It’s a truism, or even a cliché, to say that fear and desire – self absorption, in other words – prevent people expressing and accepting love. However commonplace, this idea is deeply important to human existence. Over and over again the wisest and most compassionate minds have attempted to find ways into the problem. The solution is also well known: by being kind to others, the ego is dissolved. Fear and selfish desire have less power over one’s actions. Cracks appear in the dam walls, and the nourishing waters of forgiveness make the heart come back to life. Values change, and suddenly whole new vistas open up. The person remembers how to care rather than want. How to give instead of take. Existence becomes real and present where it had been lived second hand in possessions, schemes, and regrets.
Those first steps are the hardest. Many people are trapped in desperate, addictive cycles of wanting. Meanwhile they fear losing the various bandages they strap down tight over the pain involved. There’s the pain of the harm done to others, and the harm done to themselves. Most of all there’s the pain of the loneliness and pointlessness of their existence. Love is as important a nourishment as oxygen, as the song says, and without the capacity to give love a person does not have the ability to receive it. Somehow a start is made. Perhaps the kindness of a friend or a stranger elicits a sympathetic response rather than one of clinging or anger. Somehow, without expecting return, the person does something for the benefit of another. Some memory of childhood or some instinct for survival allows the first drop or two of rain to reach the parched heartland of the soul, and green things begin to sprout.
The barriers are fear and anger. Resentment at past hurts. A wish for revenge. Sometimes the pain strapped down under those bandages is so devastating and acute that all a person’s energy is tied up in keeping the layers held close. Workaholics, gamblers, gluttons, and drug addicts, and just ordinary tense controlling people can fear their own pain so much they must struggle constantly to keep the lid on, by occupying every moment’s thought or seeking, in between, the respite of oblivion. The risk of stopping for a moment and having to feel is too frightening to countenance.
It’s always painful to begin with. It always costs, and it always starts with giving without expecting return. Real giving, simply out of kindness. That is saying: I’m hurting, I need love, I haven’t enough… but I will ignore that and do something for another.
Now think about politics. I would argue that very much the same thing applies. We are usually too greedy and selfish to step outside our own wants and needs, as nations and interest groups within nations. But cooperation, peace, and brother/sisterhood can give us so much more than the momentary advantage of self-interest. We even make an exception to our usual morality when we talk about the policy of our own nation. The basis of morality can be expressed as “Do unto others…” In other words: Act according to principles such that if everyone were to follow those principles the result would be good. The very first choice which a rational person would universalise under this approach is the right to personal autonomy, because without assuming the right to choose, a moral existence is impossible. There is a clear analogy in politics, in that we as citizens would choose to live in a democracy under the rule of laws which treat people equally. On the international stage we would be outraged should control of our nation’s government be taken by foreign powers, or if our country was targeted in a discriminatory way. That is to say we expect the right to autonomy and to fair treatment.
But this is the exception we excuse as “patriotism” or acceptable national self interest. When it comes to our country we are parochial and we think that this bias is not only normal but correct. If our country gains a trade advantage over a poorer neighbour we don’t feel guilty but commend our leaders for their skill in negotiation or their ability to use power to our advantage. By and large it is not the morality of a foreign war which makes it unpopular but the casualties. Our casualties, not the euphemised civilian horrors of the people in that other land. When the world as a whole faces the prospect of environmental catastrophe because of the industrialisation of our nation, and others like us, then just the same it seems acceptable to argue that we cannot risk even a fraction of the wealth gained by that industrialisation to mitigate the environmental harm. This national selfishness and greed has distorted international relations, as if a too-small playpen were inhabited by cruel and violent children squabbling and harming one another for possession of toys and cakes.
Where human failings are most horribly writ large is in the case of long running wars and tribal conflict. Resentment, anger, and the desire for revenge harden our hearts against the suffering or the “enemy” and block compassion. Spirals of violence and hatred last for generations. For illustration think of the meaning of the following incident, as a simple example.
I had been helping organise a rally protesting the genocide in Darfur. This ongoing horror involves several million (Muslim) people who are slowly being starved to death as a result of a campaign of violence orchestrated by the government of Sudan (themselves Muslims too). A singer, a Christian refugee from southern Sudan, was to perform at the rally. At the last moment she pulled out. Her family, she explained, had been killed by Muslims and she could not sing in support of Muslims in Darfur.
We harm ourselves by being greedy and selfish, both as an individual and as a nation. We close our hearts. We live in a sterile land, both metaphorically and in reality. Our values are distorted and we are crazy and ill. By contrast, if we act with true generosity we are richer in every way that matters. We understand true satisfaction and contentment rather than being lost in the sugar-high cycle of possession and loss.
A few less shiny toys, a slightly simpler life, a lot less fear and real security and brotherhood. Love and respect with our neighbours. On the macro and the micro scale it begins with the courage to take a unilateral risk, put aside past hurts and immediate gain, and find forgiveness, generosity and kindness even when it seems we don’t have enough for ourselves.
Take that risk. Let the love in. Insist that our government does the same.