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What’s My Motivation?

July 27, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Uncategorized

I confess that I joined the Navy at the age of 17 in large part because I wanted guidance in how to live. I was not raised by my mother or father, for reasons I won’t go in to here, but to this absence I attribute the absence of a certain assurance in my path that I felt I should have but didn’t. Joining the Navy was to me an appeal, from the mixed messages that had up till then buffeted me back and forth, to an authority that I knew was widely respected by “society.”

In looking back on my life thus far, I detect the same pattern of recurring appeals to higher authority. There was my interest in high school in the so-called Great Books of the Western World, culminating in my realization after reading The Brothers Karamazov during my first year in the Navy that the Bible was, by all of the criteria which made the Great Books “Great,” the Greatest of the Great Books. This realization in turn led to my enlistment in the Roman Catholic Church, which in turn led to my enlistment in a traditionalist and schismatic sect of the Roman Catholic Church. Life and study and reflection eventually led me to reject virtually all authority in matters of religion, and to believe that if God is to be found he’s to be found within. So from one point of view I’m not much better off today than that poor lost 17-year old kid who foolishly joined the Navy.

In law school I quickly aspired to iconoclasm.

In a comment on a post by Jeff Gamso today I wrote: “But to me whatever good I can do as an attorney is bound up with being an outsider, even (to put the romantic spin on it that you reference) an outlaw and an enemy of the State.” I wish to emphasize that this is a claim as to me only. Many highly effective attorneys, including highly effective criminal defense attorneys, can be described as insiders and as good and upstanding citizens. As for me, I’m only an attorney because and by virtue of a very different attitude.

4 Comments to “What’s My Motivation?”


  1. So you dabbled with the SSPX? Or the SSPV?

    1
    • John Kindley says:

      The SSPX. Spent a week at their seminary in Winona, and had a couple conversations with Bishop Williamson, whom you probably noticed was in the news a little while back.

      2
    • John Kindley says:

      I also dabbled with the Legionaries of Christ, whose late founder you might have noticed was also in the news a little while back. It’s been a bad decade for the RCC.

      3
      • Yes, well, there are problems everywhere, are there not?

        The founder of the Legionaries evidently had some problems hitting on young men, but then later in life apparently the real shocker was that he fathered a daughter. I should think people would applaud the progress.

        Bishop Williamson, well, I’m just nor sure what to say about that. You’d think that advocating for the traditional mass would be enough controversy for one man, yet he wades into holocaust denial. In Europe, no less, where it’s a criminal offense.

        Hey, nobody’s perfect. Maybe we should go back to the bit about judging others harshly. I’m not saying you’re doing that. But we might have to cut some slack to priests and bishops too.

        4


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