The Mystery of Rights and Wrong
By Audrey Stallsmith
In one of Chesterton’s essays called “The Domesticity of Detectives,” he talks about why he prefers mystery stories over adventure stories such as spy novels. “We might say,” he notes with his talent for paradox, “that the great detective story deals with small things; while the small or silly detective story generally deals with great things.”
Chesterton’s preferred political policy was distributism, which believes in keeping things small, as in small businesses and small government. That could be why he held that “The good detective story is in its nature a good domestic story. . .it is concerned with an enclosure, a plan or problem set within certain defined limits.”
I, too, find mystery stories more interesting than spy thrillers, as apparently do true crime shows, which seem to favor domestic murders. Perhaps they believe, as Chesterton did that “The real romance of detection works inwards towards the household gods, even if they are household devils.”
Spy stories tend to have a large number of agents involved in a plot to save or destroy a nation, while a domestic mystery usually must eventually focus in on only one or two people out to destroy another person or people. And the fate of individual souls is much more important than the fate of nations as only the souls are eternal.
In a recent true crime show I watched, a woman and her doctor boyfriend tried to hire someone to kill the boyfriend’s wife. You could almost see souls shriveling in real time as there were hidden cameras present during their discussions with the acquaintance whom she’d asked to find hitmen for her. Apparently a careless remark he’d made once about knowing some people led her to believe he meant criminal types when he actually meant cops. You’d think that, by now, hirers of hitmen would realize that most of those supposed hitmen are actually undercover policemen, but apparently not!
What attitude brings otherwise respectable people to order murder like they order dinner from DoorDash? I’ve concluded that it is a sense of entitlement. They feel they have the right to the type of life they want without the inconvenience posed by a certain other person or people.
To illustrate that, in a short mystery story from the end of Chesterton’s era, two different men were both in love with their host Herbert’s wife Barbara. One of those men was his cousin Alfred who was always borrowing money from him. The other was Herbert’s male secretary Jim. Now, Barbara actually was in love with Jim, but she and he had talked over the situation and decided that the right thing for him to do was to resign his position, leave the house, and have no further contact with her.
However, when Herbert refused to lend his cousin any more money. Alfred decided to kill him and get all of the money through Barbara—not knowing she was in love with someone else.
I realized that the difference between Alfred and Jim, in addition to the fact that the former got the rope and the latter got the girl, was in their attitudes. Alfred thought he was entitled to anything he wanted, including somebody else’s life, wife and money. Jim knew that he wasn’t.
And it occurred to me recently that what we have gotten used to, as Alfred had gotten used to Herbert’s money—we shortly believe that we are entitled to. Saturday night the dog and cats were sitting around interestedly watching me invert an upright vacuum cleaner and shake it. Although the hair clogging up its tubes actually was their fault, I was lecturing them on the low intelligence of makers of a supposedly pet-friendly vacuum who had provided no way for me to clean the bottom tube without actually taking the machine apart.
Because it was laying down more dirt than it was taking up, I actually was going to have to revert to sweeping the carpet with a broom instead. Part of my grumpiness was due to the fact that my dishwasher also conked out recently, so I was having to wash all my dishes by hand too.
Then, of course, it occurred to me that my great-grandmother probably always had to sweep the carpet with a broom, not to mention scrubbing her dishes without the benefit of skin softening soap. So, the fact that I am used to having a dishwasher and vacuum cleaner doesn’t mean that I have a right to them which poor appliance design is depriving me of!
I’m actually lucky that I have a house with a carpet and enough food to dirty the dishes. The problem with possessing an active imagination is that whenever I get a really good huff going about anything, I tend to talk myself out of it. But I’ve decided that whole entitlement thing is dangerous enough to our souls that we need to talk ourselves out of it as often as necessary.
I eventually was able to clean the vacuum’s bottom tube by removing one screw so that I could lay the tube level. I then used a long metal thingamajig with a hook to pull clumps of pet hair out a little at a time. And I adjured myself to be less lazy next time and empty the vacuum before everything clogged.
That saves work in the long run and may prevent my having to purchase a different model. I suspect less laziness and exaggeration of our problems—not to mention more foresight—could prevent more extreme domestic crises too. That includes the perceived necessity of trading one’s spouse in for a new one or, as in the true crime shows, destroying the old one in a fit of self-centered frustration.
A book I read recently held that the greatest sentence ever written was the one about men being endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let me remind everybody that the sentence specifies “pursuit." It doesn’t say that we have a right to whatever we think will make us happy.
As C. S. Lewis wrote in “We Have No Right to Happiness,” America’s founders “did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason, and fraud. No society could be built on such a basis.”
He goes on to add that, though in modern times “the ‘right to happiness’ is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse, it seems to be impossible that the matter should stay there. The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche [“complete freedom to act as he thinks best”]. And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart and will—one dare not even add ‘unfortunately’—be swept away.”
But, since we are concentrating on individual souls in this article rather than on civilizations, we should remember Dorothy Sayers’ less tactful warning in her introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy. “If you insist on having your own way, you will get it: Hell is the enjoyment of your own way forever.”
Fortunately, there are quite a number of sentences greater than that pursuit of happiness example. And one of the greatest advises, “for anyone who keeps his life for himself shall lose it; and anyone who loses his life for me shall find it again. What profit is there if you gain the whole world—and lose eternal life? (Matthew 16:25-26a LB).