civic grace. A perverse one may unleash appetites a man never suspected he possessed, all lubricated by the intoxicating promise of advancement, respectability, and the warm approval of his peers.
A genuinely sovereign moral core—an inner compass so stubbornly upright that it refuses to bend when the prevailing wind changes direction—is extraordinarily rare. A tragic, beautiful anomaly. Most men have little appetite for the lonely road. They would rather join the parade, preferably somewhere near the front, where the uniforms are clean and the refreshments plentiful. They will march to whatever tune happens to be playing, provided the uniform fits and the rations arrive on time.
Blood on the Baletwine
If you want to understand how power works, forget the political scientists for a moment. Observe animals. They have considerably less interest in dressing their instincts up as moral philosophy.
In my youth, our home was a rather chaotic menagerie. We had dogs and cats, certainly, but the working stock defined our daily landscape: ducks, geese, rabbits, and two distinct varieties of pigeons—those destined for the roasting pan and those kept merely to be admired through a haze of cigar smoke on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Even our livestock, it seemed, had to accommodate the distinction between practical utility and decorative self-indulgence.
Then, on one of those inexplicable whims that occasionally seize otherwise sensible men, my father decided to raise turkeys. Monstrous, ill-tempered, prehistoric beasts with all the charm of an armoured personnel carrier and none of its useful engineering. One tom in particular was an absolute titan, standing nearly eye-to-eye with me when I was barely thirteen.
Naturally, the brute escaped. He terrorised the lane, strutted through gardens, and challenged anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, until a frantic neighbour finally managed to corner him inside a darkened pantry.
I was dispatched to retrieve him.
I entered that stale little room, pulled the door shut behind me, and found myself staring into the cold, reptilian eyes of a creature that appeared determined to extract a pound of my flesh before surrendering his freedom. What followed was brutal, inelegant, and entirely devoid of choreography. We collided in a violent storm of feathers, dust, spurs, and mutual hostility.
I had been dealing with feathery beasts since early childhood, so the monster presented a challenge rather than an existential crisis. I knew I would wrestle him into submission and get him home. There was no doubt in my mind. The only remaining question concerned the precise quantity of blood I might have to donate to the cause.
Eventually, I pinned him to the floor, bound his spurs and wings with some string I had brought along, and hoisted the thrashing brute under my arm for the long march back down the lane. My shirt was shredded, my chest resembled a poorly executed anatomical illustration, and I was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
There is an invaluable lesson in that room: it is remarkably difficult to terrify a man who has traded bare-knuckle blows with an enraged turkey.
Once you have confronted a hostile force physically, absorbed the damage, and carried the bastard home anyway, the world loses some of its leverage over you. You discover that pain is real, but finite. Fear, you learn, is often little more than a suggestion delivered in an unnecessarily theatrical voice. And you begin to understand that backing down whenever aggression bares its teeth is an excellent way to spend the rest of your life cornered in dark rooms, waiting for permission to leave.
The Perfume of Sycophancy
Animals, like humans, possess an almost infallible radar for desperation. Neediness has a scent, and it is rarely an attractive one.
Years later, an acquaintance of mine kept a purebred Siamese cat named Cleo. She was an exquisite creature: sleek, haughty, immaculately groomed, and possessed of an almost aristocratic contempt for the human species.
Whenever guests arrived, they invariably committed the same fatal error. They pursued her. They crawled across the rug on their knees, clicked their tongues, cooed in absurdly elevated registers, and begged for a scrap of feline affection. Cleo responded with the icy disdain such behaviour deserved, turning her back and flicking her tail as though she had just received an invitation to a provincial tax seminar.
On my first visit, I poured myself a glass of heavy red, settled comfortably into the couch, and paid her absolutely no attention. I neither glanced at her nor called her name. I simply relaxed and conversed with my host as though the cat did not exist.
Within five minutes, Cleo crossed the carpet, climbed onto my knee, curled into a tight ball, and began purring in my lap like a combustion engine with aristocratic pretensions.
My hostess watched this miracle of feline diplomacy in disbelief and demanded to know the secret of my sorcery. I gave her the only answer worth giving: no creature of grace and consequence has ever been particularly attracted to the frantic sycophant panting at its heels.
They want composure. They want self-containment. They want someone who respects their space because he has enough respect for himself not to invade it.
The same principle applies to human beings. My older son is autistic, naturally shy around people, and deeply uncomfortable when his daily rituals are disrupted. Even his grandparents initially remained something of strangers to him, simply because they were not part of his everyday environment. One day, my parents visited. My mother tried to coax him into accepting a kiss, with the predictable result that her campaign met an impenetrable wall of resistance. My father, by contrast, sat quietly on the couch, talked to us, and ignored my son completely. He offered him space rather than a campaign of affectionate diplomacy. Before long, my son had settled beside him, engaging him in finger games.
Sycophancy is an offensive perfume, whether you walk on two legs or four. The moment you broadcast your need for approval—the moment you reveal that your dignity depends upon the room’s willingness to recognise it—you invite the room to fit you with a collar.
Modern society has turned the production of sycophants into something approaching an industrial process. It trains us to crave the head-pat: the promotion bestowed by the boardroom, the approval metric delivered by social media, the warm nod of institutional authority. We become exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of people who may not have given us a moment’s thought beyond the utility of keeping us obedient.
Power, however, has little respect for the beggar. It merely finds him useful. Genuine autonomy requires the composure of the man in the armchair: self-contained, unhurried, and perfectly prepared to let the beast sit on the rug or walk out the door, entirely untroubled by either outcome.
The Freedom to Be a Moron
Once you understand that human beings are malleable and that systems exert a profound influence over behaviour, an unexpected liberation follows: you stop taking the insanity of the world personally.
For decades, intelligent people have been working themselves towards premature graves in a futile attempt to correct the collective madness surrounding them. They scream at television broadcasts, engage in interminable arguments on digital platforms, and nurture a permanent state of indignation because their fellow citizens continue to fall for transparent lies, cheap propaganda, and scams so crude they might as well arrive wearing a sandwich board announcing their fraudulent intentions.
I carried that outrage myself for years. The endless parade of credulity and conspiracy theories revolted me. I could not understand how people could look directly at established historical facts and elect absurdity instead, as though reality were an unpopular restaurant they had every right to boycott.
Eventually, I let it go.
Expecting humanity to become rational, consistent, and wise on demand is a childish species of hubris. Human nature is not a software bug awaiting a corrective patch from some benevolent committee of experts. It is raw, flawed, tribal, untidy, and gloriously inconvenient. Eradicating human foolishness would require stripping humanity of its passions, imagination, and imperfections, leaving us with a population of predictable, unfeeling automatons. That might delight certain administrators, but I would not recommend it as a civilisational ambition.
If you advocate genuine freedom, you must accept the accompanying, non-negotiable tax: the freedom of others to be absolute, unmitigated morons.
I have encountered my share of scamsters and snake charmers. One feature they often share is that they are surprisingly well educated and intelligent. One such acquaintance of mine, a friend and medical doctor recognised as an expert in several eclectic medical fields, once confronted me with a conspiracy theory involving hidden pyramids and aliens so magnificently absurd that breathing became difficult while he explained it.
The man was unquestionably intelligent, a valued friend whose opinions I generally appreciated. He possessed an unusual ability to understand situations that others would misread almost instinctively. Yet here he was, entirely ensnared by a narrative apparently assembled from the discarded scraps of a fever dream.
I smiled and nodded.
People have the right to embrace ridiculous narratives. They have the right to ruin their finances on absurd schemes, surrender their agency to charlatans, and mistake a stranger’s confident nonsense for privileged access to the universe’s operating manual. You cannot save a man determined to volunteer for the chain gang. Attempting to do so merely appoints you his warden.
Once this reality settles into your bones, the burning outrage begins to evaporate. In its place emerges something quieter, more durable, and considerably less exhausting: amused detachment.
I enjoy humanity in all its wretched, tragic, comic beauty. I observe the spectacles, the political pantomimes, and the periodic mass hysterias from a safe and deliberate distance. A glass of good red wine in hand, a smile on my face, peace in my heart. The circus will perform whether you rage at the clowns or not. You might as well appreciate the absurd brilliance of the show without purchasing a ticket for the carousel, where the same exhausted horses circle endlessly while everyone insists that progress is being made.
The Solitary Compass
Where, then, does this leave the individual who refuses to be poured into the vessel?
Alone. And that, precisely, is where agency resides.
The architecture of modern civilisation is designed to reward conformity. It offers security, praise, and an orderly existence, provided you agree to march when the drums begin and avert your eyes when the machinery grinds down the dissidents. The temptation to fall into step is formidable. Stepping outside the line means exchanging the warm, reassuring comfort of the herd for the cold silence of the perimeter, where nobody promises to applaud your integrity or even notice it.
Cultivating a sovereign moral core is not an exercise in flamboyant rebellion. It is an act of quiet, stubborn maintenance. It is the ability to observe the parade, concede that the uniforms are immaculate and the music stirring, and nevertheless choose to sit beneath a tree instead.
You do not need to overthrow the architecture. You need only ensure that it does not own the room between your ears.
When you know you can survive the clawing of an enraged beast and walk home grinning, the scowl of a bureaucratic official loses much of its majesty. When you refuse the intoxicating perfume of sycophancy, applause becomes a poor substitute for principle. And when you grant the rest of the species the absolute freedom to make fools of themselves, you finally escape the exhausting obligation to supervise their delusions.
You become an outlaw in the only sense that matters: sovereign, grounded, immune to the herd’s panic, and permanently at peace with the cost of your own skin.
