When roaming around the Dayoo.com forum, I noticed a reemerged debate about a lawyer's bitter accusal of some peasant workers' evasion of counsel fees. Opinions were no novelty: some argued for the lawyer while others against him. Revilement at the employers who defaulted wages, while it existed, was occasional. Neither side of the debate achieved an advantage over its opponent. Later, both sides shifted to "greet" each other with appellations like "idiots" and "rascals."

Debate having been replaced by personal attacks, nothing more could make any sense. What a tough task it is to be reasonable! The hardship never lies in the difficulty to explain the theory, but rather that a refutation can somehow exist regardless of how exact and sound the reasoning may be: a coin always has a second side, even though it is a distorted one. This frequently triggers a sense of powerlessness within a reasonable person, especially in the situation where reason is intermixed with a mass-agitating view of ethics and humanity and aided by argumentum ad personam, which can sometimes be overwhelming. And this is exactly what the lawyer have suffered – being heckled with the question "Now that you have been willing to help the (impoverished) peasant workers, who possess a seemingly lower social status, claim their defaulted wages, how can you mercilessly demand them of paying counsel fees?" As a matter of fact, when ethics and humanity are cast aside just for the moment, the issue which the lawyer is encountered with is clear: he earns his own living, though it may be a luxurious one. At any rate, a payment shall be obligatory, albeit a negotiation on fee reduction is possible.

Upon reaching the last post on the last page, I came across a copy of an essay titled Do Not Force Lawyers into Peasant Workers, from near whose ending I excerpted a fragment translated into what follows, which I believe is so conclusive as to be more forceful than plain reasoning:

Our culture has an inclination to overvalue deeds, binding to them an unaffordable (moral) cost. If the altruism that lies behind them comes in fact accompanied by preconditions, such a blemish will immediately be mourned as though gods were disappointingly found to use toilets. But it is never an established fact in the first place that gods never suffer from natural calls.

This really makes the point. As per Abraham Marlow's hierarchy of demands, the lawyer pursued the higher-level demands of self-actualization and esteem before seeking to secure the lower-level one of proprietary security. If he is solely denied of the right to aspire after the latter, with what can he be expected to continue his pursuit of the former?