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I have so much to say about this. Whether it’s science, politics, your opinion on Black Lives Matter or most matters in life:
(Cont’d) https://twitter.com/monicahesse/status/1288243939737309185
(Cont’d) https://twitter.com/monicahesse/status/1288243939737309185
The inability to identify with and empathize with the experience of others or put oneself in their shoes or consider the possibility of your fortunes changing is truly a “disease” that plagues America in particular.
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It’s why people refuse to wear masks. It’s why many associate with a religion but refuse to love thy neighbor - of all colors, creeds, and orientations. It’s why people rationalize the separation of children from their families at the border.
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It’s why the wealthy who need or want for nothing have no issue taking a tax cut while cutting literal food off tables, ripping families from homes when times are tough, and stripping healthcare from the sick.
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It’s how slavery and Jim Crow were justified by those who created them and it’s how many justify ongoing systemic racism and inequity in society today.
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How can it be real if I can’t see it, feel it, touch it, experience it? Well, how do you justify your religious affiliation? How do you ignore the core teachings of that affiliation whilst justifying the treatment of others whose suffering you don’t understand or experience?
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COVID may be the disease of the day. Racism has not gone away. The plight of millions is happening in front of us as jobs are gone & rent is due. And there are people who think: “they should’ve worked harder.” Who whistle past the graveyard bc it’s not ‘their problem.’
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We have many problems in America today. Most of them started more than four years ago. But they’ve all become worse because looking down on others and calling them names is en vogue and modeled by people who’ve never wanted for anything and never suffered.
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Who’ve sat in literal ivory towers and made careers out of spurning workers and stiff arming would-be tenants who had too much tenon.
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To be clear, I haven’t been poor & destitute. I’ve suffered in my own ways, but not in any comparable way to the suffering of millions of Americans who work more than full time and still have to make choices between putting food on the table and paying the electric bill.
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Or the majority of Americans (yes, more than 50%) who don’t have enough money in the bank to sustain themselves in an emergency - this while wealth is more consolidated than at any point in recorded history.
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Identifying with others and imagining myself in their shoes impacts every single thing I do and decision I make religiously, politically, and personally. That doesn’t make me special or unique. It makes me human. We were made to be this way. We are called to be this way.
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The only way to make anything great, I believe, is to care for those who have the least. To protect the most marginalized so that they no longer suffer. To speak up for those who have no voice. And ultimately just do the basic good works of caring for those around you.
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My vote, politics, and actions will always reflect caring for those who suffer. And if we all operated in a way that cared for those who suffer in ways that we do not, we could actually make America great.
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