J u s t T h i n k i n g
Some days you’re just thinking along and something gels. Here are some of those moments for me.
You Go
Jon Stewart, progressive thinker and comedian, is pretty sure that humans are mostly nice. He would say that although all media make masses by featuring the fiend in humans and the narcissistic rat holes it digs trying to be noticed and “loved,” most humans are kind, not cruel. All of the time.
I agree. I am willing to do without data for this one. I am content just to notice the obvious which is that all of the people I know of do more good things than bad every day. And I doubt that there are vast vats teeming with people who do only bad things each day.
Given that, it seems to me vital, as it does to Jon Stewart, that every minute we honour the dominant goodness in humans in whatever ways we can. It matters that we not be cynical and dismissive and hopeless about our species. It matters that we remember that, according to breakthrough biologist Lynn Margulis, in order for there even to be human beings, the process of moving from one-celled non-life to multi-celled life, and then all the way to the powerhouses of mitochondria that eventually produced us, required collaboration.
Yay.
This is how Jon Stewart, pointing to a Jumbotron screen which showed traffic merging into a tunnel, said it in 2010 in his speech at the, “Rally To Restore Sanity.” He said:
Look on this screen. This is where we are. This is who we are. These cars — that’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car — a woman with two small kids who can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car, swaying, I don’t even know if you can see it — the lady’s in the NRA and she loves Oprah. There’s another car — an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan.
This is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers. And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long 30-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river.
And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go. Then I’ll go. You go; then I’ll go. Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s okay — you go, and then I’ll go.
And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned. Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together.
And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.
We do. We just do. We cooperate. Count the times today you notice this wonderful thing about human beings. Multiply that by a billion, just for starters. Cooperation among us all is, except in the very few wars we fight, how we survive. And, yes, the cliché followup clause: how we thrive.
You go, then I’ll go.
Yay.
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