Listen to thisAs we enter 2025, I wish I could say that I was optimistic about the prospects for young people in the next quarter of the 21st century. Similarly, I wish I could say that I am excited about the prospects for just and equitable CYC work that meets the highest standards of the principles of the field. I also wish I could say that things will be better for care givers and communities, but I am doubtful about that as well. In fact, as we enter the new year I am profoundly concerned about the world of greed and corruption that is emerging more fully formed with each passing day. For me at least, these are dark times indeed. I have spent much of 2024 outlining and explaining the reasons for my concerns in the past months and so I will refer to my past columns for more detail if you are interested. In this month’s column I want to think about what we might do in times of hardship and loss.
Many years ago, I came across the following story. I can’t remember whether it was a talk I heard or something I read, so I apologize for the lack of citation (if anyone knows where this came from, please let me know). That said, it has resonance for me in these times. The story takes place during the great depression in the United States in the 1930’s. It was a period of hardship economically that coincided with an extreme drought across 100 million acres of farmland. The drought brought on high winds that blew the topsoil off the land creating powerful dust storms that gave the era its name: the dust bowl.
When the rains finally came, farming was able to resume, but the loss of topsoil required new soil conservation techniques to prevent the remaining topsoil from being washed away. This was particularly problematic in areas where there were heavy and intense rains. Initially, farmers would build large earthen dams to catch the rainwater and topsoil which could then be redistributed after the storms, but if the rains were intense enough the dams could break creating even more damage than before and greater loss of topsoil. It was a serious conundrum.
However, one farmer struck upon a rather unusual solution. He decided that rather than building large earthen dams, he would build scores of small 6-inch dams across his farmland. Each dam could catch a hold a small amount of water and soil and if they broke it was not significant as the adjacent dams would catch the small runoff. In this way the water and topsoil were already distributed across the land and the damage of the storms could be minimized.
When I think of this story, I am reminded that sometimes there is utility in small gestures that can preserve those things that make life worth living. In dark times it can seem as though nothing can halt the advance and harmful impacts of cruelty, greed, and brutality that seem to mark our age. The enormity of the challenge can lead us to think that only large gestures of resistance and even violent reaction can beat back the trends towards totalitarianism and intolerance. But I would argue that large gestures must be very carefully timed and executed to be effective. And one must be sure that they won’t be like the big dams that, when they fail, cause more damage and destruction.
Instead, perhaps what we may want to consider are small gestures that affirm our living relations and build our resistance and strength over time. Perhaps we need a billion small dams that conserve and hold our humanity in reserve and promote healing and strength that gradually builds the foundations of new possibilities and modes of life. David Brooks writing in the New York Times stated,
Most healing that I see is smaller and unobtrusive. It is seen in one person’s simple countenance, that individual’s way of paying attention to the world, marked by patience, peace, kindness, joy and love. It is seen in others as they do small things with great love. Serving dinner is a material act, but hospitality is a spiritual gift. It is seen too in those who are able to love the people who are hard to love — the criminals, the outcasts, the strangers.
Brooks is directing us to the small acts that preserve the frayed relations of humanity and build areas of conservation that value the topsoil of what makes life worth living; the capacity for meaningful connection to one another.
Such acts can appear to be mundane and sometimes occur in passing. It is the gesture of goodwill in a passing nod, a wave when another motorist allows you into a line of traffic, a smile to a stranger and so on. As I thought about the myriad small acts that can make at least a small portion of a bad day bearable, it occurred to me that perhaps what I was seeing was simply being considerate.
On the surface, being considerate doesn’t seem like a very substantive response to a world gone mad. Certainly, it doesn’t have the resonance of big gestures like love, peace, resistance, speaking truth to power and other larger affirmations of dignity and freedom. But in times like ours, too often these larger affirmations can be exhausting and their failure dispiriting. They can feel at times like beating your head against a brick wall. We can become dispirited, demoralized, depressed, and burnt out. We need some way to find the strength to persist and exist with as much of our humanity intact as we can muster.
I would suggest that one way we might be able to replenish our capacity to continue the struggle is to treat each other with consideration. But what does that really mean? The word considerate has two primary meanings. The first refers to being thoughtful about the rights and feelings of others. The second means giving something careful attention. For my purposes, both definitions apply. In the first instance the consideration is for the material world of other human beings, but I would extend that to the broader definition of all living things. In the second instance the consideration is regarding thought and perception. That is to be careful to consider all possible consequences and contexts of how we think and what we perceive.
Taken together, to be considerate in any given moment is to use our capacity for thought and perception to care for the rights and feelings of others. That can sound both trivial and substantial. On the one hand, of course we should take care of each other’s rights and feelings. That seems like a bit of an obvious observation. However, if we think about it more seriously, how are we to take the kind of care necessary in our thought and perception to act with consideration of the other in the moment? But how can we think clearly and with consideration in a world polluted with the overamped and distorted feedback loops of social media, AI, and what has been termed kayfabe? Kayfabe is a term borrowed from the world of professional wrestling where it refers to the
the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined … Kayfabe isn’t merely a suspension of disbelief, it is philosophy about truth itself. It rests on the assumption that feelings are inherently more trustworthy than facts.
Kayfabe is an aspect of a world in which we take the role of the spectator-consumer. In which our capacity to think with consideration is traded for sensation and the unfiltered reactions of capitalism’s carnival. To be swept away by the illusions of the magician, the sorcerer, the huckster, the trickster and suspend our good sense to the false sensations of raw emotion. To seek the thrill of having the real world suspended so that we don’t have to face the reality of the day to day. This bargain with the illusionist is ever more powerful in what we must face in trying to think with consideration.
To think with consideration requires a certain kind of quietude, a capacity to open a space for reflection. To give our life due consideration is a prerequisite for acting in truly considerate ways. But that is hard to do with the screams and shouts of the circus all around. The circus would have us believe that to be considerate is simply an act, a performance of kindness without any real depth. It is the false kindness of the billionaire politician touring the devastated neighborhoods of their own making, while shaking hands, hugging people, and sharing their righteous anger over the plight of their constituents. This is the kayfabe of being considerate. It is a perversion of consideration at all levels.
And yet it is so easy to slip into precisely such false consideration in a world where performance reigns over substance. Acting with consideration must be built on a true regard for the other. It requires an acknowledgement of the reality of their lived condition, and it needs to include a sense of relational accountability. That is to say, a very real sense in which I understand that what I do and the way I live is deeply entangled in the lived experience of the other. It isn’t just a surface performance of kindness, although in and of itself that is not a bad thing. A truly considerate act is grounded in our common humanity, where we understand that my considerate interaction with you is not a gift I give, but an acknowledgement that we share a world together. That I am dependent upon you and you are dependent upon me and when I am considerate to you, I am caring for both of us. Far from giving the other the gift of my consideration, I am acknowledging a debt rooted in our common shared experience of life together on this planet.
Now that may seem like a lot of weight to levy on simply being considerate, but I would argue that when being considerate becomes a gesture or relational solidarity founded in the affirmation of life, it can be a powerful act of conservation. In a sense radical consideration is the politics of keeping the ecology of living relations alive, if only in small ways. For those of us working in CYC we can practice radical consideration in every moment of our interactions in the field. I hope we can find a way to expand and share these small acts of care while we wait out the passing storm of a world gone mad. After all, when the storm has passed, it is these small acts of ecological stewardship of living relations that will be the foundation of life after the calamity.
