Keep Our Humanity, Whatever the Cost
This is not a bug in the software of our national discourse; it's a feature.
It's an everyday battle to be empathetic, particularly when our interactions are often so far removed from the personal. Fewer of us are getting married, are having children. Many of us are estranged from family members. We live farther from our loved ones. Fewer of us attend church. More of us work remotely. Travel is expensive and demeaning.
The interactions we do still have in great number are digital.
We talk less to our friends and family members, texting and messaging instead. Social media sites highlight big-engagement accounts, hiding the quaint posts from our friends and family (unless they're emotional or upsetting and likely to keep us on the site). Influencers sell us things, stripping life of nuance and anger and sadness -- all the ugly parts of humanity. Internet commenters are to us simply bots, trolls, ones and zeros scrolling across a screen -- even when there's a real person on the other side.
Despair if you must but there are, I believe, ways to fight dehumanization.
Don't assume nefarious motives.
A woman honked at me the other day as I was idling at a stoplight, the angry honk you give someone who's blocking an intersection. I wanted to shout, "What's your problem, lady?" but instead I held my breath and looked over. She was waving wildly in the direction of a "no right turn" sign. The air left my lungs. She'd just been trying to stop me from pulling into the intersection and getting nabbed by a red-light camera. She was doing me a solid. I waved back in thanks.
Acknowledge the interior lives of others.
Talk to people -- at the grocery store, walking your dog, at restaurants, at school pickup. Not so often or so incessantly that your barista dumps a pot of hot coffee on your head. But chat, like we used to, eons ago -- when we were people.
"I like your T-shirt." (If you do.)
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