collective action

On the one hand, I am as frustrated as anyone with the intractable, deadly conflicts around the promotion of purportedly untainted universal truths that would bring everybody together if only “all those other people would just come to their senses and accept what is obvious to us”. I’m not going to pretend that that I’m OK with manipulative public pulpiteering or that there is nothing wrong with cynically invoking ostentatiously spiritual sentimentality to promote political agendas. I will not go along with willfully ignorant denial of factual reality or condone reckless self-deception with my silence. On the other hand, it is cruel and unnecessary to pull the rug out from under anyone who relies on religion for comfort, security, unconditional love, worthy and meaningful purposefulness, encouragement, and/or a sense of connection with other people and with something larger than themselves. Disparaging those who are doing the best they can to get by does not make the world better or us seem smarter. It only pits us against each other, gets us unnecessarily bogged down in a counterproductive side issue, and takes up energy that could be directed toward common goals. 

The possibility of working together toward a more promising future is not a ridiculously idealistic fantasy. Pursuing it takes us down a brightly-lit, broad highway that has led the greater human community to many historic breakthroughs, surprising victories, and revolutionary accomplishments. Those who have preceded us on that venerable highway didn’t know any better than to challenge set ideas about what is possible. Considerable obstacles notwithstanding, finding solutions to the most difficult problems the global human community faces is not complicated. What we need to do to move forward is as obvious as first grade arithmetic because the main requirement is to get in touch with our commonality, and by definition, commonality is common. While it would be unrealistic to aim for unanimity, if we can translate what we largely share in common with each other into a nonpartisan commitment to the common cause of building up social, political, and economic institutions that foster freedom, fairness, opportunity, personal responsibility, and the common welfare, we can find a rallying point that would bring us together around a shared vision for a society that is more hospitable to basic human decency. There are enough of us who are capable of experiencing a deep mutual affinity that is firmly grounded in our common concerns, our common interests, and our ability to identify and empathize with each other. We can achieve critical mass, unite behind the goal of encouraging sustainable economic growth, and promote a more broadly prosperous global human community through a large scale collaborative effort.

What stands in the way is not a shortage of talent, brainpower, or resources; instead, we are defeated at the very outset by our fear, our short-sightedness, and our cynicism. Whoever first observed that it is amazing what people can accomplish if they don’t care who gets the credit deserves more credit than he or she was probably looking to receive, but actually, what is even more amazing is how many of our worst problems would simply evaporate if we could see the attention-grabbing and the ostentatious self-importance that we take for granted for what they are, a sad charade of one-upmanship produced by childish insecurity. In recent centuries, humanity has come to recognize that the earth is not the center of the universe; most of us however have not outgrown the tendency to view the universe though anthropocentric, ethnocentric, or egocentric eyes. Our skewed perspective distorts reality, crowds out empathy, humility, respect, and trust, and severely limits our ability to work through conflicts, to appreciate our complementary differences, and to foster meaningful unity, impactful solidarity, and productive collaboration. We trade in hope, confident wellbeing, and goodwill for social rituals that perpetuate an endemic pattern of wasted talent, misused time, and misdirected energy. The considerable good that ordinary people have to contribute is driven out of the process or buried by greedy, aggressive pursuits of power prestige and ugly displays of territorialism which are like the dance that dogs do with fire hydrants, often under a thin veil of sanctimonious pretence of moral superiority. 

Consequently, who we are becomes shaped by a paranoiac need to protect ourselves against real and imagined adversaries and against any troubling circumstance, intrusive idea, or uncomfortable awareness that would topple the houses of cards that pretend to offer security and places to hide. A bunker mentality sets in. We hide inside our fortresses of discontented obliviousness, surrounded by stockpiles of yesterday’s distractions, anxiously guarding sentimentalized versions of reality, elaborate museums of what never was, shrines to what will never be, mausoleums of foreclosed possibilities, and hollowed out spaces that accusingly echo and amplify our regrets. We become trapped in a vicious circle of fear, hoarding, and scarcity. As with someone dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean, what we need is abundant but tragically unavailable. Even more tragic, our deprivation is self-inflicted. The situation we are in is akin to the hell described in an old parable known as the allegory of the long spoons. In the parable, everyone in Hell is perpetually hungry because the only means of eating is with spoons that are too long. They are incapable of getting any food into their mouths because of their aversion to feeding each other. In the real world, being in a situation in which the simple willingness make choices that would bolster a rising tide that lifts all boats is too weak to overcome the warranted fear of being taken advantage of is what is known as a collective action problem. The solution is obvious; however, it involves cooperation, intelligent pooling of resources, and trust that others are going to follow suit, and because of costs, risks, and insufficient incentives at the level of the individual, what happens instead is a cascading race to the bottom. Dreams of what could be sit on the shelf collecting dust, producing a return on investment equivalent to hiding our life savings under the mattress.

Recovering humanity, playing on two meanings of the word humanity, humanity as a set of personal characteristics we all share in common and humanity as a collective entity of which we are each inescapably a part, is about the natural reciprocal relationship between the vulnerability that is inherent in humanity at the individual level and the strength that emerges when we gather seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces drawn from our fragmentary understandings and our disparate perspectives and combine them into something resembling a unified whole. As each of us stokes the glowing embers of human sympathy that smolder in our hearts, we augment our bond with the humanity that all of us together instantiate. And coming from the other end, as we recover a communal bond with the humanity arrayed around us, we enrich our connection with the humanity within that is our birthright. We find new connections by looking inward at our own restlessness and incompleteness, looking outward for companionship, similarities that we can identify with, and for ways to belong and participate, looking inward again for stirrings of our most authentically human responsiveness, and looking outward again toward possibilities beyond our own limited reach as separate individuals. If we accept the challenge, dare to care, venture out from the cozy cocoons within which we smugly insulate ourselves, reawaken our imagination, dredge up our buried dreams, bring to the table underutilized talents and untapped strengths, replace unverifiable suppositions with human-centered actualities, and cultivate optimism and openness through mutual encouragement and trust-building, our hopeful gamble will be rewarded over the long haul, if not always in the near term.

the importance of a strong middle class

Being able to maintain a basic sense of human decency while doing what it takes to have a reasonably prosperous life shouldn't be a luxury. It should be the norm. What that means is that economic policies that build up the middle class need to be a priority. There are other reasons for ensuring a stable middle class besides the benefits that are experienced at a personal level. An economy that fosters a large middle class is a healthy economy and an essential ingredient of a healthy society. One of the main features of politically and/or economically oppressive countries is that they don't have much of a middle class. They simply don't offer any opportunity for individuals to, through honest means, improve their socioeconomic status. And when there are few people who have much money to buy products, the economy remains stagnant and depressed. In addition, when there are few people who are not either in a desperate struggle for survival or among those who benefit from a corrupt political process that supports economic and social injustice, human rights and governmental accountability inevitably go by the wayside.

living large

Human social instincts are paradoxical. On the one hand, it is quite natural and common for human beings to make sacrifices for others. On the other hand, the very biological traits that predispose us to loyalty and kindness can turn us into ruthless killers if we believe that people we care about are threatened. The true spirit of a warrior is less about hatred of the enemy than it is about love for his own tribe or nation. Some of the worst wars ever fought were waged in the name of a loving god.

If we examine the paradox of our social instincts more deeply, we discover an even greater paradox than that love for one's own can translate into murderous hatred of everybody else. Human altruism is paradoxically selfish at its core. That might sound cynical, but the take-home point is not about diminishing the nobility of altruists; instead, it is a useful insight by which we can construct a realistic and sustainable rationale for morally virtuous choices and thereby strengthen the human capacity for benevolence. The question shifts from how to find the right balance between selfishness and unselfishness toward how to pursue both in a way that enhances each of them.

In general, win/win solutions are more likely to succeed and are more stable than win/lose approaches that pit our own interests directly against those of others in a zero sum competition which allows us to win only to the exact extent that someone else loses. Asking people to be noble and support win/lose choices that involve setting aside what they want for themselves and for the people they care about for the sake of some abstract good inspires healthy skepticism, but inviting them to make personal sacrifices for the sake of the common welfare from which they tangibly benefit can tap into a deep well of extraordinary largess.

Most of us, at least in moments when fear is not driving the bus, welcome opportunities to enlarge our worlds. We don't want to view the world through the lens of fear and pessimism. We want to be defined by what we love and by what we have to offer rather than by our hatred or our cruel indifference. Deep down, we know that our greatest happiness does not come from the possessions we pitifully cling to; instead, it comes with feeling like what we do makes a positive difference. Wanting that happiness is the ultimate selfishness.