Good people and the ‘good’ societies/cultures/communities,
they make up, treat other good people as they wish to be treated. This good relationship is the foundation for
the community. One outcome of giving others
the respect they deserve is that it makes it more likely the respected people
will do as asked without their compliance being dependent upon coercion. An additional benefit to being good to others
within your group is that it adds to the cohesiveness of the group. Cohesive members of a good community are easily
motivated, with honest facts, to the support of a good cause.
If you lead as though others are replaceable objects or non-rational
animals; beasts, if you will, your followers will only do what you want so long
as they believe doing so affords them an advantage. Dehumanized subjects will not do as you ask for
altruistic reasons. They may carry out
your orders for a bribe or maybe they will do what you want just for the payment
of services rendered. Once you run out
of rewards, people who feel objectified and/or disrespected (you are not treating
them as you expect to be treated) have no further reason to do as you demand. The same goes for trading their work or goods
for promises of power or valuable objects, they will only trade their services
or goods for what you can deliver not just what you promise.
The advantage objectified people see, in doing what you
want, may be their continued good health; you may be able to threaten them or
their loved ones with social ridicule, unacceptable levels of anxiety, injury, or
death, to get them to comply with your wishes.
But if they find a more powerful overlord they no longer have a reason
to do as you ask and they may even exact retribution for the threatened or
actual harm you have done them.
Oppressed people may find incentive to do as you demand in
the form of a common threat you make them aware of. The threat can be either real or something
you have imagined, and if all you have to control them is this threat, once the
threat no longer exists, either because a real threat has been overcome or because
a fictitious threat has been revealed as existing only in your mind, your
coerced underlings will move on.
A group motivated by coercion often takes the initial
advantage because it is quicker to buy or bully followers into supporting a
cause then it is to gather followers through the spread of true information and
good will. But coerced groups are
unstable and fall apart as soon as the perceived benefit is gone or the leader
is removed.
Coerced groups are very expensive to maintain, consuming
far more resources than a group of altruistic, true believers. A group built on truth and mutual respect is
stable and can easily grow with little cost. A group built on lies and coercion,
misrepresented facts or fantasy, is impossible to maintain for long without a
huge outpouring of resources.
Bribes, threats, lies, punishments all can coerce people
into action but they cannot buy ongoing, altruistic loyalty the way truth and
respect does. Negative treatment cannot
induce the altruistic sacrifice of one’s life.
Against a coerced group that has a temporary advantage, the fight of the
‘good’ people for their ‘good’ cause, can prevail even if their numbers never reach
the level of their foes because the good people will willingly fight to their
death in support of the truth.
If the leader of a coerced group is removed the next in
line will be difficult to select because the old leader’s ideology will become
fragmented as the old ideology is reinterpreted by others and the new rules are
made clear by the new leaders. Once the old
leader is gone the group will break off into small factions and those factions
will go their own way. On the other hand,
who the leader of the true believers is, to a certain extent, is inconsequential. The group is not fulfilling the leader’s
goals; the leader is helping the group to fulfill their goals, regardless of
what the leader may want. True believers
merely need an individual to organize the cause and in fact there may be no
individual leader of the true believers.
There may just be a group of people chosen for their individual skills
that guides the group to its goal.
There has never been and can never be a large, cohesive,
and homogeneous group that is based upon class, gender, race, religious belief,
economic standing or regional affiliation.
There will always be outliers, dissenters, egomaniacs and people who merely
feel marginalized by the leaders. There will
always be people who do not fully support the ruling members of these
artificially defined groups. And if these
outliers are forcibly removed, others, who were marginally aligned with the
ruling class but now question that alignment, will also leave. They saw value in the people who were removed
and they will shy away from the powerful because of their act of violence
against people who some believe have done nothing to deserve such harsh
treatment. As the ruling class becomes
more cohesive this shedding of marginal members will continue until there is a full-fledged
revolt or the ruling class may become the minority and then they can be removed
or made irrelevant by the new power elite.
The only principles that will never disappear are those
built on facts and the humane treatment of one person for another. And to the extent that respect for each
individual is extended to all of humanity the group following these principles will
grow and prosper. Think of it this way,
if you belonged to a powerful group and the leader killed or at the very least,
censured or banished someone that you felt close to. Someone you knew was basically a good person,
would you feel safe? Wouldn’t you feel
like you were also in danger of exclusion?
Would you follow or even want to belong to this group when you have
every reason to believe that you could be next to be purged? When one group of people or the leader of a
group treats a good person as an object, it threatens everyone in the group,
and no one can feel safe.
There are present-day examples of societies built on
fear, like North Korea. It is a
totalitarian state where even the relatives of the leader are not safe. And there are other examples of the abuse of
good people, such as the LGBT community in Russia, India and Uganda, where they
can be imprisoned or killed for their sexual orientation, or even their support
of the LGBT community, it’s the law. There
are other examples of abuse in the Far East, Middle East and Africa, where women
and female children are oppressed, abused, mutilated and murdered, legally,
it’s the law.
My point isn’t that there are no, nor have never been
any, abuses of human rights, or even that today, there are none in our country,
I’m not so naïve as to believe that or that there will ever be a time when all individuals
treat others inhumanly. I am trying to
build a case for the eventual demise of all inhumane leaders, groups and
societies. Slowly, very slowly, the
oppression of minority beliefs, individuals and groups is withering under the
global scrutiny of those who treat all humans with dignity, who treat all
humans as they, themselves wish to be treated and then expect just treatment for
others in return. In this day of instantaneous,
global, electronic media; local, abusive laws, rules and customs are coming
under review by the free world and the oppressed are gaining recognition as
people who are not being treated as equals.
The marginalized people within these communities are seeing that there
is a path to freedom from oppression because they see others being respected and
they are speaking out against their inhumane treatment and that of their fellow
citizens.
When I treat you as I wish to be treated I give hope to
every oppressed person who observes my actions.
And when the oppressed see my actions they begin to believe that they
too deserve, and can someday get, respect and the opportunity to live in peace. When our leaders speak out against inhumane
treatment and support equal treatment for all, they give hope to all the
oppressed who hear their voice. And
those oppressed people will fight for equal treatment for themselves and more
importantly they will fight for equal treatment for their children and
grandchildren.
The global expectation of equal treatment for all will come. Not today or tomorrow, not this year or next
year. I do not expect it in my lifetime
or my children’s lifetime or even during the lifetime of my grandchildren. But humane treatment for all will come. Before this happens many people will be
imprisoned. Many people will die. Many people will be tortured. Many, many people will be abused. But this inhumane treatment does not go
unnoticed and in the end, the good people who treat others with respect will
win the ultimate battle as they always have won the lesser. And in this new era where the humane
treatment for all is expected and enforced, attempts to start new, abusive
cultures, where one group treats another as objects, will not and cannot come
into being, from the ashes of the old.
Everyone who reads this knows the qualities attributed
to the angles from above. And most have
been asked to respond to the ‘angles of their better nature’ if not by Lincoln
then by someone. This means you become a
calm, joyful person, who turns to the person next to you and then you treat
them as you wish to be treated. This is
all it takes to be a good person. It is
simple, but it is not easy.
All life is not sacred.
Cows are not sacred. Trees are
not sacred. But your life must be
sacred, to you. A person who respects their
own life is powerful. The relationships
you make and maintain ARE sacred and stronger than any bonds that are coerced.
If you want to protect a tree from being removed climb it
and live in it. Your relationship to
that tree demands it. If you find a
stray and you want to save its life. Do
so, and have a relationship with that stray that demands that you now honor
your relationship. If you go to war and
you want to save the person next to you even though it puts your life in danger
of paying the ultimate sacrifice, do so, how you feel about yourself demands it. We must honor our own life and what we choose
to do with it but we can’t impose our life’s needs on others. Each of us must find the best use for our
time on earth.
Good people always win, because they have mutually
observed, sacred bonds with others.
Bonds built on trust and value.
Value your life. Value the life
of those around you and you will be on the side of the good. And you will help good win. If you break sacred bonds you will be
alone. No one will trust you. And you will be lost.
