On the Elephant in the Room, How to Turn Our World Around from Self Destruction, It's a Learned Skill
Time to point out elephant in the room: empathy, sympathy, compassion, & love are learned skills that also need to be practiced. We like to think of them as common sense characteristics, but unfortunately, no. Malice, jealousy, anger, & hate are also learned skills. Depression, I will grant has an instinctual edge to it. In my belief, we need the presence and active connection with people. Without that connection, we will fall into depression.
People get ridiculed for saying things like "I didn't understand until I had my daughter. . .", "I didn't understand until I married my [ethnicity] wife. . .", "I didn't understand until I made a [LGBTQ+] friend. . .". It sounds dumb, sure, but we maybe we should work to encourage/push the exposure into new encounters (try to encourage a level of humble listening before bowling in) so that such phrases become tedious to the person saying them. The person eventually won't need the qualifier. They realize it's fact, it becomes a norm.
I apologize to marginalized folks that have to bear the burden of privileged people without humbleness. You don't deserve it. You shouldn't be obligated to be an ambassador.
That's why literature & art is awesome. Those from outside can get a glimpse without annoying people. Heck, it wouldn't hurt city-folk like me too read more narratives about rural-folk. It's a two-way street. I may not approve of some behavior on the Right lately, but I want to understand, even to just contribute to things for a better you or making your conditions better [frankly, I blame a propaganda machine than I blame you].
I feel the same for everyone. I want to help everyone become their better themselves at minimal cost to anyone else. In my belief system, your better self helps me become better, and we can help other people become better. We don't necessarily have to go out of our way, we just have to be our better selves and be open to new experiences. Frankly, I think it can be patronizing to try too hard to seek too hard for encounters. They can happen naturally just by leaving your locale.
Now a criticism of our aggregate social decisions, when it comes to education and schools: We focus so much on test scores and for preparing to get to the next stage (high school to college to career and/or to graduate school and/or to more school or career). We focus so much on sports and STEM. We focus so much on finance and the GDP. All those hard numbers and spectator entertainment, but we don't focus enough on our hearts, our souls, our connection to other people and the world around us, so we end up hurting others and destroying the world.
We need to invest in our schools, our teachers, our literature classes, our art classes, our music classes, our drama classes, and heck, we should look into having journaling and reflection classes. Instead, we've focused all our investment into the physical and the quick money, but at the cost of what? We're developing people who blame other people, who can't relate with other people, who can't see that other people are in pain and need assistance.
Maybe financial bros would pitch in more to help out people on extravagant student loans, a hungry person on the street, wouldn't mind paying taxes to fund welfare, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, healthcare, and other government programs that help others. Maybe polo nationalists or Incels could see that they're not loving themselves enough, they're not valuing themselves enough, they're looking outside too much for validation, that they can find a much more enriching experience by building a actual relationships (which for some people in the Manosphere might require redemption to society -- don't you dare you try to apologize to someone you have hurt) and connecting with people.
We can't just rush into these experiences, though. We need to learn them. Hopefully we learn it from our families and schools and other role models, but we don't always have those resources available to us. Fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, even visual art, criticism, and other things that introduce an expression of self and community identity. These expressions and opennes to them can help bring people out and learn about the experiences and narratives not part of their own lives. Also try to reflect and journal about these things that we have done, observed, read, and however we might have experienced the expression of other people.
I guarantee you, investing in exposing children and people to art and exposing ourselves to it, taking it seriously, reflecting on it, etc. etc. will lead to richer life, an exposure to more trust and good faith, and even joy in ways that we can't imagine.
I also want to makes sure to stress that children and people need to be exposed to and reflect upon a variety of literature, art, history, and social sciences not just that of Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman Western European White literature and art, but a variety of perspectives. Additionally, children and people need exposure and reflection upon a multiple variety of viewpoints within different communities and populations. It's not about transmitting an "authentic" viewpoint or "authentic" experience. "Authenticity" often ends up being a white washed watered down version to sell to the privileged and make the privileged feel good about partaking. "Authenticity" doesn't contribute to creating empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love. It just maintains the status quo.
At the very least, exposing people to different communities without buying into "authentication" will lower tensions and help us interact with each other and maybe even understand where we're coming from. As it stands now, we're at each other's throats and will eventually destroy ourselves because we're all trying to get the one up on each other and trying to fulfill what we perceive as our interests, but probably aren't even our real interests, or our better selves.
So, do you want to destroy the world, or do you want to join me and learn how to make a better one?
Edited 6/28/2018 8:24 AM: Added themes of "authenticity" (theme brought back to my immediate thought while reading Hugo nominated Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM by Rebecca Roanhorse at Apex Magazine
If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!
Posts
