Friend or Foe?

Who goes there, friend or foe?  The way some of us talk about other people do we know the difference?  I’m not trying to be accusatory.  We all do it.  It’s a natural behavior that has been conserved in the human genome.  It’s called assessing.  We assess everything and everyone.  Those people who didn’t assess quickly and often, didn’t survive in the jungle.  The one’s who did are our ancestors.  So they passed on a human characteristic that turned us into “assessment machines”.  “He’s good.”  “She’s bad.”  “They’re not trustworthy.”  These are all assessments.  We need our assessments.  They’re actually a shorthand method of making decisions.  So what’s the problem?

Sometimes we only see our assessments of people; we don’t see the real person.  If we do that often enough, we have no idea of who people really are.  If this happens, all we know is what we think of them.  And when our assessments are negative, we want to  disconnect from the people around us.  When we disconnect from enough people, we disconnect from the real world.

Guess what?  Others are doing the same thing.  And it’s getting worse because of modern technology.   All of our gadgets lure us away from connecting with others.  When we’re disconnected enough, we can and will tolerate bad things happening to other people more easily.  Haven’t you wondered why we barely twinge when we read about the bad conditions in our own country. 

For instance, twenty million American children going to bed hungry every night; the growing problem of homeless families; a health care system that protects only the people who can afford it; the growing poverty rates; some people feeling a need to carry a concealed weapon.

When we are disconnected and convinced that our negative assessments about other people are true, it’s easier to be unconcerned.  The result is that a society full of disconnected people who live in negative assessments of others can tolerate some pretty bad conditions.  And we have them.  I don’t mean just the crime rates.  I mean the conditions that breed criminal behavior, like the economic violence that takes hope away from whole segments of our society.  And the messages we send to our children when we demonstrate our lack of concern for someone else because they are______ (fill in a negative assessment here).

Today we are witnessing what seems like a major government budget war between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.  Some call it a culture war that’s being fought to supposedly preserve the American way.  Sorry folks.  I don’t buy that.  I believe it’s being fought because we have negative assessments of the “have-nots”.  How else could we tolerate, under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the government trying to eviscerate social programs for the “have-nots” as a way of balancing the budget”?

The true American way, as I remember it, is that we care for the least among us.  What happened to our great American generosity?  How can we sit back and allow the sick, the old, the poor, the marginalized to suffer in the wealthiest nation on the earth?  It boils down to “they don’t deserve help”.  And their “undeservedness” is based on a negative assessment of the people who need our help the most. Being down on your luck is not necessarily a character flaw.

I agree that our government is too large and expensive.  I agree that we need to fix that problem.  I don’t agree that we should abandon our social conscience to do it.

The interesting thing about being a “have” is that you could become a “have-not”.  And  if that happens what will you think about a government that supports unnecessary wars and tax shelters while it scraps the programs that you need to survive?  Oh, I know.  It can’t happen to you.  I hope you’re right.

Robert DeFilippis