We have a humanity crisis.
Not a humanitarian crisis, although there are plenty of those happening in the world too.
You see, maybe I’m friends with the wrong people on Facebook, but it seems like almost daily I’m inundated with memes like this one:
Or this one:
None of those good enough for ya? How about one that’s both transphobic and threatens physical violence?
The funny thing is, most of the people who share these memes will turn around and share DO YOU LOVE JESUS?! TYPE AMEN! types of posts in practically the same click. It would almost be funny if these same people didn’t have so much power. But as we learned with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, these folks can and will take away fundamental freedoms from us. Freedoms. You know, the very thing the right loves to brag about preserving.
I don’t know at what point in history “helping others” and “being a decent fucking human” became a partisan issue, but for some reason, it is. And I blame toxic individualism.
A certain amount of individualism isn’t bad. It’s what enables us to stand out and create new things. Nothing great would be accomplished without someone pushing against the grain. It’s when individualism evolves into “I got mine, so screw you” that it becomes toxic.
It’s why people turn against each other so easily these days. Remember when people didn’t give a shit about being transgender? No one was boycotting Pokémon back in the 90s for having Meowth be voiced by a trans woman. But somehow trans people having more rights takes away rights from cisgender people, and right wing pundits utilized that fearmongering to make trans folks public enemy number one. All because people are afraid of losing their rights to a group that is honestly much worse off than them.
Why are we as a people so dead-set on fucking over other folks? Why do we as a society pit groups of people against each other?
“It’s the same string of arrogant assumptions that spawned the master race theories of Herr Hitler: ego deification, social Darwinism, arbitrary stratification of human types,” this article ponders. “Adapted for capitalism, it becomes the divine right to plunder, a license for those who own nearly everything to take the rest, because they wish to, because they can. Because the weak don’t matter. Let the big dogs feed.”
“Success coaches” like Andrew Tate espouse the same kind of individualistic BS — life’s about making your own money, popping out your own babies, and bowing to that primal urge to get yours before someone else takes it from you. But is that a way to truly be human?
Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said the earliest sign of human civilization was a healed bone. In the animal kingdom, should a creature break a bone, that would almost certainly spell death for the poor thing. A stronger animal will easily overpower it and claim it as a snack. But someone protected and cared for another person long enough for their injury to heal. The thing that makes us different from animals is our ability to care for one another for unselfish reasons. This is our humanity. This is the very thing these “survival of the fittest” types want to erase.
Call me a bleeding heart librul, but I’d rather pay a little extra in taxes so some kid can get a free lunch or someone’s grandpa can get the cancer treatment he needs. I can learn a few Spanish phrases to make immigrants’ lives a little easier. I’d make small sacrifices like getting used to a friend’s new name or pronouns if it means welcoming in marginalized folks. It honestly isn’t that much of a sacrifice — we honor newlywed women’s name change requests all the time. American right wing politics make no logical sense to me. At some point, it just seems like people are going out of their way to be dicks to folks they don’t even know.
I’m not saying voting blue will change everything overnight. Everyone knows even left-leaning politicians are bought off by companies and individuals with less than wholesome intentions. A revolution isn’t going to magically happen anytime soon. But maybe we can start by not actively being jerks to other people. Maybe we can start by embracing our humanity.
A concept, am I right?
JESSA JOYCE 