Compassion is no longer in fashion. Cruelty clothed in the name of efficiency seems to be in. Gratitude and humility are out. Corrosiveness and retribution clothed in the name of meritocracy and fairness are in. We are seeing the birth of a new religion, one that is so unlike any of the famous world religions. Whether you believed in Karma or Christ it used to be that showing compassion towards the less fortunate, knowing that your own position in life is fleeting and true salvation/ nirvana/ moksha lies in realizing the ephemeral nature of our existence were tenets to live by. Now that most of us have a religion-shaped hole in our lives we, (especially those of us who are fortunate) seem to have filled it up with self deluding myths about "deservedness" and "just rewards" as though each of us rose to our positions in life purely by self-effort. In this form of self-mythology, there is no room for chance, contingency, luck, and everything boils down to choice.
And it is here I am grateful for Robert Sapolsky’s monumental work Determined which I urge everyone (especially those who believe that they have succeeded purely on the basis of the choices they made in life) to read. His thesis in the book is stated simply as “we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck over which we had no control that has brought us to any moment.” He spends 500 pages examining every piece of scientific evidence from neuroscience, animal behavior, genetics, and even quantum physics on the question of free will and intent and concludes that:
“there is no justifiable “deserve.” The only possible moral conclusion is that you are no more entitled to have your needs and desires met than is any other human. That there is no human who is less worthy than you to have their well-being considered. You may think otherwise, because you can’t conceive of the threads of causality beneath the surface that made you you, because you have the luxury of deciding that effort and self-discipline aren’t made of biology because you have surrounded yourself with people who think the same. But this is where the science has taken us.”
I am all for re-evaluating government efficiency, how our tax dollars are spent, and even removing some of the performative aspects of DEI. I would also like to see a reform of our immigration laws and definitely would like to keep dangerous people from endangering the lives of others and themselves. But the manner in which this whole exercise is conducted is just callous. If we are talking about dangerous people shouldn’t we also focus our efforts on reducing the 80 odd school shootings that happen every year? Shouldn’t we scrutinize defense budgets while we are scrutinizing education budgets? Surely, saving $15M over 5 years for gender affirming care in the military cannot be the primary source of efficiency? Surely protecting women and girls should mean more than just preventing 10 transgender athletes out of 530,000 in the NCAA from competing in women’s sports when access to basic healthcare is not guaranteed?
Are we really serious about making significant changes to the way government operates or are we just doing what is easy by bullying some of the most vulnerable people in the country? Eleanor Roosevelt used to say, “My interest or sympathy or indignation is not aroused by an abstract cause but by the plight of a single person whom I have seen with my own eyes. Out of my response to an individual develops an awareness of a problem.” This is a lesson our family has learned through our daughter. Ironically sending her to a private school and college with a generous financial aid program has actually helped us interact with kids from other parts of America and from social classes or family backgrounds vastly different from ours. What does it mean to be a trans kid or to be a child of undocumented parents or to be a first-generation college goer is no longer an abstract idea for us.
We are working hard in our family to incorporate more gratitude in our lives. We all know how random tragedy can be. But when it comes to fortune we are unable to see it as a random act and often attribute it to our own intellect or mettle or hard work. Does that mean we don’t deserve any praise for our accomplishments? Sapolsky argues that praise is only useful if it helps us replicate the positive acts. What about punishment for our wrongdoings? Sapolsky advocates for a quarantine-approach instead of a punitive form of justice so that a person deemed dangerous to society is quarantined but not judged. Hard to implement or practice but worth trying even if we fail everyday.
I have been working in my own small way to extend our community to non-human species and that seems like a Sisyphean task at this moment. As always when frustrated I turn to books and this time is no different. I was reading the Haiku masters Basho, Buson and Issa on a recent flight and was touched by the kindness and compassion they extend to all lifeforms from cormorants to monkeys and to flies and fleas. A seemingly impossible cause at this point when even compassion for other humans appears to be at an all-time low. John Donne preached that no man is an island. He wrote “Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind.” Such sentiments are not bubbling up in our society at this moment. Both identity politics and technology have eroded our humanity by giving us a false sense of interconnectedness and a pseudo-community. I don’t know what the solutions are or what the future holds, but I take solace in Issa’s words
Climb Mount Fuji,
O snail,
But slowly, slowly
And that's all I can do - one step at a time.
