There is a very interesting poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Sons of Martha, which — as I understand it — is highly popular among engineers. This is the poem:
The Sons of Mary seldom bother,
for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother
of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once,
and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons,
world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages
to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages;
it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly;
it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly
the Sons of Mary by land and main.
They say to mountains ``Be ye removèd.''
They say to the lesser floods ``Be dry.''
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd---
they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit---
then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,
pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
They finger Death at their gloves' end
where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend:
they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear,
they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer,
and goad and turn him till evenfall.
To these from birth is Belief forbidden;
from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden—
under the earthline their altars are—
The secret fountains to follow up,
waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup,
and pour them again at a city's drouth.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them
a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them
to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways,
so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days
that their brethren's ways may be long in the land.
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood
to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood
some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven,
not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given
to his own kind in their common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd—
they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd,
and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet—they hear the Word—
they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and—
the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!
It's a very powerful poem. It evokes one of the strongest images: the poor. Yet the thing about it which is most powerful is how utterly and completely it misses the point — not only the theological point of the passage that the poem is about, but even the practical point one might draw from the poem itself.
Before explaining, though, perhaps it would be a good idea to review the original.
In the course of their journey he came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who say down at the Lord's feet and listened to him speaking. Now Martha who was distracted with all the serving said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.' But the Lord answered: 'Martha, Marha,' he said 'you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.'
It's hard to believe that the theological point even needs stating — the notion that a God who took on flesh as a poor carpenter born in a stable, was crucified, died, and was buried did so in order to assure the physical comfort of those who listened to him is not worth answering intelligently. The only ways that I can think of to believe in Kipling's interpretation are:
- To utterly and completely ignore the bible and instead pay attention to the actions of a large subset of Christians, or
- be an utter idiot.
So much for the theological side. For the practical side, the complaint is essentially that there's a group of people who do thankless and dangerous jobs for no identifiable reason. Or, more eloquently, "simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need."
Except if it were simple service simply given for a common need, they wouldn't complain or feel slighted. That just isn't the meaning of "simple".
So what it amounts to is objecting that a thankless task is thankless. This is a rather stupid thing for people who do their labor "not as a witness to any creed". What is the sense in appealing to a universal justice that one rejects? Indeed, for a practical man, the only practical option is to do the task without regard to thanks (of what practical value are thanks, anyway?) or to leave off doing it entirely. As the dentist said when a patient complained that her tooth her when she pushed on it a certain day, "don't push on it that way".
(Of course, practical men rarely are. What most men mean when they say that they are practical is that they don't want to know what they're doing, they just want to get on with doing it. 'Practical' is a nicer word than 'lazy', though, and far better than 'an intellectual coward'.)
Incidentally, this is the reason why Marx was so completely wrong. What he failed to understand is really twofold:
- The proletariat prefers his exploitation to fending for himself in nature red in tooth and claw. There has always been wilderness within a few days walk that one could run off to and live like an animal. That is, the proletariat recognizes that compared to, say, nearly every other living thing, he has it pretty damn good.
- The revolutionarily minded of the proletariat revolt all the time — they start their own businesses.
Now, for the above to make sense it must be understood that the proletariat is a very modern phenomenon. Medieval serfs were not proletariat in any meaningful sense — there wasn't enough production for the concept to be meaningful. Moreover, there couldn't be Marx's Proletariat so long as there were Medieval guilds.
Suffice it to say that the proletariat is a phenomenon of the last two hundred years or so. Now, to be fair to Marx, he did live in Europe — rigid, socially frozen Europe. Yet even in Europe there was a merchant class. Before Marx was ever born there were men who made themselves rich through trade.
Indeed, it was around the time of Marx that there arose the phenomenon of impoverished nobility — wealthy men without money who lived by selling what their ancestors had accumulated. It is often forgotten that they did not sell their land to nobility but to merchants. Indeed, it is the curious open secret of England, for example, that many — if not most — of its noble families were not noble for long. It was during the 1800s especially that rich merchants purchased titles (though the phenomenon of rich men becoming nobility in practice if not in title had been going on for a while before).
But since extreme examples are always the easiest, consider Andrew Carnegie. It is often forgotten either because he was a great philanthropist or because he was a great exploiter, but if you want a story of a worker taking control of the means of production, you won't find a better one. And to return to Kipling's poem, it raises a very interesting question: was Carnegie a son of Martha or a son of Mary?
The answer to that question is also the obvious point that Kipling's poem managed somehow to miss: if the sons of Mary have it so much better than the sons of Martha, then be a son of Mary, not a son of Martha.
Kipling does address this idea in his line "To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar." Of course, if you're going to invoke predestination, it's rather unfair to complain of those predestined to a better life. It's not like they had anything to do with it, or could change that even if they wanted to. Really, if one really wants to invoke predestination, there's nothing more to say. Besides, perhaps, "Oh, Shut up!" Why should Kipling get to appeal (indirectly) to choice while defending his appeal with predestination? It's not logically inconsistent, since there is no (human) logic if predestination is true, but it's just undignified. It's as bad as punching someone and then immediately preaching universal pacifism.
The Sons of Martha is a very strange poem. It's beautiful and thoroughly stupid at the same time, and in many ways for the same reasons. It is, though not consciously, a poem about human weakness. The weakness of those who were no stronger than to labor thanklessly for others and the weakness of the poet to understand it — or anything else.