Warren Kinsella
Also Warren Kinsella
I don’t see the “need to be
shocked” as particularly reflective of modern life. I’ve been around the world and have witnessed
a wide variety of human-on-human atrocity that didn’t make anyone other than
me, the foreigner, bat an eyelash. Even
in local politics, people who have shouted to the heavens “move forward
together” have said, in private, that to get ahead in this world, it’s every man for himself.
Disagree with me if you want, but
there’s a rationale for this that goes beyond
a blank declaration that the world is evil.
What we traditionally do is exactly the same as what our counterparts in
the rest of the natural world do – we conserve energy for when we might need it
most. Our first layer of self is a
selfish one; ignoring a homeless person on the street, leaving empty coffee
cups on store shelves, not holding the door open for the person behind us or
not worrying about what happens to the soil if we extract every ounce of
natural resource from it. Whatever is a
gain for us, individual, is a loss (of resource, of time, of safety, etc) for
someone else.
This is nothing new; today’s
generation isn’t more ambivalent than every one that’s come before it. While there is still a large swath of
population that doesn’t care what happens to anyone other than themselves,
their family and perhaps their social group – a work cast, an ethnic or
religious group, etc – this is a trend that is on the decline. We are becoming more aware of our present as
part of a spectrum that includes the future
as well as the
past and are taking into consideration long-term consequence as well as
immediate benefit. As we are
hyper-socialized through urban living, media and now, social media, our nets of
influence (and therefore, of compassion) are ultimately reaching out further.
Again, there are parallels
for this in the natural world; altruism isn’t a uniquely human, God-given
ability that sets us apart from other species; it’s simply another evolutionary
advantage. It’s one that makes a
lot of sense, too – you gain more influence and control over external factors
like storms, predators, illnesses and food access when you work together. But this also means risking loss through
providing to others without
a definitive guarantee of return. Collaboration
eats away at independence, but furthers opportunity.
This, then, is the real human dichotomy; not the
political left vs. the political right, but individual independence vs.
social strength and mutual benefit. It’s
also the origin of strategy,
which at its simplest is planning for victory tomorrow, even at the expense of
a win today.
While political war room
strategists might speak metaphorically about stepping on necks, that’s all it
is – metaphor. When was the last time we
had a political assassination in North America?
When in
Canada, specifically? While we might
accept throwing each other’s youth “under the bus” as fair play, we remain
aghast at the idea of actually killing children.
When we expand the net from
political strategy to actual military strategy, hearts-and-minds campaigns, fostering
local supports and where possible, facilitating structural collapse from the
inside rather than expending resources and political capital ourselves is more
the norm than ever. We don’t want to
kill off opponents – we
want to harness them as markets, partners, sources of usefulness. It’s that inherent biogical altruism playing
itself out at the international scale.
Unfortunately, there will always
be selection-of-the-fittest examples at the grand scale. After every diplomatic, strategic and
manipulative tactic has been tried, force becomes the only option remaining
(inaction causes the problem to spread, eventually calling for action – it’s
like trying to avoid going to the doctor for a toothache). Force results in proud
leaders being stripped of their power, honour and dignity. They become fodder
for social media, today’s equivalent to heads on pikes as warnings.
The majority of people who will
or would wield power register these examples and add them into their strategic
considerations, forcing them to lean a bit more in the pro-social, manipulative
direction. And the cycle continues.
What follows manipulation in
terms of fostering success? Empowerment.
So, to the dichotomy of good and
evil folk out there worried about a closing spiral on civilization, I would say
this: there
is good in this world – and it’s worth planning for.