Broken Thumb Blog

Being human is no comfortable state of being. It requires compassion, tolerance, temperance, resilience and patience--none of which is easy to achieve. And these traits are regularly tested because we live in a world full of people similarly struggling with their humanity. It is difficult to suffer the intolerant, to have compassion for the cruel, or to be temperate in the face of extremism.

My friend Tyson once asked me how I reconcile an obvious misanthropy with my secular humanism, and I had no answer for him. For the few weeks following I turned my mental energies toward understanding how it is that I am able to do so. I considered my opinions on mob mentality, individual liberty, free will, tyranny, democracy, republicanism, distribution of wealth, persistence of poverty, crime, war, religion, art, and literature. The exercise was neither comprehensive or strictly organized. It occurred in disjointed moments on the subway, during lunchbreaks, and through conversations with friends.

Tyson's question forced me to evaluate the two facets of my worldview. The first is that people, when left to their own devices, are selfish and self-serving. They seize advantages which accrue benefits to themselves and think little of the consequence to others. In such a world, each of us is responsible for his own safety. Each of us must be constantly vigilant to avoid becoming victims of another's greed, perfidy, or general machinations. The second is that we love success, beauty, and happiness. We have created institutions to pursue and secure personal liberty. Our great artists have wrought masterworks in paint, prose, and poetry. Charity and generosity surface in moments of great calamity.

Knowing these two things, and recognizing man's deep capacity for each, I accept that we must allow people to be what they are. To tame man's negative spirits tames all of man's spirits. We must seek a middle point where our basest motivations are balanced by our noblest pursuits, and when behavior becomes destructive to the social order (rape, murder, theft, fraud) we must condemn and contain it. Otherwise the relative anarchy of pure self-interest will crowd out the beautiful things in life -- no artist will display work which the vandal has equal right to destroy.

So I answered Tyson's original question to my own satisfaction. Nonetheless, I still wonder, "How do we best encourage man's greatness in a healthy productive society? What form does that society take? Can it ever be free of crime? of poverty? Would we honestly want it to be?"

I don't have the answers to these questions yet. But I'll keep thinking, and as I form my opinions, you can expect me to share them.