What Do We Owe Each Other?

Here’s an incredible understatement: the last two years have been really, really hard for a lot of people. There isn’t room enough to catalog the trials, challenges, and grief that billions of people have endured in the last few years. So many people were dealing with tremendously difficult circumstances before COVID entered stage right while nobody was looking. And, it just won’t leave.

The phrase “future shock” comes to mind; a phrase popularized recently by Jane McGonigal. It’s the idea that events, past and present, are so dramatic on such a large scale that we’re left disoriented.

Our strategies for being happy, healthy, and successful no longer work. Old assumptions no longer hold up. And it’s incredibly difficult to wrap our minds around what exactly is happening, and why. It feels like a collective trauma.

That’s from the introduction to Jane’s new book Imaginable.

Collective trauma. To go on top of the traumas already being experienced by billions. Contemplation of the former traumas was difficult. Doing something about was almost overwhelming. Add to it the difficulties created by COVID and it becomes unimaginable.

We have a lot of societal problems. As societies grow, this tends to be the trajectory: increasingly difficult-to-solve problems. Historically, most societies have been undone by their problems because their people haven’t put forth the effort to stop the unravelling.

One of our big, society-level problems is moral relativism. The level of moral relativism is increasing in leaps and bounds. Strong societies are built on a few moral absolutes that are subverted by certain relativistic views and practices. Ironically, the current relativism was spawned, in large measure, by an almost forced response to generational adherence to other notions that were themselves relativistic and incorrect.

Systemic and endemic racism is a prime example. It is a relativistic view that gained near ubiquitous acceptance in certain parts of the United States over the first hundred years of the country’s history. A civil ward was fought, in great part, over this issue. Unfortunately, to varying degrees, racism still exists in almost every part of the country.

The moral absolute that has been undermined: love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor.

If there were strict adherence to that one moral absolute, there would be no hate or crime of any kind. There would be no poverty; no greed. No one would ever seek advantage over another.

In most respects, I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. However, I do believe there are forces at work intended to create divisiveness among all people. We could go down a great, long rabbit hole trying to guess at their motivation; what they hope to achieve by dividing us. However, it’s clear that’s what they want. That’s why their rhetoric is always delivered with acrimony toward “the other side”.

In short: they (whoever they are) want us to be enemies.

In many ways, they’re succeeding. So, so many small things along with a few really big ones have incrementally pushed us to where we are as a society. The small things were almost imperceptible. The big ones were meant to move us and distract us.

So, what do we do about it?

I don’t know anything about your temperament; if you’re given quickly to anger or generally a kind person. I think we’ve all had experiences where we’ve lost our temper with another person. No one would ever feel justified in lashing out at another person if no one ever lashed out at each other.

Getting started can be hard so we start small. Consider one person who, for the most part, you like, but that does something that annoys you.

Go do something nice for that person; doesn’t matter what it is. Just be kinder than normal to them. Then, do it the next day, and the next. Pick the same person, pick a different one. It doesn’t matter.

In our house, we often say, “kindness begins with you.” To which my children always respond, “No it doesn’t. It starts with k.” I’ve realized the error in my statement. Kindness, as it turns out, actually doesn’t begin with you.

Kindness begins with me.

You see, nobody owes me anything. I, however, owe it to everyone to be kind to them.

Kindness; precisely what we owe each other.

While it definitely matters how other people behave, I have no control over them or their actions.

I can, however, control my own. If I’m kind, perhaps that kindness will “rub off” on another who will, in turn, be kind.

One person at a time.