A Buddhist monk once advised his students that when they made their way in the world they should consider themselves in a “land of friendly cannibals.” What he meant was that just because strangers can be nice doesn’t mean they have our best interests at heart. Indeed, it’ss part and parcel of one’s coming-of-age to realize that everyone has his or her own agenda, and often it’s at odds with our own.
As writer Caroline Zelonka put it, “People aren’t against you; they are for themselves. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing everything should and does revolve around our wants and needs. However, the reality is just the opposite. People rarely care about what we want and need and look more towards what they need and what works for them.”
Thus clergyman William Ellery Channing’s comment, “How the ‘I’ pervades all things!” – for it is part and parcel to being human that what matters most is what “I” want and what “I” need. And since everyone feels that way, if we don’t take care of ourselves no one else will. As comedienne Lily Tomlin observed, “We’re all in this together – by ourselves.”
This down-to-earth, pragmatic view of human nature is the bedrock of Conservatism. Self-interest is understood as the driving force behind not just human life but all life. And nature shows us that only the fittest survive. We must capitalize on opportunities and conserve our personal resources. We are surrounded, after all, by cannibals. In a dog-eat-dog world it’s eat or be eaten. Yes, this results in a lot of suffering by those less able to wrest what they need from others. But that’s the way human life is.
Only it isn’t. Archaeologists in Africa, for example, have found the million-year-old remains of a severely injured hominid whose wounds showed clear signs of healing. This means that other hominids took care of this individual – even that long ago, he had been cared for, something no other species would do.
Compassion for others is a hallmark of humanity. Thomas Jefferson was absolutely correct when he observed that “Morality, compassion, generosity are innate elements of the human constitution.” To deny these qualities for the sake of the “I” is to retreat back into the primeval jungle.
Today our society is being torn apart by the question of whether government has a responsibility to help all its citizens. Yet if we simply take one step back, and ask instead if humans have a responsibility to help one another, there is little disagreement. Compassion is so part and parcel to what makes us human that society has labeled those who lack empathy for others as being mentally ill, as being sociopaths.
Where liberals and conservatives stand divided is in how to help others. Conservatives believe that church charities and emergency rooms can provide the help capitalism’s casualties need. Liberals believe only government has the ability to help the millions of senior citizens, disabled people and the unemployed who would otherwise fall through the cracks.
What we need is for both liberals and conservatives to admit their failures. Sweeping programs to help the disadvantaged too often give rise to dependency and abuse, while giving more and more money to the rich in hopes it will “trickle down” has led to the greatest disparity in wealth this country has ever seen. Yes, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. But as humans we alone among earth’s creatures are capable of rising above Nature’s cold brutality. We thus have a responsibility to see that everyone has enough to eat, has access to medical care and gets a decent education. As humans, we should be past arguing about this; we should instead be finding workable ways to make it happen.