On the Right

“You’re on the wrong side of history.”

How many times have I heard that about myself and how many times have I thought it about others? What does it even mean? How does one get on the “right” or “wrong” side of history? If history, as they say, is written by the victors, then what difference do our attitudes about it make now, before the victors have had a chance to tally up the score?

To be on a side at all suggests conflict. What is conflict, if not two opposing sides both believing they hold the superior belief system? What other reason is there to fight? Somebody believes a spit of land is theirs; somebody else believes the opposite. Ultimately, all ideologies boil down to that, don’t they? How do we allocate limited resources?

What is the battle over transgenderism, for example, if not a battle over power? Moral power, in this case. But also the power of the state to dictate how one lives one’s life. The power of institutions to assert their authority over individuals. The power of one ideology over another. But we could say the same about conflicts over immigration, taxation, guns.

America is a country in constant tension with itself. Maybe that’s true of every nation, just as it is between individuals. Just as every individual is in constant tension with themselves. That tension, I suppose, comes from our unique ability as a species to know our own minds, and to recognize that others may – and do – hold different aspirations than our own, even if those aspirations are as simple as finding food. It is this - food as metaphor - for which we all fight. So, to resolve those fights, we’ve come up borders and credos and ideologies. In the end, what is an ideology other than an algorithm for allocation and distribution?

Can we separate ideology from materialism, or is every ideology inherently coupled to the physical because that’s the only way we have of relating to the world? “In the beginning, there was light.” What is Genesis, if not an accounting of all there is? Once we have an accounting, we can begin deciding on its allocation. We create rules for who gets what, and why. This tribe, that tribe. This king versus that pauper. What is morality, if not a codification of the rules? And what are the rules, if not a codification of the algorithm? And the algorithm is rooted in the material, because we have no other way of knowing the world.

I did it, you guys! I figured out life!

We can profess non-material beliefs, of course, but the only way to judge the validity of those non-material beliefs, is to process them through the material, even if the “material” is something as ineffable as a prayer or a dream. And yet, don’t we all suspect that there’s something beyond our senses, just out of reach? Is that sense, which some believe is an actual sixth sense, an illusion? A relic? Or is it something else, something beyond the material, yet hopelessly enmeshed with our material existences?

Although I have no idea whether such a sixth sense is “real,” I’m convinced we all recognize what I mean when I describe it. I’m further convinced that we all recognize that the sensation we experience, call it “spirituality,” has an inherent nature that is loving, peaceful, and omnipresent. We have different names for it, but all world religions support its existence, and all people seem to strive towards it, the way a plant bends towards the sun.

So when I think about “being on the right side of history,” I guess my inclination is to rest my belief systems on that, admittedly, sandy foundation. Something compels us towards “goodness.” It’s certainly possible to reach a purely material explanation for this phenomenon. After all, cooperation is evolutionarily advantageous. An atheist could stop there and be utterly satisfied. I used to live in that camp but I find it harder and harder to do so for the simple reason that it feels better to shift my beliefs towards the ineffable.

Merely feeling something to be better isn’t necessarily a satisfactory reason for changing one’s belief system, but at the same time, why not? Freud’s Pleasure Principle dictates that we do what feels good, even if our behavior isn’t obviously “pleasurable.” Meaning-seeking, though frustrating and probably fruitless work, doesn’t necessarily “feel good,” but it creates conditions under which I find myself happier in a general sense. Ironically, a lot of the happiness derives from being open to feeling others’ pain. I am convinced living empathetically is a far better overall way to approach life than its opposite. Empathy certainly can be painful but it’s a far superior way to comport one’s self than sociopathy.

Consider the obvious example of Donald Trump. I have no desire to debate his psychology here, but I am convinced he’s a sociopath. In other words, he incapable of empathy, or his empathy is so repressed that it might be as well be non-existent. If sociopathy led to better mental health outcomes, which is another way of saying it leads to a happier life, wouldn’t we expect this powerful billionaire to be the happiest man on the planet? And yet, it seems obvious that he’s a deeply miserable person.

Which is why I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his MAGA movement is a rooted in unhappiness, anger, and resentment - a movement that expressly condemns empathy as weakness. How many times have we heard the former president, when discussing his plan to mass deport millions of people living in this country, say something along the lines of, “It’s a terrible thing to do, but we’ve got do it”? Does anybody believe that he actually thinks it would be a “terrible thing to do”? When thousands of his supporters hold up signs at his rallies that read, “Mass Deportations Now!” does anybody believe they are doing so with love in their hearts?

When I think about “the right side of history,” I obviously think about our current circumstances, but I wonder if it’s better to think about deep history, the kind of history Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of when he talked about the moral arc of the universe. It is, in a sense, karmic history. I don’t mean that one’s actions ultimately boomerang towards ourselves, but that our actions have consequences. For better or worse, those consequences create our reality. That reality is our history.

So I think about taking stances that are based less on maximizing personal material attainment and, instead, are based on maximizing well-being for the greatest number of people without doing undue harm to anybody. This is, of course, impossible.

For example, one could make the argument that confiscating a billionaire’s entire wealth and redistributing it would enhance the well-being of a large number of people, but at what cost to the individual from whom we confiscated the wealth? Who decides when an individual has “enough”? Who decides when a population has “too little”? Frankly, I have no idea, but I think it’s fairly easy to recognize the obscene levels of wealth inequality in this nation, and in this world. And so I would favor policies that redistribute that wealth somewhat, but not in its entirety.

I will be the first to admit that I have no idea what the correct answers are in most situations, which is why I feel confident I will never run for office, or seek to lead anybody in any capacity. But I do feel sure that being on the right side of history almost always means being on the empathetic side of history.

When people are getting shot in schools, it seems to me the empathetic thing to do is to reduce the common element in all school shootings – guns. When people feel that they are born into the “wrong” body, my instinct is to do everything in our power to support them living in a way that helps alleviate their discomfort. When immigrants cross our borders illegally because they cannot make a life for themselves in their home nations, my instinct is not to send them back to circumstances that were bad enough that they would risk everything to escape. Instead, I would work on solutions that either create a legal pathway to residency or to use our national might to help conditions in nations that could use our support.

History will not remember any of us. I have joked before that the best any of us could possibly hope for is that one day, a sixth grader writes a book report about us. But even if our names fade, our deeds reverberate across time. Kindness begets kindness, which begets kindness. The opposite, of course, is also true.

A couple weeks ago, on Have I Got News For You, I asked former House Republican Charlie Dent if he regretted any votes during his time in office. “Gay marriage,” he said without much hesitation. He’d voted against it. He’d voted against empathy and kindness. He’d voted, in a very real sense, against his own best interests. Not because he, himself, would benefit from marrying a same sex partner, but because the act of denying the sanctification of a loving relationship between two people reduces kindness in the world.

I don’t know what the “victors” will ultimately say about this fraught moment in American history, but I know I will one day judge my own life. And I feel comfortable with the decision to lead with love. Every cell in my body tells me that kindness is the ultimate algorithm, which is another way of saying it’s the best way of conducting one’s personal life, and the life of a nation. So when thinking about my position on any given issue, I’m just going to let the algo do its thing.