Dialogue - Dignity or Profit?

Dialogues | Dignity or Profit?

Bain and Shi Xin sit next to each other, trying to remain still. Waiting for Hunter has become a meaningless phrase, a distant hope evaporated into random sounds. They cling to the knowledge that Hunter has promised to return, but if he doesn’t the Service Robot seems persuaded to consider their plight. Bain’s weary eyes fall across the short length to the slope behind the cave entrance, taking in the old-fashioned coins scattered amongst the tumble of sleeping traders that also seem to have surrendered to the pointlessness of their own existence. Bain grunts, remembering the last time he played poker with them all, when they were so drunk, it was no fun winning any more.

The time does not matter, nor the year.

Shi Xin: What would be the point of winning the money, if they can’t do anything with it anway?

Bain: It’s more than just the gain, it’s the reputation that comes with it.

Shi Xin: But that’s even less tangible. What good is reputation here?

Bain: It makes your opponent fear you a little more, it opens the little mistakes, and makes you more confident to take advantage of them.

Shi Xin: But here, it really is just a game.

Bain: But there might be, in gambling there’s always hope, that’s what drives you on.

Shi Xin: Yes, I’ve seen you with them.

Bain waves his metal arm: Oh yes, and I lost more than my arm, before I started winning it back.

Shi Xin: But why do they keep going?

Bain: Hope turns to need, then desperation. The promise of gain, of rescue by profit is ever-present. You might be lucky, you might outwit your opponents.

Shi Xin: Even if all evidence is against it?

Bain: More so, hope is what drives the desire for profit. Profit gives the confidence, and kudos.

Shi Xin: But there’s no dignity in the loss. And no dignity in the beating those who never win.

Bain: That’s true, but irrelevant. Dignity doesn’t feed the family, or put a roof over their head.

Shi Xin: But you’re not describing this profit in those terms, you’ve just talked about the benefits of personal gain.

Bain: Well, it’s all the same.

Shi Xin: It’s not. Making gain for the benefit of others is different to making personal gain, profiting personally by stepping across others.

Bain: That sounds too dramatic. In any game there’s always a winner, always someone who comes last, always someone who fails.

Shi Xin: In some games, many even, that’s true, but life doesn’t have to be like that.

Bain: It does if you need money to fulfil yourself, or provide for others.

Shi Xin: But that’s an argument for theft.

Bain smiles: I’ve heard that. Some call all property theft.

Shi Xin: That’s not quite what I mean, but there’s a difference between behaving with dignity, and behaving solely for the benefit of yourself.

Bain: You seem to think of this only in the extreme. It’s not an either/or, it’s possible to make profit to benefit others, there’s dignity and decency in that.

Shi Xin: Yes, but it depends on how it’s done. If you take advantage of your skills with numbers, and play against someone you know to be both poor and innumerate, then there’s no dignity in that, only shame.

Bain: Putting aside that someone like that has no sense of shame, that’s still an extreme, most people don’t think that way. We all have to look out for ourselves, because no-one else will do that for you.

Shi Xin: That’s bleak. Many people have families, and friends.

Bain: Yes, but even those groups have power relationships built in. There’s a game of emotional profit, or the one who holds the money has the power of the others in a family, so everyone else is trying to gain some of that power.

Shi Xin: I didn’t know a family, but I have seen families, and the most effective seem to be the most supportive of each other, with dignity as part of the way they engage.

Bain: Ah, that just sounds like something from an old book. Most families I’ve know are very competitive both within and without. They compete with other families in the neighbourhood, watch what other people have, want for themselves, and want better things.

Shi Xin: Sounds like a gangster neighbourhood!

Bain: hah. Of course, but even the most well-heeled are the same, always looking at the clothes and the means of transport, the brightness of the lights, the height of the buildings, everyone striving to be better than their neighbour.

Shi Xin: Well, that’s not a society I want to live in. And not one I grew up in either. I can’t claim there was much affection, but we did support each other in the school, and learned to work together to create and maintain the world around us.

Bain: Sounds like an old-fashioned commune.

Shi Xin: Well, it was spiritual, in a true sense. We grew what we ate, if the winter was too harsh we had little to eat, so we shared. There was always someone trying to steal the food, but they learned to stop. If we didn’t share, none of us would have survived. And some did die in the longest winters.

Bain: But if you had a choice, surely you would have found a better way of living.

Shi Xin: Perhaps it’s what you know, and surely, I did leave in the end, when I grew up, but that was a choice they all supported. I almost stayed because they allowed me to leave.

Bain: That just sounds weird! I left home as fast as I could, I’d run away several times, but found it too difficult to survive, so crawled back, knowing I would be beaten. Eventually when I left I’d worked out what to do, knew I could win at card games, make some money, steal some food, cheat if necessary, and move on, from town, to city, to planet, always moving.

Shi Xin: Sounds exhausting! If you’d had a place that had supported you, would you have stayed?

Bain: I don’t know. Hard to say. Gain and profit, money, influence, that was what I knew, and really that’s what I see in most human societies we meet in our travels with Hunter: always someone is at the top, profiting from their elevation, or trying, and losing.

Shi Xin: So dignity is surely better.

Bain: But profit is what most humans want.

Shi Xin: Only if they don’t know any alternative.

Bain: Perhaps, but it has to be seen, and benefited from at an early age, otherwise the striving for gain brings out the competitive instinct in men.

Shi Xin: Men.

Bain: Er, yes.

Shi Xin: Perhaps that’s it then, it’s the men most likely to behave like that.

Bain opens his mouth to aver, to point out the countless women he has known in positions of power, all behaving exactly as he described, but of course Shi Xin had taught him to wonder how they were brought up, the families and the expectations of the society of their youths. He allows himself to speculate what he would have been become if he’d been brought up the same way as Shi Xin. He laughs to himself, he looks at Shi Xin and sees her thinking the same: he would have died in the long winters.

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