Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2020. It treats events of spring 2020 as current, including the COVID-19 emergency, applause for health workers and police in Spain, and the Black Lives Matter protests. This is a personal opinion piece written in June 2020 and reflects the author’s own views.
We need to be careful about how we perceive the world around us, because a distorted view of it can lead good people to behave badly.
If I look at the people closest to me (family and friends), those further away (acquaintances) and my online circle (people I don’t know personally but follow, or who follow me, on social media), on the whole I have no complaints. I’m sure I’m surrounded by good people.
I know for a fact that, even though they think differently about politics, religion and even economic policy, everyone around me (close, distant and online) wants exactly the same thing: the common good.
There are no racists in my circles, no people who hate women, and certainly no people who wish poverty on others. Quite the opposite. On the whole, they are good people.
Well, the people around me are no different from the people around you. We will always find exceptions, but we should see them for what they are: exceptions.
We have shown our solidarity time and again
As a society, we have shown more than once that we are all capable of coming together for the common good. We have shown that, regardless of race or gender, when something has threatened us as a country or as a society, we have all pulled in the same direction. And that happens because we all have the same interests. In short, because on the whole we are good people.
So why are we so divided as a society?
During this latest blow to our society, caused by the health emergency, we have seen ourselves praising doctors, nurses and police officers. We called them heroes. And the truth is that they risked their lives to look after us, our families, our elderly and our sick.
But we quickly slip back into a kind of fictional reality, where a new fight begins that starts to divide us. Now we are also starting to split our heroes into “lefties” and “fascists” because of their political views, even though all of them are seeking the common good.
There is always a cause to fight for, and if there isn’t one, one gets created.
Once again the streets are filling with demonstrations, regardless even of the danger still posed by a virus that has killed tens of thousands of people and has not yet gone away.
This time the cause is the killing of an African American man in the United States by a police officer with a history of police brutality.
People feel they have to take to the streets, and they do, thinking they know why they are going out and what for, but very few really know: we start fires so that we get the chance to put them out.
Perhaps that would explain why, if these are anti-racism demonstrations, they attack the statue of Abraham Lincoln, who happens to be the man who abolished slavery, the man who fought for the rights of every person regardless of race and colour.
Perhaps it would also explain why they attack the statue of Winston Churchill. Didn’t this man fight against the Nazis?
And I could go on. All I see is a certain interest in dividing good people and making them fight over causes that don’t even exist, which could lead to other kinds of acts that might turn into a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.
Even if there is no widespread racism, if we make African Americans believe that the US police will kill you today simply for being African American, the next time an African American sees a police officer coming over to ask for his car papers, he might react unpredictably.
We have seen for some time now that there is always a cause to fight for, and if there isn’t one, one gets created.
Have we already forgotten how police officers all over the world (including the United States) have risked their lives to save African Americans in all sorts of situations?
On the whole, the police are not racist. On the whole, the police look after the interests of the innocent, regardless of race or colour.
Poor against rich, workers against employers, women against men…
There was a time when women were objectified by society. Those times are over. Yes, those times are over.
We have been sold lies about a gender pay gap that doesn’t exist. However convinced you may be that there is a pay gap between the sexes, I simply invite you to look at the data for yourself, impartially. Whoever is selling you the pay gap is part of the problem we’re discussing: division.
We have spent public money creating associations that have only weakened us as a society in every sense. First, economically, because these associations have been very effective as a way of making money out of unnecessary confrontation between men and women.
We have been made to believe that a man is a potential abuser simply for being a man, which makes me wonder what these women think of their own fathers.
I take it for granted that there are abusive men, just as I take it for granted that some women have used the law to mistreat their ex-husbands. Of course, I personally believe that, on the whole, women and men are good people.
We have come to have what seems to be a widespread view of business owners as some kind of exploitative devil. I don’t know whether people realise that it’s because business owners take the risk of starting companies that something called “jobs” exists.
Those rich people so many hate are precisely the ones who create the most jobs.
Just as I would invite politicians and business owners to put themselves in a worker’s shoes, I would also invite the people who complain about business owners to start a company. It would be a real pleasure to see how happy and well paid their workers would be.
But I don’t blame these people, because they are probably not to blame for thinking this way.
When a billionaire donates life-saving products, millions that do our society good, and I see some people still criticising that billionaire, clearly we can’t blame the person doing the criticising. We would have to look for whoever has “brainwashed” them into thinking that a generous act is not a good thing.
I sincerely believe that if we think the world around us is not wicked, and that on the whole people are worth it, your life can improve, and your mental health can improve. It isn’t healthy to turn on the television and see how many wars we have going on.
Our mind can end up generalising from isolated events, and in that case you will end up filled with hatred and disappointment in humanity: a world full of racists, abusers and murderers, on top of an economic crisis and a pandemic. Seen that way, every day you don’t throw yourself off a cliff could count as a victory.
Don’t let them fool you, don’t let them beat us. Don’t let them divide us. Remember that, on the whole, we all want the same thing. We are all good people.
Featured image: Photograph by Mike Peel ( www.mikepeel.net ), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
