|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
With one life to live, and after giving appropriate homáge to obligations of the social contract and religious observance, each of us should pursue our own happiness as a daily priority. Every day of discontent, while perhaps yielding life lessons, is obviously less preferable and even healthy than a day full of smiles.
Happiness can be generated from within and without. Finding happiness from within requires that we do or think about things, be in places, and/or interact with people that make us happy. And to the extent life’s demands (e.g., work, family responsibilities, illness, etc.) limit these choices, we must compartmentalize, relegating the stressful and unhappy parts of each day to mitigate their impact. This challenge is daunting in the best of times. Today, it has obviously become im- possible for most of us.
Politics and the pandemic, along with their progeny — disruption and uncertainty — have led to impatience, frustration, anger and violence at levels not seen since World War II, nearly 80 years ago. And the intervening development of social media, while providing enlightenment to everyone on earth, has clearly exacerbated these effects by ensuring that all people can see and feel them all the time.
People are both the problem and the solution. We have limited abilities to cope with, much less resolve, the varying and conflicting values and norms of our fellow man. These limitations also preclude us from controlling the emotional and environmental factors that interfere with our daily happiness whether coming from within, or from our interactions with other people and the external world.
Consider that all humans are comprised of thousands of characteristics. Each characteristic exists on its own spectrum. Using intelligence as an example, the spectrum would roughly run from imbecile to genius, with numerous levels in between. With empathy, it could be anywhere between “couldn’t care less” and Mother Teresa.
The point is that we can never know — even with family and close friends — from where, on each spectrum of their individual characteristics, and in what combination, another person’s actions and statements arise. And because this lack of knowledge about a person restricts our understanding of what they might comprehend and intend, another person’s actions and words should not unduly affect our own feelings, desires, and conduct.
There are going to be disagreements — from one person to the next — about almost everything. But given that it is a mystery as to which of a person’s characteristics (and to what extent) are motivating and shaping an action or statement, we should acknowledge this inherent lack of certainty and avoid making judgments about, or overreacting to, what we have seen or heard. By doing this, we can mitigate any stress or unhappiness which might be otherwise perceived or felt.
Understanding that we always lack complete clarity in our human interactions should facilitate the tempering of anger and frustration that can result from the disappointed expectations of human behavior. And it will enable us to focus on the good.
The problem is exacerbated in the governance of societies and nation states. How can billions of people in a limited space be organized and regulated so as to preserve and enhance life, opportunity, productivity and peace? Given the virtually infinite number of permutations of humans’ respective characteristic spectrums, it would seem impossible to be able to accommodate the needs and wants of a large enough percentage of the people to effectively govern, much less obtain a consensus among such a disparate population.
As many leaders and philosophers have previously encouraged, the only way to do so is to govern from the middle. To organize and govern society from the extremes of the human spectrum, would necessarily leave out the vast majority of everyone to the respective left or right. Doing so from the middle is necessarily inclusive of the largest percentage of the population by reflecting the views of those people surrounding that middle.
Virtually all regimes and societies that have succeeded over a significant period of time have governed from the middle. In large part, this was because the vast majority of people had little awareness of, much less in-depth knowledge about, their government or society.
Until the 21st Century, knowledge was limited and communication was slow. The ignorant (i.e., uneducated) and the stupid (i.e., educated, but nonetheless clueless) had neither the data available, or the knowledge, to understand government and society, nor the voice to communicate about it. And even the venal were limited in the harm they could cause because few would hear their rantings.
But the internet has fundamentally changed everything. Now, the extremes of the human spectrum have as loud and as broad a voice as everyone else. And any theory or information on any topic can be supported by instantly-available validation. With those on the extremes now “informed” and “with voice”, they have become active and emboldened, making it quite difficult for those who would lead from the middle. Given the current state of evolution, humans are mentally and physically ill-equipped to deal with, much less solve the challenge of this paradigm. But, we can do better.
Societal and personal happiness depends on people and governments adapting to this state of affairs and getting back to the middle. In our personal interactions, we should find a happy medium, a place where there is enough commonality and shared joy to accept, if not like, one another, even despite disagreements or even conflict. Societal governance can work the same way. May we all meet soon, somewhere in the middle.
Alan Rosenthal, a native Miamian. is a civil litigation and trial attorney in Carlton Fields’ Miami office.
