The Last Guy

Arlo Gutherie, Woody’s son, once wrote a little song about the “last guy.”  While all of us have troubles, he said, we take comfort by knowing that some people are “a lot worse off” than we are.

As a child, when I complained about anything, my father reminded me how much worse life was for the little kids in Italy.  Substitute Iraq or Afghanistan and the argument still holds.  Even today, when things don’t go my way I often find myself saying, “Well, yes, Budd, but this is a very high level problem to have. Think of the people whose lives are so wretched that they cannot even imagine having a problem like this. Want to switch places with them?”  

If all of us feel better because we compare ourselves to “those less fortunate,” then somewhere there has to be a “last guy” who is the least fortunate of all. Nobody has a worse situation.  The last guy, said Arlo, “doesn’t even have a street to lie down in for a truck to run him over.”

A kind of inverted pyramid emerges.  At the top are the myriads of complainers who put up with minor annoyances.  They get by because just below them are people with more serious problems.  They in turn survive because below them are people with more severe situations.  Each group gets smaller as the misery intensifies. Each group takes comfort that their situations are not as desperate as those of the people below them who suffer even more. At the very bottom, of course, upon which the entire structure depends, is “the last guy.”

Of course the logic here is as wobbly as the pyramid. Does it really make me feel better to know that homeless orphans in Africa are rummaging through garbage cans for dinner? Of course not. Yet it does put my grievances into a salutary perspective. As a white Protestant male I have experienced discrimination, but it is nothing compared to the prejudice, segregation, pogroms, abuse and lynchings that others have endured.  I have my share of health issues, and frustrations with our health care system, but I also have access to some of the best health care in the world.  I may hate the traffic on I-90, but because of our freeways I can go places and do things that were unimaginable just a few generations back. My complaints reveal a privileged existence indeed.

The “problem” with spirituality is that it opens my heart to others. When they suffer, I suffer.  When they rejoice, I rejoice. Examining my complaints, I find that my own deep gladness is deeply linked to - and dependent upon - the happiness of others.

Not just happiness is at stake. So is our security.  Never has the reality of our interdependence been so apparent. An Icelandic volcano shuts down air traffic in Europe and strands millions. A single computer-generated error causes panic on Wall Street. Angry Pashtuns in the tribal lands of Pakistan create havoc in Times Square. Our demand for bargains creates sweatshops in Asia. And who can tell what horizons will be impacted by the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana?  In today’s world, our survival requires us to attend to the misery and seek the happiness of each other. To be happy and safe, we must engage in tikkun olam, the healing of the world. To find paradise we must be concerned with the happiness and security of “the least of these.”

Nicholas Berdayev once wrote that none of us will be saved until all of us are saved. I can’t be truly happy until the last guy is safely home.