“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” ~ Mark Twain
Sometimes I think loyalty is something you’re just born with — or not.
What is loyalty, anyway? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, loyalty is “…usually seen as a virtue, albeit a problematic one. It is constituted centrally by perseverance in an association to which a person has become intrinsically committed as a matter of his or her identity. Its paradigmatic expression is found in close friendship, to which loyalty is integral, but many other relationships and associations seek to encourage it as an aspect of affiliation or membership: families expect it, organizations often demand it, and countries do what they can to foster it.”
What could possibly be problematic about loyalty?
Because we could explore this topic on a number of intense and controversial levels — fidelity in marriage, allegiance to a cause or country, fealty to a leader or individual, devotion and piety to dogma or doctrine — let’s approach it from the shallow end of the pool.
When I was in fourth grade the Nike Cortez white leather sneakers with the red swoosh were all the rage, and I wanted a pair with the pent up zeal of an only child desperate to fit in with her peers. My parents had sticker shock over the price ($40 sneakers in 1980 would be $156 in today’s economy) and refused to yield to my plea. Determined, I mailed $2 to my aunt, who lived near Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, and asked her to place a bet for me the next time she went to the races. Over the phone, she read me the names of the horses running that day and I picked the name I liked best, despite its 20/1 odds. To everyone’s surprise, my pick won, and I got my $40 and my shoes.
Fast forward to my next pair of Nikes, gleefully purchased without gambling or going into debt. They were great. My brand loyalty remained intact through three more pairs, and then something changed. I got a bad pair. I can’t explain what’s different, but they’re different. They gave me blisters, they didn’t feel like a gentle hug when I put them on. And just like that, the spell was broken.
If only it were that easy in families, friendships, relationships, careers, religion, and politics. When things “go south” (there’s an idiom that would be worth looking into) — when we’re betrayed by a lover, disillusioned by an institution, lied to by a leader, or deserted by a friend — those who are “loyal to a fault” or suffer from “blind loyalty” can’t just shake it off and move on. They’re invested. They have history. Their identity is interwoven with the object of their loyalty, and letting go feels like amputating a limb without the benefit of anesthesia. Instead of facing facts and acknowledging flaws and errors, they make excuses for the cheater, double down on the rhetoric, cover and conceal wrongdoing, and massage the narrative to protect the soft underbelly of their allegiance. Better to twist oneself into a moral pretzel than admit misplaced loyalty.
It took massive disillusionment, deception, and treachery (not from the shoes) to realize loyalty that hurts isn’t a virtue… its self-destruction. To add insult to injury, the very people and institutions that caused the pain insisted that I owed them my allegiance, regardless of what they’d done.
As Mr. Twain said, loyalty to a petrified opinion — even when it’s your OWN opinion — never set anyone free, including yourself.
