An opinion--Love your neighbor

I've noticed that when I'm at work, I generally love my patients. I may have complaints about them, wish they would behave differently, get frustrated with their choices, but I do feel a warm connection with them. (OK, there are people/patients who I find I am violently allergic to, but they are rare.) I work in an area which votes differently than I do, and I don't necessarily agree with my patients, but I have their backs and want what's best for them. 

I don't necessarily feel that way about my fellow Americans. As a group many of them seem to act in ignorant, short sighted and often hateful ways. But when I meet them in a stuffy little office, I like them and on the important stuff, we usually see eye to eye. Why is that?

I think I'm being hacked. My brain, that is. I think that there may be a concerted effort going on to make me feel like I'm not a powerful and loving part of a valued whole. It seems like what I read and what I'm exposed to in news and what passes for news makes me feel like I am, instead, part of a small enclave of right minded people struggling for a way of life. And it isn't infrequent that I read something that makes me realize that, even within that group of people who I feel are my friends, who really understand what I understand, there are people who are real jerks and are working to steer my right minded community in the wrong direction. So almost daily it seems like the group of folks who are "my people" is getting smaller.

This mindset makes me chronically grouchy and suspicious of others. I may like a painting, for instance, but what if the painter is an ignorant SOB? How about that cool quotation I just heard--would the philosopher who wrote it agree with me on other subjects?

I fear that this ever smaller division of people into angry activists for different causes will not serve us well when inevitable disasters occur. Anyone who has been reading this blog understands that I am expecting more climate disasters, but just recently we have been dealing with a worldwide pandemic which is only peripherally connected to climate change. Big events seem to be happening more often lately, and we will do better with them if we are ready. Ready, how? Ready by loving one another so we can work together when we need to. 

I just saw a movie called Finch, one of many post-apocalyptic stories available for consumption. It takes place in a world devastated by a solar flare, but mostly by a dysfunctional human response to a solar flare. (Solar flares could happen, actually, and will fry our electrical system and most of our mass communications, among other things. They are random, happening all the time, but the sun has to aim one exactly in our direction to hit us properly--I digress.) We need to feel compassion for each other (and have back up systems for predictable disasters, of course) in order to find our way out of trouble.

I don't think I'm being hacked by someone who wants the world to fail spectacularly. It is way more likely that this hacking is part of our "click on what makes you mad" internet, but that it is magnified by groups that know they can manipulate us if we splinter into squabbling sub factions. This may include national governments that want us to vote in ways that do not represent our best interests, but may also benefit corporations that would like to sell us more things we don't need. It is a helpful short term strategy for making a population impotent and biddable, but it is going to hurt all of us in the end.

Lately I've been thinking about divisive subjects and how I can have compassion and share common goals with people who disagree with me. Here are a few:

1. Abortion and the right of a woman to choose to end a pregnancy: I've been looking at the laws that stem from Roe v. Wade. I believe that women should be able to end an unwanted pregnancy, but I don't believe that it is meaningless to do so. In the US, we have laws that allow a pregnancy to be terminated at or before 24 weeks. It is no small thing to get rid of a small, helpless proto-human that looks like a tiny baby, even if it is not viable outside of the womb. People feel very strongly about this, and I see why some would vote entirely for people who are opposed to abortion, without being anti-woman. This is a subject upon which kind and reasonable people can disagree. It is also a subject where strong emotions can make people do terrible things and say terrible things about each other. Emotions get high on the pro choice side because many women who have unwanted pregnancies are young and quite a bit of sex in this population is coerced or not consensual. Even pregnancy as a result of consensual sex has a huge price in terms of limiting life options for the woman but not usually the man. Women desperate to end a pregnancy have been historically subjected to pain, suffering and death when obtaining illegal abortion. Freely available short and long term birth control as well as morning after pills can help reduce the problem but there will always be unwanted pregnancy. Controversy will not cease and respect for each others' point of view will be hard but not impossible to maintain.

2. Immigration: I believe that we should be open to immigration of people who want to be in the US and whose homes have become unlivable for them. But I also see that the principles I hold dear, of diversity and inclusion, can clash with globalization. Countries have developed cultures over centuries that are different from one another and this is valuable. Inclusion, for me, means inviting people in to a place, a country that I feel is home, but not giving up that home or letting it change so it is unrecognizable. I think we can be both welcoming and inclusive without giving up who we are, that the cultures people bring in will enrich us, but I can see how reasonable, non-hateful people might resist mass population movement. (Those reasonable people may want to look at preventing and mitigating climate change to avoid such mass migration.)

3. Vaccination and masking: I believe that people should protect each other, and in particular people who are vulnerable to severe illness and death from Covid by getting vaccinated and masking in situations where there is likely to be active Covid infection (moderate to large groups of people, some of whom may be unvaccinated.) But I understand that for some people, wearing a mask is more difficult than it is for me. I live in a place that is not hot and humid and do not have problems with being overweight or experiencing asthma or acne. Also many people are dependent on seeing facial expression to communicate. Mask use isn't easy. Vaccination is safe but it is not without risk. Studies show that there are no statistically significant increases in severe reactions such as blood clots or neurological complications with Covid vaccination, but some people do get problems out of the blue after a vaccination which are probably vaccine related.  Like some of my vaccine hesitant patients, I don't like being told what to do and I don't necessarily trust drug companies, medical experts or the federal government to keep me safe. I also think that we don't hear enough about how protective natural infection is and that vaccine makers have a financial interest in making us believe that vaccines are the only way to be safe from Covid infection. I'm willing to do exactly as the CDC says in this situation, since this is a terrible worldwide pandemic, but I don't want to make this submission behavior a habit. Some peoples' jobs and ways of life were ended with Covid restrictions and they feel angry at the powerful decision makers who forced this on them. This is a real grievance and leads people to resent those they feel are responsible or complicit. As a person who works in healthcare, I also have strong feelings as I see colleagues burning out taking care of people whose infections could have been prevented by responsible behavior and I feel grief for people who die or are disabled because we, as a country, couldn't follow some pretty simple recommendations. But I can hold those feelings and also keep people who disagree in my heart.

The second commandment in the Judeo-Christian bible says "love your neighbor." Each of the ten commandments is difficult for people at times which is why they survive and are meaningful. It can be hard to love your neighbor. It can also be really easy in most cases, if we work at it and see it as necessary. There are jerks, too, so I'm not going to be absolutist about it, but there aren't nearly as many ignorant and unlovable people as we are lead to believe. We need to start broadening our concept of "us" so we can work together now to take care of the world and each other.