To many of us, witnessing the cruelty of people now in power is heartbreaking and discouraging, even to the point of serious depression and in some cases thoughts of suicide. Thoughtful people I know are asking themselves what to do.
It’s never been easy to confront cruelty, but the feelings of pain and heartbreak are key to responding; it is precisely due to our capacity to feel love, care, and compassion that cruelty feels so terribly painful.
The only way to confront cruelty is to smother it with love. Martin Luther King knew this, as did Nelson Mandela. Loving the world despite its cruelty is what Buddhists call Bodhisattva activity. Talking about it is easy; doing it is hard work, and at times like these, perhaps the hardest work of all.
The hard work of love is precisely what’s needed right now. With people losing their jobs, people who are living in fear of deportation, people who cannot feed themselves or find a home, people who are being marginalized and targeted; all these people need love. And not just love, of course, but support.
For years, the Democratic party has been talking about fighting for this and fighting for that. Overcoming cruelty is not about fighting. Fighting is exactly the wrong idiom for these times. We can and should resist, however, and in order to resist effectively one’s heart must be open to the world, even in the face of cruelty, as difficult as that is.
There have as always been those who believe that might makes right, that the world is a cruel and predatory place and only through the powers of force and cruelty do we survive. That belief supports the idea that the weak have their place in the natural order: to be dominated by the powerful. This is sometimes dubbed Neo-Darwinism, a twist on the idea of survival-of-the-fittest, but it is as mistaken as its attribution to Darwin, who did not originate the term. To the contrary, Darwin emphasized adaptive interrelationship as the key to survival.
Humanity has survived through love and cooperation, not cruelty. It has always been and remains our greatest strength; it is our superpower. We don’t have retractable claws, venomous fangs, nor great physical strength, yet we are the world’s alpha predator, and it is due to our ability to cooperate. Cooperation, not competition, is the key to human survival. Long-term cooperation succeeds when empathy, compassion and love are cultivated through example and action.
Cruelty is taught, but tellingly, it dies with each us. Love, on the other hand, is constantly born and emerges naturally from the heart, as in a mother’s love for her child. Love is our greatest natural human inheritance, and it’s needed now more than ever. Without it, we are simply beasts.
It is in the face of beastly cruelty that the great strength of love is revealed. It is the force that endures across time, and the social progress of humanity depends upon it. Although social progress sometimes includes taking “two steps forward and three steps back,” the history of the past 500 years is unquestionably that of increased emancipation, freedom and cooperation. The force of cruelty sometimes holds us back for a while, but it is a failing long-term strategy no matter how terrible it often is.
I know this is asking a lot, but don’t give up on love.
Larry, this is an apt and timely article. Thanks! These are hard ideas to remember at times, but they are stated beautifully.
Looks like there is goi.ng to be plenty of cruelty for us to confront. But how? Do what we can locally and look to hook up with others. Also read about autocracy, how they can be resisted and how they can fail. Knowledge and goodwill! Thanks for this Larry.
Ohhhhhhhhh, Thank YOU always, Larry!