The Civil War Inside Each One Of Us

Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of using the American Civil War as a metaphor, not just to explain the divisive political landscape, but the divide within each person. Just as there was a North and South in America (Anti-slavery and Pro-Slavery), there was a divide between good and bad within each of us. There was the part pulled towards higher principles and the part that was willing to compromise with baser instincts. Certainly, in his own life, King was pulled this way. He was a man of enormous principle and selflessness, but he also had a number of affairs. This was a violation not only of his marriage, but the Christian teachings he preached at the pulpit. He knew better...but found himself doing it anyway. This tension must have been incredibly painful and shameful for him. So when King said that “there is something of a civil war going on within all our lives,” he wasn’t just speaking theoretically. He knew it firsthand. The point of looking at examples like this isn’t to dismiss someone as a hypocrite—we’ve had quite enough of that zero-sum thinking in recent years and, quite frankly, there’s nothing Stoic about it. Nor are we trying to rationalize or excuse bad behavior. T…