People With Connections

Everyone who isn't a complete hermit...and even a few of those, I suspect...has connections.  By this I mean that in their social, economic and family life they are in relationship with certain people who can do things for them, be they supplying protection, better economic, educational and social opportunities...or possibly even some things that are on the underside of society, maybe even beyond the law.  It's this last area that I'm referring to here today, and in doing so I must be oh-so-careful to tread very lightly...

Maybe you've seen the movie Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks, in which a boy with a more limited intellectual capacity nevertheless grows up and enjoys a very fruitful and interesting life.  The people around him...other than his best friend Bubba...all seem to revel in their perceived higher relative intelligence to him and almost without exception seem determined to use their own "smarts" to underhanded means.  Time after time Forrest eschews the seamy connections that others foster and instead directs his own life cleanly, and on his terms.  That may have been one of the biggest lessons I drew from this film.  I don't want to be identified in the least with people I discern are connected with illegal or unethical networks...yet at the same time openly shunning them would seem to imply that I know what they're up to.  So instead I tend to operate in a benignly informal, but distanced manner around those who seem to be the unwarranted hub of social interest and who seem to always have a hand in everything (and everyone) around them that possessing an extroverted or winsome personality does not completely account for...then again, they might simply be constantly on the make.  If the result of this means that those "in the know" decide to regard me as naïve or simple then I suppose that's the way it will have to be. To give a couple more cinematic examples, in The Godfather and Taxi Driver singer Johnny Fontaine (played by Al Martino) and cabby Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro)...characters on opposite ends of society...nevertheless both contact their respective connections to get what they want. If this article reads like I'm dancing around the subject without directly addressing it, then I've succeeded: if I'm more explicit or detailed then I've missed the point, which is that this is a universal social phenomenon, present in virtually all of our institutions and which tends to corrupt them depending on the degree that leadership tolerates it: each of us has to deal with it in the manner that befits us best. Just keep in mind that behind some connections the system of justice has no due process, and once you're "in" it may be difficult to ever get yourself "out"...