There is Only Us
We are all one family, here in this shared blue boat home
Honestly, I was pretty militant about TV in my early adulthood.
I didn’t want one in my home.
I didn’t watch it.
Ever.
Some of this came from the values I picked up in college.
My friend group in college was pretty remarkable.
Smart in all the ways. Caring and considerate. Inclusive of international students. Gender-inclusive. Thoughtful — prone to late-night conversations probing the depths of philosophy, science, social problems. FUN in a very clean-fun way (e.g. we held a nighttime, candle-lit, Dead-Poets-Society-esque poetry reading in an abandoned root cellar on campus). Passionately committed to justice and environmental sustainability (the movie Affluenza was one of the many counter-cultural books/films/etc. I remember us recommending to each other).
By the time I was entering my twenties, TV really did seem like the opiate of the masses to me — not only encouraging me and others to consume far more than we needed to consume, but also literally sucking my life-force, where whole hours of my life could just go poof! without any real living.
I didn’t actually own a TV until I got married.
I still didn’t watch it much, but sometimes I’d turn it on in the evening.
And I remember being so struck… and mystified… that it seemed like the only thing I could find, as I clicked around the main channels, was some version of a cop show.
Like, really?!
This is ALL we can create for entertainment?
We could have many conversations and come to any number of conclusions about why that’s the case. But that’s not why I bring this up today.
I bring it up because this is just one salient example — of many — of the ways our dominant culture hammers home “good guy” vs. “bad guy” narratives for us.
Morning, noon, night.
Again and again, in so many different ways, we are taught to frame our lives this way.
And here’s the problem with that.
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
We’re believing an illusion.
“Good Guys” and “Bad Guys” Don’t Exist
There is no such thing as a “good guy,” just like there is no such thing as a “bad guy.”
Cops lie all the time. And over the past couple weeks, our local news had not just one, but two different cases of cops sexually abusing minors. And we’ve all seen the video of George Floyd being dispassionately, slowly murdered by cops.
People who commit crimes have mothers, often brothers and sisters, often kids. They very likely have people who love and depend on them. They all need love, just like every other human does. Many of them are motivated by love in much of what they do — sometimes even in committing a crime.
We are all human.
We can all seriously harm others — and many of us do.
We can all be honest, and/or work for justice — and many of us do.
We are all just people… making choices in how we’ll live, how we’ll treat others, what motivates us, what our values are.
We can all do bad and good — often in the same day, or the same hour!
So let’s stop making everything about “us” (always “good,” of course) and “them” (so often “bad” in some way).
Let’s realize that “us” and “them” is an illusion fed to us by the world around us — just an artificial filter through which we’ve been conditioned to see.
Here’s the truth: there is only “us.”
We need to especially see this in our philanthropy — which we far-too-often frame as “charity” or doing “good.”
There is Only "Us" On This Blue Boat Home
The very idea of “charity” is at odds with the reality of loving our fellow humans.
Inherent in the practice of “charity” is helping those “in need” — as though those “in need” are over there, those other people, as though we don’t have our own needs too.
There is no sense of mutuality in charity.
There is no sense of solidarity.
The oft-spoken tropes about “giving back,“ or helping the “less fortunate,” inherently create an “us” and a “them.”
But that’s an illusion.
When you look at what it is to be human on this blue boat home of ours, as we float amidst the Milky Way galaxy together, there is really no way to accurately understand relating to all of our fellow humans as anything but a part of “us.”
There is no “us” and “them” here.
There is only “us.”
Yet, in so many ways, in so many settings, even and especially within the “charitable” spaces aiming to do “good” for our fellow humans, we continue to create a sense of an “us” and a “them.”
If our “charity” comes from a place of helping those “less fortunate” than us, we are creating harm, even in the act of “helping,” by othering those we’re helping.
We often do this by labeling them as “needy” or “at-risk” or “low-income” or “under-served” or “marginalized,” or any of the other euphemisms we tend to use in this work.
When we other someone, we cut them off from the joy of being in community with us. We’ve created a reality where they are not one of us.
They don’t belong “here,” where we are.
They belong “there,” where we are not.
We make them different than us.
We act like we are the “helpers,” which in essence implies that we do not need help ourselves… which is not actually true…
… for any of us.
Here’s the rub.
We all — all — need help.
None of us — none of us — could survive without other humans.
Yet.
If you look at the ways we’ve set things up, you sure wouldn’t know that.
We’ve manufactured — and perpetuated — the illusion that some of us are the helpers, and others of us are the ones needing help, completely abandoning the truth that we all are both.
There is no “us” and “them.”
There is only “us.”
And when we live with that knowing, the way we see — and practice — philanthropy will look entirely different than it does today.
What do you think?
Have you noticed this tendency we have, too?
With Love,
Cecelia 💗
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