My paper was a direct discussion and comparison of half-a-dozen ethical systems, concentrating on what seemed to me to be their flaws. I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterward that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions. This was to say that while I found things like “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your person or in that of another, in every case as an end and not as a means merely,” quite attractive principles, I hadn’t run onto any system that exactly fitted my disposition.
In his discussion, Jimmy took another tack entirely. Instead of criticizing ethical systems, he attempted to formulate one. It was humanistic, not completely unlike some of the others that I had considered. Jimmy started by saying that true humanity was an achievement, not an automatic inheritance. There were things that you could pick at in what he had to say, but his system did have one advantage and that was that he spoke in terms of a general attitude toward living rather than in terms of exact principles. It is too easy to find exceptions to principles.
As I listened, I became increasingly bothered, not by he was saying, which fit Jimmy’s disposition quite closely, but by the sort of paper he was giving. I was the one who was supposed to be intending to be a synthesist, assembling castles from mortar and bricks, only that wasn’t what I had done. It came to me then that I had never done it—making pins or building cabins, putting things together, none of this was really in my line, and I should have seen it long since.
I am not a builder, I thought. I am not a tinkerer. It was a moment of pure, unheralded revelation.
When Jimmy was done, Mr. Mbele said, “Let’s have a discussion. What comments occur to you? Mia?”
“All right,” I said. I turned to Jimmy. “Why do you want to be an ordinologist?”
He shrugged. “Why do you want to be a synthesist?”
I shook my head. “I’m serious. I want an answer.”
“I don’t see the point. What does this have to do with ethics or what we’ve just said?”
“Nothing to do with ethics,” I said. “It has a lot to do with your paper. You didn’t listen to yourself.”
“Do you mind explaining yourself a little more fully?” Mr. Mbele said. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“After a while,” I said, “I wasn’t listening to Jimmy’s points. I got thinking about what sort of paper he had put together and about what sort of paper I’d put together. We had our own choice. It just struck me that if Jimmy really wanted to be an ordinologist, he would have written a paper like mine, a critical paper. And if I were really cut out to be a synthesist, I would have written a paper like Jimmy’s, a creative paper. But neither of us did.”
“I see,” Mr. Mbele said. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re right.”
Jimmy said, “But I want to be an ordinologist.”
“That’s just because of your grandfather,” I said.
Mr. Mbele agreed with me almost immediately, but Jimmy had had his aims too long set on ordinology to change his mind easily. It took some time before the sense of it got through to him, but then he doesn’t have a critical mind, and that, of course, was the point. I just made it clear that I now intended to be an ordinologist, and Mr. Mbele accepted that. It was easier for me to change, because when I had thought of the future, I had thought of synthesis, but with parentheses and a question mark after. This change of direction was right for me, and now when I thought of ordinology there was no question of any kind in my mind, particularly when Mr. Mbele told me that I had the equipment to make a success at it.
And after Jimmy got used to the idea, he finally changed his direction, too. Because, after all, he was creative.
I said, “You’re the one who is always thinking up crazy things for us to do. I’m the one who should be thinking why they won’t work.”
“All right,” Jimmy said. “You be the ordinologist and I’ll be the synthesist.”