“If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being… You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch?
Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul. For the human species, selfishness is extinction.
If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe that leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.
A life spent shaping a world I want [my child] to inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.”-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
A friend shared an article this morning that got me thinking and reflecting on this passage from Cloud Atlas, one of my favorite novels (N.B. ignore the movie).
The article reveals that the Trump Administration attempted to purchase a company working on a coronavirus cure and restrict the potential cure to only patients in the United States. I am not at all surprised by this. Many will view this effort as exemplary of the very competitive qualities that rallied his supporters: America First; MAGA.
I’m not going to bash the president for doing the sort of thing he has promised to do all along. I will, however, examine my own beliefs about globalization, competition, and the future.
This pandemic has reminded me that the world is not just connected by the internet. The health and wellbeing of a person in Wuhan, China, is connected to the health and wellbeing of people in Georgia and Germany. It always has been. We are just now able to track it. Our fear and the present crisis have drawn our attention to our connectedness. We are connected in our humanity as we fight this virus with common solutions.
I am not going to let my fear drive my beliefs or actions toward the “colosseum of confrontation” in which the tribes of humanity are divided into winners and losers even in tragedy. I want to protect and provide for my family while doing what little I can to promote the health and wellbeing of families across town and on the other side of the globe.
I do not want my children to inherit a world where the cure for illness is obtained by “tooth and claw”, the strongest, the most affluent. Sure, I believe in free markets and in hard work, but I do not believe that human beings are only motivated by self-interest.
I ascribe to a faith that, though we often forget, is rooted in self-sacrifice. This passage by David Mitchell (and the Politico article) reminds me that Jesus refused to compete for power. He cured illnesses for free. He muzzled violence during his arrest. He humbled himself in sacrificial death and rose in new life, as we will remember this week. He taught his disciples that their most ardent beliefs, however small, will come to be.
Let’s believe that this world and everything in it can be shared as easily as it can be purchased. Life, love, and wellbeing are not zero-sum games. We can transcend.