Amerika

When you consider, what you are doing is what is mostly missing from modern society: Considering.

What is it, to consider, anyway?

When somebody says something, makes an observation, communicates, what do you do? Immediately judge it as something you like, or dislike? Do you agree, or disagree? Decide if it makes you comfortable, or uncomfortable? Depending upon your feeling about it, what do you do next?

If you are like most leftists, you will either tolerate or loathe the speaker.

If you are not like most leftists, you might consider what is being said.

The leftist – as a rule – will judge everything against like, versus dislike. Agreement vs. disagreement. Comfort vs. discomfort.

Whereas the non-leftist will listen, consider, add to inventory or discard, act or not act.

To do, or not-do. A quintessential taoist perspective. Not always necessary to do. Often better to not-do. Just be: listen, consider, contemplate…

If there was only one thing that could be insisted upon, to arrest society’s headlong plunge into the abyss, what would that thing be?

A hypothetical question, and a rhetorical one.

My answer would be: Consideration.

Imagine – or consider – :

If everyone were considerate to each other, how different society would be.

This is not so far-fetched. When I was young, it was a given, that one was considerate to others. Everybody (almost) was considerate. No big deal. The result was that tenuous, but all-important thing, called respect. This was the state that existed before the idea of “rights” was invented, to replace it.

Without “rights”, people were able to get along with each other: to cooperate and tolerate, without those conditions being labeled as either cooperation or tolerance.

How did this outlook come to be? Whatever “rights” were to be had, they extended only to adults. Not to children. Children had no rights. Shock! Horror!

But it worked. Children, having no rights, were susceptible to being taught how to behave, by adults. They learned about things like cooperation, tolerance and consideration, carrying it on into adulthood, when they, in turn, could teach it to their own children…

This was how it had always been. Natural. Obvious. Effective. This is the basis of civilization. Where consideration ends, there also ends civilization.