On humanity and inhumanity

Remembering our worth and the worth of others

This isn’t the post I thought I’d be sending today. I spent yesterday writing a totally different one.

I haven’t said much about the situation in the Middle East because, honestly, I’m not really qualified to. I’m not Jewish or Muslim, Palestinian or Israeli. I don’t know as much as I should about the state of things in that region (though I certainly know more than I did a week ago, it’s still not much). I’m not a scholar of the history of that area or the conflicts that underlie the violence going on there.

I’m not a fan of “everyone chiming in because a thing happened and you’ll look bad if you don’t say something,” either, which seems to be where social media has taken us, and not for the greater good. It’s too easy to drown the reality of a situation in a thousand ramblings by people who don’t really have anything to say but feel like they have to perform for the occasion, and that doesn’t feel productive to me.

But this morning I came across a quote in a newsletter from Dr. Lissa Rankin and it’s just not leaving me alone: ‘Yet again, we have proof that what Harvard physician Paul Farmer said is undeniably true:

‘“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”’

OOF.

If you’re like me, that line hits you right in the gut because you’ve sensed the truth of it before, even if you’ve never put words to it. I certainly had not, but the second I read it, every cell of me let out a solid “YEEEESSSSSSS” of understanding.

I’ve written before about how we humans seem to be intent on dehumanizing ourselves with terms like “content” and the need to behave more and more like machines even though we’re not machines and never will be. I see the truth of that everywhere, from the way we push ourselves to do more and more at the expense of being to the way employers expect employees to do their jobs without acknowledging their human needs (Amazon warehouses/drivers, anyone?).

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I have theories about what underlies that tendency, from basic capitalism to the Industrial Revolution to colonization and slavery, but I’m not an expert, so I can’t claim my theories are true. They’re educated guesses at best.

Then I look at that quote, and I feel like it all comes together, or at least comes a lot closer.

Is there really, truly, anything more dehumanizing than the idea that some lives matter less than others?

I don’t think so.

We don’t just do this to groups of people. We do it to ourselves, especially (but certainly not only) if we’re women. We put others ahead of ourselves because we think we’re not as important. We’ve been taught that we don’t matter as much as someone else.

And then, for some of us, we act out on that feeling by passing it on to others. We may not do it consciously, but we do it all the same, and so the cycle continues.

The same thing happens on larger scales, too. I suppose it’s the natural outgrowth of “Us vs. Them” thinking.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

And with that cycle we end up not only with broken selves but also with broken relationships and, eventually, international invasions. War crimes. Horrors inflicted on others because we’ve forgotten how to be human and that that person we’re attacking is just as human as we are.

We wonder how we got here. We think we play no part in the overall dynamic and have no power to stop it.

I know I have no power to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or to keep Hamas from attacking Israel and Israel from attacking back and the whole situation from escalating. And you probably don’t, either.

But I do have the power to teach myself that I matter, and that you do, too, and that not only am I not going to dehumanize either one of us for anyone’s imagined benefit, I’m also not going to stand idly by when I see someone else doing it. At the very least, I can comfort the person who’s been attacked and remind them that they do matter.

One of my favorite West Wing characters, Leo McGarry, often said, “There’s a way to be a person.” I think this is exactly what he was talking about.

I had a great conversation for the podcast a few days ago, which you’ll hear in the new year, where current events came up. In the course of the conversation, we landed on the notion that engaging in awe, wonder, and creativity in the face of horrors is an act of resistance. It says that we refuse to give in to the horror and the despair, though we do acknowledge it (no creative bypassing here, thank you!).

When we stand up and refuse to be cowed by the horror by reminding ourselves that there’s still beauty in the world, and engaging with it despite the atrocities, we’re making a stand against those forces that engage in them—no matter how small it might feel. We remind ourselves and others that we can all contribute to the world, and each act of beauty and wonder is a defiant strike against the inhumanity we see elsewhere.

Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash

I have nothing direct to offer to the people of Israel and Gaza and Ukraine right now but my sympathy and my fervent wish that things will settle down as quickly as they started. But I sure can do my part to end the idea that “some lives matter less,” and I can resist by continuing to find awe, wonder, and beauty wherever I can, and sharing it with others.

I hope you’ll do the same.

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A couple small footnotes before we go:

1. I was thrilled to see that the New York Times ran a piece recently on the “content” and “content creator,” inspired by Emma Thompson’s remarks. It’s worth a read, so here’s a gift link if you want to check it out. I love this line: “In practical terms, “content creator” neatly accomplishes two things at once: It lets people who make garbage think they’re making art, and tells people who make art that they’re making garbage.” 🔥
   

   Martin Bannon, retired editor in chief of the Washington Post, also mentions the trend in an excerpt from his new book that recently appeared in the Atlantic:

   I had been in journalism long enough to witness some executives—unmoored by crushing pressures on circulation, advertising, and profits—abandon the foundational journalistic culture, even shunning the vocabulary we use to describe our work. Many publishers took to calling journalism “content,” a term so hollow that I sarcastically advised substituting “stuff.” Journalists were recategorized as “content producers,” top editors retitled “chief content officers.”

2. If you’d like to vote on which story I should write from my list of black eye explanations, there’s still time. I’ll count comments on that post through the end of this week, so if you haven’t voted, I hope you will!