Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - August 2023: On Sweeping Our Doorsteps
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Good morning/afternoon/evening,
Why can't we all just get along?
In college, the best conversations often entertained that question and usually occurred around three in the morning. Orators all, my friends and I became mechanics of the human condition, taking apart the world's problems and reassembling old ideas into new configurations. Picture Raphael's The School of Athens, but with more Sublime t-shirts and lukewarm Rolling Rock.
We were idealists. In discussing humanity's struggles, we think-tanked politics and history and psychology and sociology, and like Democritus describing the smallest components of matter, we reasoned there must be fractal psychological reasons humanity refused to learn its lessons--thought patterns recurring on both the individual and collective scales, holding our species back from our full potential. Why is the world not better? If an individual person is pretty chill, why is our world so decidedly unchill?
"If I don't do this bad thing, someone else will--and at least I'm not as bad as that someone else."
So says the corrupt leader--and this is the exact kind of thought I'm talking about. No single raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood. The thoughts I've accumulated below represent raindrops, as it were--innocuous little rationalizations we all make that, on a collective scale, keep the world exactly as troubled it is. This is not an exhaustive list, but it may be an exhausting list. I relate these here because I've encountered such thoughts in myself and would like to sweep in front of my own psychological doorstep:
"Real change relies on everyone pitching in, and if everyone isn't pitching in, why should I?"
Think about billionaires in their private jets. If they're not reducing their carbon footprint, why should I? What difference could my recycling a bottle make? Such reasoning is, of course, perilous in the face of climate change.
"This doesn't affect me directly, and thinking about it is bad for my mental health."
Another classic from the Climate Change Collection! We should all be freaking out about global warming--but, naturally, no one can live like that. So we don't.
"Better the devil you know than the one you don't."
From spouses to elected officials, it's all too natural to stay in an abusive relationship.
"I'd rather just give in to the bad habit one more time right now and get it over with, that way I'll stop being preoccupied by it and can move on with living my life."
It's distracting to have a bad habit! Whether the bad habit consists of smoking cigarettes or indulging the military industrial complex, once we get it out of the way one last time, we'll be able to finally move on without that distraction. Right?
"If I/we don't attack first, I/we leave ourselves open to attack."
This sort of ties into the previous one, and perhaps this specific point is debatable. I believe countries have a legitimate need for self-defense capabilities. However, think of all the violence borne out trigger-happy preemption.
"Oh, so you think you're better than me?"
In a community or peer group, envy can turn into resentment, which can lead a group of crabs to drag each other back down into the boiling pot.
"I'm a rational person."
If we believe ourselves to be rational and reasonably intelligent, then whatever we find ourselves believing must therefore be something a rational and reasonably intelligent person would believe. Those who brainwash love the intelligent and rational.
....
I want to be the best version of myself. I've heard it said that one should behave in a way that, if everyone behaved that way, the world would be a better place, and I'm keenly interested in such a hypothetical better world since Hannah and I are expecting a little girl in January 2024. She'll be our first--in fact, she's bcc'd on this email! We created a Gmail account for her and have been sending love letters.
Things will change. Both for the two (three) of us and our entire world. I've enumerated so many bad things that seem like constants, but maybe having hope is like bringing home the groceries--a decision made again and again to carry something heavy, to provide for those you love.
I sincerely hope you've been well. Thank you for reading.
Infinite Regards,
Jay