Defiant Humanism

Could be me…

I listened to a talk in Aspen by David Brooks of the New York Times (NYT). He gave a talk about a bit of his life story, working with Jim Lehrer of the PBS News Hour, University of Chicago, and other things. But more interestingly he spoke about a loss of humanity that we have seen recently and a direct dehumanization of people, particularly immigrants that is troubling. He also made mention of morality and was bemoaning the fact that the loss of moral education in public schools (it used to be forefront), and the church, is leading people to find their own morality. I have my own moral compass, but it is not particularly shared or universally taught. As a former church goer, even an elder in the Presbyterian church, who now attempts to live by the creed, “to love and be loved”, and “the Golden rule”…I have made up my own morality too.

In addition, before he sat down to a dialog with folks from the Aspen Institute, Brooks made mention of some quotes from James Baldwin that struck me as super powerful. I have read a few of Baldwin’s books and they are very direct and revealing. I was able to find a You Tube video, embedded below, perhaps the origin of these quotes. I have made bold, the portions of the text that hit me in the solar plexus as it were.

There may not be as much humanity in the world, as you’d like to see, but there is some, there’s more than one would think….The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people….Look around the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is that what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.

You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.

Wow, that hurts. I do know, that when I fail to demonstrate humanity, for example being annoyed at someone for poor service, looking askance at an un-housed person, feel my ire rising over something, almost trivial in nature, I have to flip the narrative. It’s not the other person’s fault that I feel that way, I have chosen to feel that way, I have become angry, by choice.

David Brooks also made the point that humility was the highest ideal for human achievement. Not courage, not intelligence, not even kindness, but humility. Humility as he defined it was about knowing yourself. Knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, which he called your greatest “sin”, and therefore knowing what you most needed to work on. Self-criticism in a way that makes you better, makes you kinder, gives you more strength. Brooks said, “Humility is radical self awareness from a position of “other” centeredness”. Without humility or self-knowledge, you can’t be fully the person you want to be. You don’t know where you are broken, and therefore what you have to deal with.

Those are all things that resonate with me. I used to think my greatest weakness was “caring what other people think”. And that is still there for sure. But perhaps now my greatest weakness is a lack of deep empathy. This shows up as impatience, lack of respect, competitiveness, and other visible manifestations. But if I work on empathy, I think my humanity will be that much better.

And humanity is something that I believe is important for a just society. And that brings me to my final takeaway from the talk, “defiant humanism”. I think it means defiance in the face of hate and dehumanization we see from our neighbors, fellow drivers, the Trump administration, fellow humans in other countries, dehumanizing their citizens. We can be empathetic even if we don’t see it in others. We can be human, even if we don’t see it in others.

All of this awareness of “ways of being” has been interesting, as well as the lessons from the stoics mentioned in Right Thing Right Now. How this shows up in my world going forward is not clear, but I hope to be more moral, more humanistic, more empathetic.