The Cost of Supremacy Is Division

An Epidemic of Weary Minds, Washing Their Hands of Hope and Understanding

Are we brainwashing ourselves into an embittered future? Life’s difficult experiences work like an algorithm, steadily eroding the shore of goodwill.

We want to know that our experiences are hard-won truths about the world and our place in it. We want to be right at the cost of social cohesion.

Hurt has become the lens through which many view the world, finding safety in dissociating from relationships.

Too many are bruised by the wounded, reinforcing apathy and despair.

If the hurt became the healers, selfishly trying to absolve themselves of their pain by trying to alleviate another’s, surely we’d all be better off.

Injecting hope into the veins of hatred is a means to pull society back from the brink.

We cannot erase someone’s experience, but we can meet it with understanding and empathy. Rather than pick at life’s scabs, we can nurture healing, share what we’ve learned, and show others how to lessen their scars.

Self-imposed loneliness, chosen as protection from the complexities of human nature and troubled experience, only atrophies society’s progress and strength.

Our greatest difference from the animals around us is our ability to coordinate, to seek, and to offer compassion. Without that, or perhaps because of its absence, society descends into selfish gains and manipulative games.

What do we want for our friends, families and ourselves? Support, growth, care, love.

Too often the loveless rhetoric revolves around how we are wronged, our injustices, our desire for respect despite withholding our own.

The sludge of pessimism about the state of things corrupts the very conditions for improvement. We should do good not despite the bad, but because of it. Without that balance, everything falters.

The measure of strength is not supremacy, but compassion. One divides; the other unifies.

Instead of racing to the bottom in outrage, society must climb with helping hands toward a higher view of the future.

Critique with encouragement, as you would nurture a child. It is not about who is right or wrong, but about helping others find themselves for better understanding of your own place in the world.

Hate can burrow into us all. The only salve against infection is compassion.

The sense that we are doomed, that people are broken, is not the end but a signal, an invitation toward a better way of being.