“People Should Not Be Mean!”

-- Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Founding Director

“People should not be mean!”
 
My friend tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out the sign, printed in orange marker on a crumpled white piece of paper, held by a small child in oversized mittens. The child and his mom were part of a crowd gathered at the state capital to express sharp concern over threats to democracy.   Those concerns were more complex than just meanness, of course, but I could see how, for a kid that small, that sign would sum it up - and maybe he wasn’t far off.
 
I joined call to action webinar last weekend, along with around 80,00 others, in response to the same concerns about which the crowd at the capital gathered. The tone of the call was nonviolent, inclusive, and mostly nonpartisan. Throughout, speakers exhorted participants to “meet chaos with calm, and cruelty with compassion.”
 
For some, compassion is a moral obligation, but even if it’s not, it may be a strategic one.
 
Compassion does not mean being nice. It does not preclude anger or nonviolent coercion. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. It does not require uniting or even relationship. It is not the same as empathy. I don’t believe that compassion requires me to suffer with others or even, always, to end suffering. At its core, compassion is not wanting or causing others to experience violence or diminishment of their humanity. Its opposite is cruelty.
 
It is terribly hard to hold compassion for people who fall in line with those who seem to delight in others’ suffering.  But that is precisely when compassion is most necessary.  
 
I’m going to oversimplify here to make a point - there are two reasons that people cause suffering:  some act from a moral universe that doesn’t care if people are diminished, endangered,  marginalized, or erased. Compassion won’t erode that moral universe, nor will it get them to stop wielding power from that place.
 
But power is empty without people who go along, and they go along because they’re convinced that it will make them less vulnerable to harm.
 
How that conviction takes root is a question with many answers. The consensus of scholars, movement leaders, and wisdom traditions suggests it is rooted in some combination of fear, greed, and errors in thinking.  No matter the root, though, vulnerability breeds fear, and (there is ample research and experience to support this) compassion invites fear to stand down. When fear stands down, people are less inclined to participate in harmful activity.  They are less likely to align with cruel power and more likely to align with its opposition. 
 
There is no wiggle room here; I can indulge in cruelty, or I can choose the hard road of compassion.  That’s a decision re-made every day, reflected in words and actions. It’s not enough, of course, but without it, all other acts in the interest of a more just, peaceful, and thriving world are in vain.

If I want more people to join the work of ensuring a world in which all can thrive, if I want to pull power from those who do not want such a world, then I can be angry, and I can be fierce. I should be determined. I should be persistent. But that little boy was right; I should not be mean.

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