We’ll know if we are, by the way, if that self-blame has curdled into self-hate. If it’s blackened into depression. If ywe never feel good enough anymore, around our friends and loved ones. If we constantly feel a sense of desolation and littleness. These are almost sure signs we’re blaming ourself for what a failed society is. Maybe we did lose that job, and it’s secondary effect was to poison our relationship, and the effect of that was to plunge us into depression. None of that was really our fault.
(If we don’t believe it, consider the statistics. Nobody — nobody — can live a decent life on an average income. It’s flatly impossible now. 70% of people live paycheck to paycheck. 80% can’t raise a small amount for an emergency. These bad feelings are not our fault. Nobody can be expected to win — maybe even just to survive — a game fixed in advance by the cultural power brokers..
We must begin to regard ourself as a being of inalienable, intrinsic worth. What does it mean to say that “we were failed”? It means that we were born with a certain intrinsic worth, which nobody should have ever taken away from us. Our body is inviolable — yet maybe we don’t have decent healthcare. Our mind is a treasure — yet maybe we never received a good education. Our feelings are things of great meaning and beauty and purpose — yet maybe they were never seen or valued or known at all. All those are concrete ways we were failed — as a being of intrinsic worth.
We must regard everyone as a being of inalienable, intrinsic worth.This is the first really big step. We are a being of worth. But so is everyone else. That is precisely why everyone deserves things like healthcare, education, medicine, safety, stability and so on. It’s not just us. To really become a mature person, we must think of not just ourself as deserving of these things — but everyone, which, of course, includes us. That is what it means to be treated like a human being. That is what it means to have “humanity” — a terms we too often don’t really understand.
We don’t have to be perfect to deserve to be treated like a human being. The catch is that our current culture tells us to lionize ourselves as “perfect just the way we are.” That is not what I am saying to you. We are not perfect. We are deeply imperfect. So am I. Maybe, like me, you have certain weaknesses you can’t resist — mine are chocolate, disco, a sneaky beeir or hard cider, movie marathons instead of work, and a day spent taking a long walk across the city. Those weaknesses don’t make you unworthy of being treated like a human being. What does? Nothing does. There is nothing you can do or say or think or want or need — ever, period — that will ever take away your intrinsic worth. That is why it is inalienable. You deserve certain things just you are a human being. You always have, and always will. You didn’t get them. Your life didn’t go according to plan as a result. But that doesn’t mean you have to be perfect, or ever had to be.
Now, this sounds easy. But in practice, it’s very, very hard. It takes work. Reflection, soul-searching, meditation. To stop blaming yourself. To stop shaming yourself. And really understand that you never had to perfect, and still don’t have to be. That it should be OK to be a flawed, imperfect person — and still be treated like a human being. That is a still deeper idea of humanity — and a truer one, too.
Draw a firm boundary between you from your abusers. If you understand it’s society that has failed you — then who is “society”? Well, it’s everyone that believes foolish things like you should never have had healthcare or education or retirement or chances or support or safety or stability. Yes, really. Do you know how one of the first things victims of abuse are often told to is to separate themselves from their abusers? You must do exactly the same thing. You see, the more you hear all that — you don’t deserve anything — the harder it will be for you to cultivate a sense of robust, healthy, intrinsic worth.
If you have “friends” who believe you never deserved to be supported…guess what? They were never really your friends, in any genuine way. Yes, really. Go ahead and think it through. You cannot grow if you are surrounded by people like that. You will go on in despair and anxiety and rage and self-hate. Set a firm boundary. Keep them away from you, and you away from them.
(This is another big step — and no, it’s not easy. But it’s necessary. Relationships determine so much of our feelings and thoughts. And we can’t have better ones if we’re trapped in abusive relationships.)
Let me give you an example. I have a friend who wants to become a psychiatrist because her mother was deeply mentally ill. She wants to prevent anyone having to go through what she did as a kid, all the pain and suffering she experienced. A little girl, trying — and inevitably failing — to take care a very, very sick mom. They loved each other to bits. But what is the lesson in that love? Love isn’t the absence of suffering — but it is meaning in suffering, purpose to it, grace in it. Now imagine that she becomes a psychiatrist, and spends her life helping little girls and their moms not have to suffer the way she and hers did. What’s that called? It’s called growth, development, nurturance, healing.
What is it called when enough people do something like that? It’s called…progress. How else does human suffering ever really diminish? The only way that it happens is when we begin to orient our lives towards reducing the suffering in others that we ourselves have experienced. “It must never happen again,” we say, “I will walk in this direction.”
What have we learned when we do this? We have learned to begin being loving people. Genuinely loving people. Not just people who to a church or mosque and say that they will love others, and then don’t. But people who genuinely care for the possibilities of others around them. If enough of us do that…we don’t have an abusive society anymore. We have a nurturing one, a nourishing one, one that elevates and expands each and every life into its highest and truest self.
That is the kind of society we should want. But it’s not easy to get there, from the place we are now. Not just politically — but psychologically. It’s not easy to build a functioning society — from abused, battered, weary, anxious, frightened, desperate people. Hurt people hurt people.
First we must teach ourselves how to love again. Step by gentle, faltering, baby step. The forest’s challenge isn’t just outlasting the hurricane. It is placing the seed in the soil. It is reaching for the sun. It is holding up the whole sky. We must learn to see, hold, and touch each other again. That, I feel, is the truest — and hardest — challenge of now.
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