Episode Untitled, or Humanity and What We Can Do About It – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, an attempt at trying to suggest how we humanity can be better humans.

I had a grand piece planned out for this week: how we should come to notice our common humanity more, which I outlined while I was watching the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics last Friday, but the script that it turned into isn’t something I’m very proud of. It’s too American, too focused on capitalism setting us free, when really that hasn’t happened for millions if not billions of people around this planet. So, I’m writing this with no real goal in mind, just hoping it’ll go somewhere that I can record it and send it out to the twelve of you who listen to my podcast and the other handful of you who read my blog.

I’ve got to say, it’s hard coming up with something new every week. Sometimes when I’m on top of things I’ll have a running list of topics that I want to cover, and slowly make my way down that list. The intended post for this week fit into that model pretty well. But, whether it’s because of sleep deprivation, forgetfulness, or whatever else, I can’t remember where I put that list, so here we are ladies and gents! The big thing I wanted to get across in this week’s intended episode is that we really don’t need enemies, we don’t need rivals or there doesn’t need to be a battle between good and evil. All that builds community, sure, but it also builds mistrust and leaves us poorer in the long run. 

My beloved baseball team (Go Cubs) has a long-standing rivalry with our neighbors downriver, the St. Louis Cardinals, and while that rivalry has sometimes spilled over into actual brawls on the field it’s just a sports rivalry at the end of the day. Except that it’s grown beyond just being a sports rivalry. Rivalries like that can grow into actual hatreds, actual animosity, and that, ladies and gents, is what leads to us having full scale enemies. It’s silly, but it’s also human nature to follow the crowd, and if that crowd tells us to hate then that’s probably what we’ll end up doing.

So, what’s the point of me telling you this? Is it that hate is inherent? Nope. Is it because I made a commitment to write one of these things every week? Yep, and I’m going to make each one count. We follow the crowd, but we don’t necessarily have to follow bad advice. If we take the time to sit down and learn from each other, if we’re honest with each other we can probably solve our problems. The trick is actually meaning it. That’s something I’ve learned through all the toughening my skin’s gone through over the years that I’ve been in grad school, as jaded as I could easily become, every day I still need to remind myself what it is I care about, and why I keep doing what I do. 

If there’s anything I’d like to see happen in my time on this marble rolling around in the sky it’s some cooperation among us humans. Like the commentators at the New York Times did this weekend, I do tend to roll my eyes whenever I heard John Lennon’s song “Imagine” play during the Olympics opening ceremony. It’s lost its impact after the umpteenth time it’s been played in stadiums and games put on by dictators and bullies, in a moment of global solidarity that’s always co-opted into one big marketing campaign for some corporation or another. But as long as those guys listen to Lennon’s words, that’s John, not Vladimir, maybe we will achieve that world where there’s no war, no suffering, no hunger, and where everyone knows how to read.