Complex
Culture
“Stop
trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity.”
David
Whyte
We live
in a culture that values instant gratification. We want what we want when we
want it. Some of that is due to being a young culture in comparison to the
world at large. And some of it has to do with the singularly American attitude
of entitlement. In other words, as a culture we are more like spoiled children
than mature adults. My friend Anna and I had a conversation recently about the
lack of training for soft skills such as empathy, cooperation, and consideration
for others. Where should they be taught, when, how, and by whom? Because
children are not naturally given to egalitarianism, these skills must be
explicitly taught. Anna is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who has seen firsthand
the consequences of our engrained attitudes. But you don’t have to be a social
worker to see the results of entitlement.
One of
the great advances of humankind was to learn how to live together in discrete
social units that help each other. The only reason we have existed for
as long as we have and developed the complex cultures we now inhabit is because
we learned early to cooperate, negotiate, integrate, and learn from one
another. The greatest disservice to this wisdom has been the notion that the
group with the biggest army and most powerful weapons is also the best and most
deserving of reaping the harvest and claiming the spoils of the conquered. We
stopped cooperating and put all our energy into aggression. It is a U-turn away
from where our greatest strength lies. What it has caused is continuous war and
a shifting hierarchy of conquest and resentment.
The
world is a complex place. The human family is especially complex, simply
because we all have the same needs but not the same resources. When we refuse
to cooperate, to share, to provide for the genuine needs of others, we leave
the door open for more aggressive means of getting what is needed. There are no
easy solutions except to work out ways of giving and taking that consider the good of all. We want others to do that, but we are reluctant to do it
ourselves. We think, why should I give up something just so that guy can eat?
I
noticed that some California cities are beginning to provide tiny houses for their
homeless population. California has, at last count, almost 130,000 homeless
folks living on its streets and in its shelters. That situation is getting worse
simply because rents have gone up exponentially in recent years and priced
previously housed people out of the market. Do you believe that helping this
population does not help the rest of the people who live in California? And of
course, California is just one example and not even the largest. Have you ever
tried to get a job without a place of residence? Ever gone to a new job without
being able to shower and put on clean clothes? When we help people help
themselves, everyone benefits.
So, I
ask you—when should the soft skills of empathy, cooperation, and consideration
for the greater good be taught? By whom, and where? Who will benefit from
learning them? How would our culture change if these skills were explicitly
taught to every child born in America? It’s worth thinking about.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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