taking action

Being numb and unresponsive is not who we are, but nobody wants a guilt trip. Most of us already feel guilty about plenty that we can’t do anything about. We don’t have to be reminded that we’ve become unable to respond humanly to what we see directly right around us and indirectly on the news or that we’ve unwittingly become participants in a deeply entrenched unjust social and economic system. It is not readily apparent what specifically any of us can actually do. Even if we truly want to make a positive difference, it’s hard to know how to get a handle on actual solutions. What difference can our woefully small acts of compassion possibly make in the grand scheme of things? Being compassionate seems to have negligible impact, and the risks involved are high. Why should we care about the poor, the war refugees, and the future generations who are going to inherit the messes we leave? The payoff from doing the right thing in the face of what feels like an impersonal, unyielding monolith is low. It has negligible benefit, and the risks involved are high. It’s especially unwise to care too much with regard to issues that are so big they threaten to swallow everything in their path. Our hopeful idealism sets us up for demoralization and hardened cynicism.

Caring is risky. Admitting we care is not cool. Being sensitive invites bullying and mockery and earns us a reputation for being weak, soft, and prone to wallowing in emotionalism. It’s a sure way to become marginalized. (It’s endearing in children, but women and men of consequence in the real world know better.) Caring enough to invest in solutions is costly, frustrating, or just inconvenient. Even if we allow ourselves to be exposed to and to care about troubling realities, even if we fully embrace our humanity, even if we truly want to help out where we can, we can’t escape from the recognition that the human community is rife with human need that can seem like a black hole, with competition for scarce resources, and with recalcitrant selfishness. It feels unsafe to be without any defense against realities that take us out of our comfort zones. The cost-benefit ratio of becoming less numb seems low. Why would we bother ourselves with unpleasant realities and set ourselves up for certain failure and disappointment? Why should we go to the trouble of doing what it takes to come up with actual solutions?

We grow numb amidst a ravenous race to the bottom. The most sensitive burn out. The smartest among us are baffled. The most optimistic become discouraged and give up. The best and the brightest retreat into ivory towers. The most resourceful direct their creativity toward constructing cocoons for themselves. The most ardent social activists become reduced to cartoonish stereotypes. The whole point of working for a more just and compassionate society and seeking effective solutions is buried or just discounted as passé. The resulting fatalism and cynicism creates a social climate that is ripe for an unfortunate glorification of greed and an open season on the cultural values, the attitudes, the sensibilities, and the social institutions that are conducive the common welfare. Some of the problem is that we are immersed in information overload and compassion fatigue, but any honest and informed examination of the human condition puts us face to face with the recognition that not only are we not going to solve the most troubling problems that are inherent in life as we know it, our most well-meaning efforts can and often do make things worse. It is inevitable that we are going to experience a certain amount of discouragement, lost idealism, dampened enthusiasm, and resignation to certain inevitable facts and features of modern life.

What forward movement would even look like is beyond what most of us can grasp. Even if we are determined to do what we can, we rapidly become disheartened because our best efforts seem to have no real impact. Delegating, donating, and doing token volunteer work don’t do much to eliminate the nagging sense of inadequacy that visits us in our moments of greatest honesty. Where do we start solving the problems we can solve? How do we even tell the difference between a problem that can be solved and one that can’t? There are many ways to fail. We can doom our best efforts by superficial assessments of the problem, seeking easy answers, proposing simplistic solutions, or having unrealistic expectations. It is easy to fall into the seductive trap of being smug arm chair generals with imaginary magical powers to command obedience and to authoritatively issue orders that would make the world a better place (at least for people like us), but getting to solutions is going to take more than that, and it is going to take more than pouting, impetuous demands, reckless threats, shadowboxing, creating scapegoats, or mounting protest votes.

The situation is all the more baffling and discouraging because, in spite of the fact that we have at our fingertips an amazing array of technology, knowledge, and other resources, we are embarrassingly inept at challenges that require basic social skills that are taught in kindergarten. Our grownup problems are very messy and complicated, but solving our problems depends more on becoming able to be motivated to find solutions, put aside our personal agendas, get along with each other, and work together than it depends on expertise, special talents, brilliance, or fancy technology. We can’t blame the situation on being confused or on being unable to identify effective solutions. Knowing, in a basic way, what needs to be done is usually not a great mystery. In fact, what it would take to do the right thing can be and often is simple, obvious, and compelling; nonetheless, even when the best response is plain, summoning the courage and resolve to face the task of coming up with realistic ideas, translating them into specific actions that can be carried out by actual human beings, and choreographing the many pieces within the effort can seem like an impossible goal, especially when there is competition for finite resources and our efforts are hampered, as they invariably are, by obstacles like unmotivated and hostile participants.

There is a sense of powerlessness that comes out of feeling like our lives are being invaded by forces over which we have no control. We are assailed by intrusive, insistent social and cultural currents that come at us from all directions. With all our spectacular leaps in technology, communication, and mobility, not only are we constantly and unavoidably exposed to strange, new realities that are too overwhelming to process, but also major collisions of radically differing political and religious viewpoints and the emergence of deep, intractable conflicts in fundamental values have become routine. The global village greets us at our doorstep. There is a perpetual sense of instability and uncertainty that leads to fear, avoidance, anger, and backlash. Information overload and “compassion fatigue” are chronic conditions. Many people feel besieged, frustrated, and full of impotent rage. They consequently adopt escapist beliefs, play the blame game, create scapegoats, and grab onto simplistic solutions. It would be strange if we weren’t bewildered at times. Life comes with a panoply of experiences, impressions, feelings, reflections, and options, which can pile up and become overwhelming.

The good news is that there is a solution; the bad news is that it involves a steep climb. It entirely depends on fallible and fickle human beings like you and me – ordinary human beings with ordinary human abilities and with the usual human flaws. There are no gurus or messiahs who can lead us to the Promised Land, but solutions for our biggest problems don’t depend on extraordinary brilliance. They are not beyond our abilities. The main part of what needs to be done is not terribly complicated or technical. While there are aspects of the solutions that will require special expertise, most people can understand enough to participate in a process whereby we find common cause, pool our talents and personal resources, create new possibilities, and bring about actual solutions. We can’t delegate the work of finding alternative pathways to brainy specialists, to elected officials, to government bureaucrats, or to saintly altruists who toil selflessly on our behalf.

As in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, we have come to the end of the yellow brick road. We are beset by feelings of bewildered inadequacy and are easily taken in by seductive, distracting spectacles, but it turns out that what we are really looking for is not wizardry after all. The solution is instead conspicuously human, ordinary, humble, and much closer to Kansas, or wherever our home might be, than we imagine. What we need, like Dorothy and her companions, is to discover, recognize, and foster what is already in us. The problems we face are formidable, complex, and intractable, but most of what it is going to take to solve them is not the intervention of a special class of people. No matter how dedicated, talented, brilliant, or capable some among us might be, the biggest part of the solution depends on enough ordinary people imagining new possibilities, participating in planning and implementation, investing in success, embracing uncomfortable change, and most of all, finding unsuspected resources within themselves and in the connection we can have with each other.

It’s a tall order. Much will be required of us, but it’s not about being exceptionally smart, talented, or well-equipped. We need a certain amount of courage, resourcefulness, commitment, and willingness to do what it takes, but it is not about being heroes or saints. Doing what it takes to find our hearts and recover our humanity stretches us, but it’s not about guilt or maudlin emotional appeals that manipulatively pluck our heartstrings. Instead, what we need is a new narrative about who we are individually and collectively. We need to move toward a social arrangement that is more about a win/win mindset and less prone to the win/lose culture of rapacious greed. That would mostly involve simply building on what normal, healthy human beings do best – making choices based on what is in our own best interest and that of those we care about, enlarging and deepening what we care about, extending our reach, and intelligently applying ourselves in ways that produce better long term results. It is a more enlightened understanding of self-interest. 

Inherent in this argument is a claim about the psychology involved in the beliefs, perceptions, illusions, desires, attractions, and motivations that drive the pursuit of what will purportedly provide satisfaction. It comes out of questions about how neo-classical economics defines rational choice and a critical examination of what it means to be rational. It is the pursuit of an alternative to the way we allow the market to determine values, thereby repressing our basic humanity, abdicating responsibility for the consequences of our choices, stifling natural human responsiveness, and negligently abandoning our duty to ourselves, our children, and each other. It is, most of all, a claim about what constitutes “the good life” and an invitation to seek something other than, deeper than, more long-lasting than, and greater than settling for the usual fare, being lulled into a distracted stupor, compliantly herded into servile conformity, and hypnotically sedated by bright and shiny objects alluringly dangled before us. It is a claim that there is more to a truly happy life than short-term gain, self-gratification, and getting as much money and power as we can. What most enriches our lives is a blend of elements like being inspired by a worthy sense of purpose, feeling connected to other people and to the natural world, finding a sense of belonging, participating in something larger than ourselves, making sensible choices that lead to experiences of deep satisfaction and true fulfillment, building up reciprocal goodwill, and opening ourselves to serendipitous encounters and unanticipated developments.

But how do we come to terms with conflicting priorities? Where is the line between responsible citizenship and healthy self-interest? Our responses to these questions make a difference. What we care about determines the kind of society we end up with. Caring only about ourselves, money, and power leads one way; caring about children, social and economic justice, the wellbeing of human and other living beings, and ethical and aesthetic choices that are grounded in human responsiveness leads another way. While some would say that the former direction is just about being smart and that the latter is recklessly mushy-headed, most sentient human beings, when push comes to shove, have a preference for responses that are basically kind. If we are confused, fatigued, and numb, that’s all the more reason to chart a course for ourselves that replenishes our innocent hopefulness, awakens new possibilities, welcomes challenges, anticipates setbacks, and avoids pitfalls. For that, we need a sturdy blend of heart and head. To be fully human is to care, but how we act on that matters. We need to use our heads to assess and solve problems, drawing from our experience, our educated understandings, our reasoning powers, our skills, and the gritty pragmatic wisdom of those on the front line.

Conceding defeat is not an option for two reasons. First, the very real prospect of a catastrophic environmental, economic, or geopolitical crisis that would strike at the very heart of civilization as we know it doesn’t really fit into our plans, and second, there are personal costs associated with becoming dehumanized. As Socrates said as he faced the death penalty for refusing to conform to the status quo, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” However we define life, without self-awareness, whatever satisfaction we might find is fragile, hollow, and brief. Even those who seem to go through life obliviously happy, trapped in their cozy bubbles and totally cut off from the difficulties of people around them, are missing out on the best life has to offer, and when a crisis comes up, they have all their eggs in the basket of blissful ignorance and don’t know what to do. To some extent though, we all insulate ourselves from the consequences of our own choices and actions as if we were in a narcotic-induced stupor. Confirmation bias causes us to only see what we want to see. Avoidance and neglect form a vicious circle. We become apathetic, cynical, and complicit. We can put the blame on that amorphous group of supposedly negligent and incompetent people known as “them”, but virtually all of us share some of the responsibility for the way things are.

That maintaining our humanity in the midst of everything that is going on around us is painful, hard, and demoralizing doesn’t mean we need to quit caring about starving children halfway around the world or just not be concerned about problems like climate change. It just means we have some questions to ponder. The most obvious question is what is that we can actually do to turn things around. The operative word is “we”, but not “we” as in an amorphous herd, instead “we” as an aggregation of intelligent participants actively contributing to solutions. It’s not about some “them” that needs to be cajoled or shamed, nor is it about “society” as an objectified “it” that is “out there”. We can’t just mold the social order into something that we want it to be or direct it the way we want it to go. There’s no steering wheel or rudder; instead, society as we know it is an aggregation of individual choices, our choices. Everything we do is a vote for some intended or unintended social reality. There is no ready-made mechanism by which society as a whole can creatively and aptly respond to problems. Nothing short of a radical change in the basic equation will lead to the tipping point we need.