I think you try to make sense of this world. Of the inequality, of the injustice, of the pain and trauma, but whether you are Black or female, gay, or genderless, or like me, a white dude typing from his computer about the meaning of life—it always comes back to feeling of love I have for our species.
The human species.
I should care and do more for humans--regardless of class, or caste, or religion, or color, or gender. I guess even luck says a ripple is small but travels far.
As a white male, I tend to wonder if ego and greed and power and difference will always continue to create inequality, injustice, and trauma for the human species regardless of what gender or what color you are.
Power and greed and aggression should be punished or arrested or devalued in our society, instead we celebrate it. I'm sure in other societies around the globe where different colors and genders hold more power, the same pain and trauma plays out with those below.
I think of a community as a microcosm of society, a place where everyone should be necessary and whole. Healthy. Thriving. Alive. Present. Doing meaningful work or art or balancing a job with a hobby or raising a mix-race baby. Home is a place where you can't help but feel a natural inclination to help those around you.
Being American, I celebrate these trashy values, I buy their food, their labels, use their services, watch their shows, and continue to push our society’s pain and trauma into one another and worse, the next generation.
What’s my solution? What answers do I feel but don’t know are fact?
I hope we can hold ourselves accountable to what values matter most to a thriving society. Love. Hope. Meaningful progress and sustainability. Kindness. Effort. Processes and values over goals and retirement destinations. I think we can find these values in every type of person around the world. In any type of culture. The struggling line cook smiling while he creates your dish. The young writer looking at their child dangling from a tree. A selfless stranger hugging a vulnerable man that weeps for his mother. A white man giving his riches and support to raise society’s education, health, and mental wellness.
Take what you need to be happy and give away what you don’t. Share what you love and know. Stop believing scarcity is an absolute truth. Give equity and opportunity to those who have long been forgotten. Push out those from our tribe that long for status and luxury and especially those that let the less fortunate rot in the society’s cellars below. We should know the names of those racist people that unsubscribed and we should ask them why.
