Building
a Better Human Being
“We
have to build a better man before we build a better society.”
Paul
Tillich
I’ve
done a lot of pondering these last few weeks—that’s what I do best, you know. I’m
a ponderer, observer, witness, analyzer, weigher of this or that. It’s the
nature of this beast. Studying the enneagram and other type indicators helps me
to understand myself (and others) better. At first, I hated what I found—it seemed
so stuffy and judgmental, so imperious and opinionated, and it is all those
things. Other people who are wired differently do not carry this weight of judgment
and they are freer to live each moment as it comes. They seem weightless to me;
the heaviness within me sometimes thinks them brainless too, but they aren’t. They’re
just constructed differently, and that’s a good thing. What if there were no
lightness in the world. What if no one knew how to play, how to say funny
things, to make people laugh and have fun. What a sad world it would be.
When
Paul Tillich said that we must build a better man, he meant one who listens to his better angels and makes decisions based on what is right and not
what is expedient. He meant a person who considers the least among us, who can
deny him/herself in order to provide for another. Tillich meant, I believe, a
person whose life is not driven by greed, which we all have, but by the desire for all people to prosper.
In the
USA, we are used to having whatever we want. We have been guided by the ethic
that if you work hard, you can make it happen—anyone can succeed. It’s the old
Puritan work ethic. And it assumes that everyone has the same abilities and
opportunities—which they don’t. Working hard is important, but it is not the
only determining factor. Some of us are born with less of the necessary stuff—intelligence,
ability to express ourselves persuasively, expertise in money management, hand-eye
coordination, agility, physical strength. Some of us are shy; even if we know
the right answers, we second-guess, we doubt ourselves. Some of us just want to
blend in and avoid being singled out. And some of us have the system stacked
against us.
Example: my aunt worked
in a factory that made Buster Brown children’s clothes. She sat at a sewing
machine all day in a room full of other women sitting at sewing machines. Each
of them sewed one particular seam in many, many identical garments. The
production goal was set by the supervisor. Each day, each seamstress was to produce
X-number of seams. If they exceeded that number, they were paid extra and if
they were unable to meet that production goal, they were paid less. If that inability
persisted, they were fired.
What happened to my aunt,
was that she often exceeded the daily production goal, and instead of allowing
her to make significantly more money, the supervisor changed the seam she
sewed, or the garment she worked on. There was always a new learning curve to slow
her down, to make it virtually impossible for her to get ahead. My aunt was
certainly not the only one. It’s likely that all of seamstresses were shown the
same treatment. That’s what it means to have the system rigged against you. It’s
purposeful and planned. And it’s wrong. It’s intended to produce more income for
the owners and investors and less for the workers. It’s not a question of legality;
it’s not against the law. It’s a question of morality, of fairness. That center
no longer holds in America, and truth be told, it never has.
Building a better human
being, means building one who thinks about his/her actions, and how they impact
others. It means there may be fewer people and less money at the top and more
in the middle of our social structure. It means a more just and equitable system,
which is what it takes to build a better society. Sorry for “overthinking” this—it’s
just what I do.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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