MLK-Drum_Major_Instinct_edited
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00:00:30.400 | The presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers.
00:00:36.880 | You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion.
00:00:42.880 | And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you in the bind.
00:00:48.520 | In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey.
00:00:53.680 | In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car.
00:00:59.240 | In order to be lovely to love, you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume.
00:01:06.120 | And you know before you know it, you're just buying that stuff.
00:01:09.960 | That's the way the advertisers do it.
00:01:11.400 | I got a letter the other day and it was a magazine coming out and it opened up, opened
00:01:17.840 | up, "Dear Dr. King, as you know you are on many mailing lists and you are categorized
00:01:25.200 | as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you
00:01:32.440 | will want to read what I have to say."
00:01:34.160 | Of course I did.
00:01:35.160 | After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it.
00:01:41.320 | But very seriously, it goes through life.
00:01:44.480 | The drum major instinct is real.
00:01:48.760 | And you know what else that happens or causes to happen?
00:01:53.520 | It often causes us to live above our means.
00:01:58.400 | (Make it plain, make it plain.)
00:02:01.040 | It's nothing but the drum major instinct.
00:02:03.640 | (Yeah)
00:02:04.640 | You ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income?
00:02:14.360 | You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who aren't enough to have a
00:02:20.560 | good T Model 4.
00:02:23.760 | (Make it plain, make it plain.)
00:02:26.240 | But it feeds a repressed ego.
00:02:29.880 | You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual
00:02:36.760 | income.
00:02:37.760 | So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than
00:02:44.040 | about twenty-five hundred.
00:02:46.360 | That's just good economics.
00:02:49.800 | And if it's a family of two and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they
00:02:56.040 | would have to make out with one car.
00:02:59.680 | That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient.
00:03:04.360 | But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a
00:03:09.080 | car that costs six thousand?
00:03:11.360 | And they wonder why their ends never meet.
00:03:14.600 | That's a fact.
00:03:18.560 | Now the economists also say that your house shouldn't cost—if you're buying a house,
00:03:22.400 | it shouldn't cost more than twice your income.
00:03:26.600 | That's based on the economy and how you would make ends meet.
00:03:29.480 | So if you have an income of five thousand dollars—it's kind of difficult in this
00:03:36.200 | society—but say it's a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house
00:03:41.160 | shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand.
00:03:44.480 | But I've seen folk making ten thousand dollars living in forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar
00:03:50.160 | houses.
00:03:52.120 | And you know, they just barely make it.
00:03:55.120 | They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in.
00:04:00.920 | Never have anything to put away for rainy days.
00:04:05.320 | But now the problem is, it is the drum-major instinct.
00:04:09.760 | And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum-major instinct taking
00:04:14.680 | them over, and they just live their lives trying to outdo the gentleman.
00:04:20.360 | They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better
00:04:26.640 | looking than Mary's coat.
00:04:27.640 | And I've got to drive this car because it's something about this car that makes my car
00:04:36.160 | a little better than my neighbor's car.
00:04:39.080 | I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house, and other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar
00:04:46.640 | houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar
00:04:53.320 | house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house, and I don't know where he's going
00:04:57.680 | to end up if he's going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.
00:05:03.400 | There comes a time that the drum-major instinct can become destructive.
00:05:12.320 | And that's where I want to move now.
00:05:15.360 | I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes
00:05:25.880 | a very dangerous, pernicious instinct.
00:05:29.400 | For instance, if it isn't harnessed, it causes one's personality to become distorted.
00:05:36.960 | I guess that's the most damaging aspect of it, what it does to the personality.
00:05:44.640 | If it isn't harnessed, you will end up, day in and day out, trying to deal with your ego
00:05:53.760 | problem by boasting.
00:05:55.640 | Have you ever heard people that, you know—and I'm sure you've met them—that really become
00:06:01.600 | sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves, and they just
00:06:09.680 | boast and boast and boast, and that's a person who has not harnessed the drum-major instinct.
00:06:19.520 | And then it does other things to the personality.
00:06:23.720 | It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes.
00:06:27.720 | There are some people who are influence peddlers, and in that attempt to deal with the drum-major
00:06:36.560 | instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people.
00:06:43.320 | And if you're not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don't
00:06:49.480 | really know.
00:06:50.480 | They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this and that.
00:06:56.640 | That happens to people.
00:06:57.840 | And the other thing is that it causes one to engage, ultimately, in activities that
00:07:06.840 | are merely used to get attention.
00:07:09.720 | Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum-major
00:07:15.200 | instinct.
00:07:16.880 | They don't feel that they're getting enough attention through the normal channels of social
00:07:22.120 | behavior, and so they turn to antisocial behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel
00:07:29.600 | important.
00:07:30.600 | And so they get that gun, and before they know it, they rob the bank in a quest for
00:07:36.600 | recognition and a quest for importance.
00:07:40.840 | And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails
00:07:49.180 | to harness this instinct, he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself
00:07:56.760 | up.
00:07:57.760 | And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities.
00:08:03.320 | You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people because you are trying to pull them
00:08:09.360 | down in order to push yourself up.
00:08:11.840 | And the great issue of life is to harness the drum-major instinct.
00:08:19.400 | Now, the other problem is, when you don't harness the drum-major instinct, this uncontrolled
00:08:28.440 | aspect of it is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism.
00:08:34.040 | It leads to snobbish exclusivism.
00:08:39.760 | Now, you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I'm in a fraternity,
00:08:51.080 | I'm in two or three—for sororities and all of these.
00:08:56.640 | I'm not talking against them, I'm saying it's the danger.
00:09:01.440 | The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism, where somehow
00:09:10.400 | you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive, and that's fulfilling
00:09:16.400 | something, you know.
00:09:17.400 | And I'm in this fraternity, and it's the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can't
00:09:22.920 | get in this fraternity.
00:09:26.000 | So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.
00:09:31.400 | And you know, that can happen with the church.
00:09:33.320 | I know churches get in that bind sometimes.
00:09:35.440 | (Yes, yes, they get plain luke.)
00:09:37.720 | I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors and so many
00:09:45.120 | schoolteachers and so many lawyers and so many businessmen in our church."
00:09:54.820 | And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers and businessmen, teachers,
00:09:59.320 | they ought to be in church.
00:10:01.000 | But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as
00:10:07.040 | if the other people don't count.
00:10:13.560 | The church is the one place where the doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor.
00:10:20.080 | The church is the one place where the Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D.
00:10:24.560 | The church is the one place that the schoolteacher ought to forget the degree she has behind
00:10:29.360 | her name.
00:10:30.360 | The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer.
00:10:35.400 | And any church that violates the "whosoever will let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold
00:10:42.520 | church, and nothing but a little soldier with a fiendishness of religiosity.
00:10:47.400 | The church is true to its job.
00:10:49.600 | It says, "Whosoever will let him come."
00:10:52.440 | It says, "Whosoever will let him come."
00:10:56.960 | And it does not suppose to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct.
00:11:03.320 | It's the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master
00:11:10.080 | and savior.
00:11:11.080 | And a recognition grows out of this that all men are brothers because they are children
00:11:18.800 | of a common father.
00:11:19.800 | The drum major instinct leads to exclusivist wanting.
00:11:24.520 | The drum major instinct can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he's a
00:11:32.160 | little better than that person who doesn't have it.
00:11:35.200 | Or because he has some economic security, that he's a little better than that person
00:11:39.360 | who doesn't have it.
00:11:41.800 | That's the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.
00:11:47.320 | Now the other thing is that it leads to tragic, and we've seen it happen so often, tragic
00:11:56.080 | race prejudice.
00:11:59.200 | This recording is briefly interrupted at this point.
00:12:01.880 | We see with our own eyes, in fact not too long ago a man down in Mississippi said that
00:12:10.720 | God was a charter member of the White Citizens Council.
00:12:19.800 | And so God being the charter member means that everybody who's in that has a kind of
00:12:26.800 | divinity, a kind of superiority.
00:12:29.160 | And think of what has happened in history as a result of this perverted use of the drum
00:12:36.720 | major instinct that has led to the most tragic prejudice, the most tragic expressions of
00:12:43.240 | man's inhumanity to man.
00:12:46.720 | The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail.
00:12:57.360 | And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed
00:13:05.440 | coming around the cell to talk about the race problem.
00:13:09.760 | And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating, and they were showing
00:13:15.160 | us where segregation was so right, and they were showing us where intermarriage was so
00:13:23.760 | wrong.
00:13:24.760 | So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking calmly because they wanted
00:13:29.920 | to talk about it.
00:13:31.520 | And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about
00:13:39.280 | where they lived and how much they were earning.
00:13:44.120 | And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now you know what?
00:13:49.400 | You ought to be marching with us.
00:13:53.920 | You just as poor as Negro."
00:13:59.600 | And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through
00:14:07.760 | prejudice and blindness you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American
00:14:14.640 | society oppress poor white people.
00:14:18.760 | And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white and the drum-major
00:14:24.640 | instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you're white.
00:14:29.040 | And you're so poor you can't send your children to school.
00:14:31.560 | You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."
00:14:36.360 | Now that's the fact.
00:14:38.600 | The poor white has been put into this position where through blindness and prejudice he is
00:14:46.040 | forced to support his oppressors, and all the things he has gone for him is the false
00:14:52.560 | feeling that he is superior because his skin is white and can hardly eat and make his ends
00:14:58.080 | meet week in and week out.
00:15:02.400 | Not only does it stop, and not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes
00:15:10.360 | into the struggle between nations.
00:15:14.080 | And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the
00:15:18.240 | nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy.
00:15:23.320 | And if something doesn't happen to stop this trend, I'm sorely afraid that we won't be
00:15:31.640 | here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years.
00:15:39.320 | If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none
00:15:49.080 | of us are going to be around, because somebody is going to make the mistake through our senseless
00:15:54.640 | blundering of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere, and then another one is going to drop.
00:16:00.400 | And don't let anybody fool you.
00:16:04.280 | This can happen within a matter of seconds.
00:16:06.800 | They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New
00:16:12.720 | York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away and every building.
00:16:17.200 | And we can do the same thing to Russian China.
00:16:19.680 | But this is why we are drifting, and we are drifting there, because nations are caught
00:16:25.080 | up with the drum-major instinct, "I must be first, I must be supreme, our nation must
00:16:31.880 | rule the world."
00:16:32.880 | And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit.
00:16:41.400 | And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see
00:16:47.520 | the drift that it has taken.
00:16:50.280 | God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now.
00:16:55.720 | God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam.
00:17:03.400 | And we are criminals in that war.
00:17:05.040 | We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to
00:17:09.120 | continue to say it.
00:17:10.920 | And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.
00:17:17.160 | But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.
00:17:20.400 | And the God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me."
00:17:27.440 | He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews,
00:17:35.120 | "Don't play with me, Israel.
00:17:36.120 | Don't play with me, Babylon.
00:17:37.120 | Be still and know that I'm God.
00:17:38.120 | And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your
00:17:49.720 | power."
00:17:50.720 | And that can happen to America.
00:17:55.120 | Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and
00:18:00.320 | when I come and look at America, I say to myself, "The parallels are frightening."
00:18:07.120 | We have perverted the drummage instinct.
00:18:13.680 | Let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying.
00:18:24.560 | What was the answer that Jesus gave these men?
00:18:27.720 | It's very interesting.
00:18:30.520 | One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them.
00:18:36.240 | One would have thought that Jesus would have said, "You are out of your place.
00:18:42.960 | You are selfish.
00:18:45.480 | Why would you raise such a question?"
00:18:48.000 | That isn't what Jesus did.
00:18:50.920 | He did something altogether different.
00:18:53.480 | He said in substance, "Oh, I see.
00:18:57.800 | You want to be first.
00:19:01.940 | You want to be great.
00:19:05.320 | You want to be important.
00:19:08.480 | You want to be significant.
00:19:10.440 | Well, you ought to be.
00:19:14.880 | If you want to be my disciple, you must be."
00:19:21.800 | He reordered priorities, and he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct.
00:19:29.080 | It's a good instinct if you use it right.
00:19:32.760 | It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it.
00:19:36.320 | Don't give it up.
00:19:38.040 | Keep feeling the need for being important.
00:19:42.080 | Keep feeling the need for being first.
00:19:45.080 | But I want you to be first in love.
00:19:52.080 | I want you to be first in moral excellence.
00:19:54.200 | I want you to be first in generosity.
00:19:57.600 | That is what I want you to do."
00:20:01.320 | He transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness.
00:20:08.840 | And you know how he said it?
00:20:10.080 | He said, "Now, brethren, I can't give you greatness, and really, I can't make you first."
00:20:20.240 | This is what Jesus said to James and John.
00:20:22.880 | "You must earn it.
00:20:26.880 | True greatness comes not by favoritism but by fitness.
00:20:34.840 | The right hand and the left are not mine to give; they belong to those who are prepared."
00:20:47.360 | And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness.
00:20:51.520 | If you want to be important, wonderful.
00:20:54.620 | If you want to be recognized, wonderful.
00:20:58.040 | If you want to be great, wonderful.
00:21:00.360 | But recognize that "he who is greatest among you shall be your servant."
00:21:07.680 | That's a new definition of greatness.
00:21:11.240 | This morning, the thing that I like about it, by giving that definition of greatness,
00:21:16.840 | it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
00:21:23.400 | You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
00:21:27.640 | You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
00:21:35.400 | You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
00:21:39.000 | You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve.
00:21:43.840 | You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
00:21:51.880 | You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant.
00:22:09.120 | I know a man, and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover
00:22:16.520 | who I'm talking about as I go down the way, because he was a great one.
00:22:23.680 | He just went about serving.
00:22:26.440 | He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman.
00:22:39.080 | Then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was
00:22:49.560 | thirty years old.
00:22:52.720 | Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher.
00:23:02.920 | And he went about doing some things.
00:23:06.080 | He didn't have much; he never wrote a book.
00:23:10.920 | He never held an office.
00:23:14.200 | He never had a family.
00:23:16.920 | He never owned a house.
00:23:20.160 | He never went to college.
00:23:21.160 | He never visited a big city.
00:23:27.080 | He never went two hundred miles from where he was born.
00:23:33.840 | He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness.
00:23:40.000 | He had no credentials but himself.
00:23:45.680 | He was only a little one.
00:23:46.680 | The eye of the public began to look at him.
00:23:49.680 | They called him a rouse.
00:23:52.600 | They turned against him.
00:23:57.320 | They called him a rabble-rouser.
00:24:00.440 | They called him a troublemaker.
00:24:04.280 | They said he was an agitator.
00:24:08.280 | He practiced civil disobedience.
00:24:10.840 | He broke injunctions.
00:24:13.360 | And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial.
00:24:19.880 | And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them.
00:24:26.740 | One of his closest friends denied him.
00:24:30.160 | Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies.
00:24:36.480 | And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession
00:24:46.680 | that he had in the world.
00:24:49.720 | When he was dead, he was buried in a barraton through the pity of a friend.
00:24:58.300 | Nineteen centuries have come and gone.
00:25:03.460 | Today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history.
00:25:12.260 | All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the pirates that
00:25:22.320 | ever stood, all kings that ever went to jail, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:26.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to hell, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:27.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to hell,
00:25:28.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:29.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:30.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:31.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:32.320 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:25:55.560 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven,
00:26:23.400 | and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven.
00:26:53.240 | I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral, and I don't think of it in
00:26:59.360 | a morbid sense.
00:27:02.360 | Every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?"
00:27:07.680 | And I leave the word to you this morning.
00:27:10.640 | If any of you are around, when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral.
00:27:20.320 | And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.
00:27:26.080 | Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say.
00:27:28.560 | Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important.
00:27:34.000 | Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important.
00:27:39.320 | Tell them not to mention where I went to school.
00:27:42.920 | I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his
00:27:49.560 | life serving others.
00:27:52.240 | I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody.
00:27:59.080 | I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the wall question.
00:28:04.480 | I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.
00:28:11.000 | I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were
00:28:17.280 | naked.
00:28:18.280 | I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were imprisoned.
00:28:25.080 | I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
00:28:30.560 | Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice.
00:28:37.920 | Say that I was a drum major for peace, I was a drum major for righteousness, and all of
00:28:44.000 | the other shallow things will not matter.
00:28:47.440 | I won't have any money to leave behind.
00:28:51.440 | I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind, but I just want to
00:28:57.560 | leave a committed life behind.
00:28:59.680 | And that's all I want to say.
00:29:02.080 | If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a war song, if I
00:29:10.560 | can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
00:29:17.440 | If I can do my duty as a Christian, or if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
00:29:24.400 | if I can spread the message as the Master taught, then my living will not be in vain.
00:29:32.360 | Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason.
00:29:39.440 | I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or
00:29:46.160 | position, but I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment
00:29:54.840 | to others so that we can make of this old world a new world.
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