Willful Ignorance and Its Unavoidable Impact: The Unraveling of the American Empire….

 

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  – George Santayana, The Life of Reason:

The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1 (1905-1906) 

I’m tired: it was a really long week. And I’m also tired because it’s been a really long year … and, in truth, a really long three years. I’m supposed to be writing several business-focused pieces on important topics today, but I just can’t summon the energy … because I’m tired physically, emotionally and spiritually.…

And yet I am moved to write, as I continue to be dismayed by who we are revealing ourselves to be: the sneering, braying ignorance and arrogance on display so broadly throughout our polity is both troubling and, too many of us, surprising. But perhaps it shouldn’t be.

In keeping with the Best Practice that I discovered while leading my team at work (from Lu, et. al., “To Be More Creative, Schedule Your Breaks”), I’ve chosen to practice Disciplined Switching personally as well. The concept is pretty simple, if a bit antithetical to those of us who were converted to the concept of Flow a few decades ago: in order to stay fresh and to keep our minds from comfort zones that feel productive but have been proven by research to be decreasingly so, we’re well-advised to set consciously artificial but observed deadlines for our chosen activities and then to switch to another activity for a prescribed period of time. The research suggests that not only will we have greater mental acuity during our second activity but that when we return to the first (after a prescribed interval) the same will also be true.

So, instead of a single book, I’m actually reading three simultaneously and switching in a disciplined way between and among them:

The first is Isabel Wilkerson’s powerful and haunting new book Caste, which describes in harrowing detail the astonishing and distressing similarities of three systems of racially-/ethnically-based structural discrimination and disenfranchisement, those of race/structural racism here in America, of the Nazi Third Reich that patterned its murderous xenophobia on the American model and of the millennia-old, stratified system of impenetrable benefit and constriction in India. As it deconstructs the Eight Pillars of Caste, awful ‘eureka!’ moments begin to land with all their distressing and debilitating ferocity: we recognize these patterns in our social relations and gain a new appreciation for how they intertwine to oppress so many and advantage so few. It’s a must-read, but challengingly so: truly, it’s difficult but imperative for us to study how we’ve chosen repeatedly throughout our history as a species to harm ourselves, and often catastrophically.

The second is Robert P Jones’ White Too Long, a fascinating if similarly harrowing and challenging exploration of how American religion – especially that of the Protestant, evangelical variety – and White Supremacy have become and been dismayingly intertwined and powerfully punishing throughout our country’s history. It, too, is a hard read, but a required one for People of Faith: if we truly believe in a uniquely virtuous Divinity, then we have to face the damningly contrasting reality of what so many of us have done in His/Her/Its Name.…

The third, the latest entry into the rotation, is a purposely disruptive exploration by Prof. James W Loewen entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Convincingly argued, the short answer is that we were all fed a sanitized version of our country’s history, the consequences of which can be seen in the societal upheaval that we’re experiencing now. This, too, I consider required reading, both because it explores the realities of the myths that we were taught and because it helps us develop a more incisive and nuanced assessment of the present state of our polity (as well as, perhaps, some correctives that’ll enable us to go forward differently and better…).

What do all three of these books have in common other than being challenging reads? They remind us, implore us and demand of us, achingly so, to face the truth/reality of who we are and what we’ve done, as well as to explore and elucidate the enormous and incalculable costs of our historic failure to do so, both over time and in the present moment.

Here are just a few examples:

Do you realize that in constructing the evil that became the Third Reich, the Nazis actually studied American racism and specifically the legal apartheid known somewhat euphemistically as Jim Crow in order to construct their singularly immoral and inhumane regime? If you read Caste, you’ll learn this and a good deal more about our recurring historical tendency to structuralize the dehumanization of and discrimination against groups of our fellow human beings. 

Do you realize the extent to which ‘Christianity’ in both its theological and institutional forms has been used to suppress African-Americans and privilege whites? For example, did you know that (white) religious were some of the major proponents of America’s racist and exclusionary residential policies, and, in fact, were often named plaintiffs in lawsuits to prevent integration of communities throughout this country? Or that, to this very day, the official state song of Mississippi – “Go, Mississippi” – is based on a jingle from 1960s segregationist Gov. Ross Barnett’s campaigns, which were endorsed, propelled and backed financially and otherwise by the leadership of the most influential Southern Baptist and United Methodist churches in the state, and that, in this century alone, four separate efforts to replace this racist, religious relic have failed? If you read White Too Long, you’ll learn that so many concepts and events that seem familiar are actually far more sinister in nature than we’ve been led to believe largely because they’ve been cloaked in racist religion.

Do you realize that a century ago we had a rabid white supremacist president who segregated the federal government, welcomed racist propaganda into the White House and endorsed it broadly, engaged in unauthorized, interventionist foreign mini-wars (including fighting on the wrong, “white” side of the Russian Revolution) and was wildly and widely despised in his time though he’s been sanitized and transformed into a hero in our popular imagination as well as our children’s textbooks? If you read Lies My Teacher Told Me, you’ll learn this and so much more about the lies you were told about Woodrow Wilson and the other myths that you were trained to believe about our history. Suffice it to say that, if you do, it’ll be much easier to understand the studied commitment to arrogance and ignorance exhibited by so many of our fellow citizens and why so many are so completely enthralled by the increasingly mythical concept of American Exceptionalism that becomes ever more divorced from reality each day.

Here’s another little tidbit: what were you taught about Helen Keller? Chances are that it was the hero story of her overcoming being blind and deaf, which led to her being transformed into a safe but inspirational icon of perseverance in the face of adversity [which itself aligns nicely with the American myth of individualism]. This has been accomplished by focusing on the formative years of her life and ignoring the last six decades of it. As Prof. Loewen notes: 

The truth is that Helen Keller was a radical socialist. … Keller’s commitment to socialism stemmed from her experience as a disabled person and from her sympathy for others with handicaps. … Through research she learned that blindness was not distributed randomly throughout the population but was concentrated in the lower class. … Thus Keller learned how the social class system controls people’s opportunities in life, sometimes determining even whether they can see. … Keller … never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change.

Funny, but that’s not the Helen Keller about whom I learned; what about you?

All of which brings to mind the enormous cost of our tendency toward historical amnesia and hagiography: to paraphrase the song, what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget or, often, to ‘misremember’ (i.e., to remember very differently than its reality). Which brings us to the 21^st century and the most immoral, inhumane and unqualified president we’ve had in quite some time, whose greatest legacy (other than hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID-19 deaths) will be the mainstreaming of unreality and bald-faced lies as the currency of our societal exchange.

What these three powerfully incisive books remind us is just how great the cost of such willful and willing blindness and ignorance can be and is. Simply put, our past failures to acknowledge the whole of our history and our consistent practice of whitewashing its uncomfortable parts has led us to a place where this latter practice is the rule rather than the exception and where we’re exhorted repeatedly to overlook what we can see plainly with our eyes and instead to believe something very different and routinely untrue.

Seriously, does any one of us truly believe that basing our lives, our collective/social relations and our engagement with the world in unreality and falsehood is a good idea?

If not, then how did we get to this place where we seem, collectively, to be on the verge of adopting such a practice permanently?

The answer, I believe, is in our failure to learn and deal honestly with our history, which is both destroying our present and imperiling our future.

So, what can we do to arrest this long-standing but pernicious practice (if not tradition)? Vote. But, even more than this, commit to the full and unyielding embrace of Truth in our lives both individually and collectively. Among other things, this will force us to challenge ourselves to assess whether our perspectives are based in reality or stem from the rosy lens of how we’d prefer that our lives and experiences have been and are. And it’ll force us to demand the same of those who would presume to lead us, as we owe it to ourselves and each other to enhance the likelihood of our collaboration and shared progress.

But make no mistake: if we choose to conceive of ourselves and believe that we are a peaceful people whose country just happens to have been at war for more than three-quarters of its existence; or that because our founding documents, laced though they were with the imprint of slavery, proclaim that we're all equal, there’s no structural racism/White Privilege or sexism or religiocentricity or heterosexism or xenophobia, etc., in our society; or that, even though two of the five times that the Electoral College has been invoked to decide the presidency have occurred this century, so many of us cling to the fiction that our individual votes don’t count; or that.…

Well, you get the picture: if we choose not to believe the truth, the likelihood is that we’ll further imperil our ability to craft a better future for ourselves and our successors.

And pardon me for being a touch cynical, but isn’t this what we Baby Boomers claimed that we’d do differently a half-century ago in our youth? You know, we assailed our parents for having sold out, but we, in our cock-sure righteousness, were going to change the world for the better, right?

Perhaps it’s time for us to admit our often abject failure at this aspiration and pass the baton to younger, less delusional generations. Although it’s by no means been universal, the young have had access to far more information than we had, so the majority of them have moved closer to the complex truth of who we are and how we’ve come to be.

But I do believe that we elders have a role to play: it’s incumbent upon us to acknowledge the reality of our failures and to share these insights – along with the learnings from our triumphs – with our successors. Apparently, they’re far more capable of accepting both the troubling and inspiring aspects of the legacy that we’re bequeathing them, so perhaps they’ll be able to help us evolve in constructive ways that might just allow us to reclaim the ideal of the American Dream and yet have it be reality-based for all for the first time.…

When you fight reality, you will lose every time. Once you accept the situation for what it truly is, not what you want it to be, you are then free to move forward.

– Jenni Young McGill

September 18th: A Day in Life and a Reminder of Its Blessings….

 here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 - e. e. cummings, "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]"

As Facebook reminded me yesterday morning, I have four friends born on September 18th. Like most days, initially, I reflexively prepared to move on to the next notification, but then something caught my eye and I paused to appreciate it: it was the day that four special people, each of whom has played a unique role in my life, were born and now that only three of them are still with us physically, I stopped to ponder a moment over the blessing that each has been and is. In this spirit, I’d like to share my reflections with you, in hopes both that they touch you in the present and, more importantly, motivate you to reflect on, appreciate and celebrate those in your life whom you hold or have held dear.…

I’ll start with Vinnie Wilmot, a college friend and fellow DJ whose moniker at the time was “Neon”: as I remember it, a sly reference to the reality that he’s one of the highest-yellow African-Americans you’ll ever meet. He was also one of those scary-smart people who wasn’t the most socially graceful but was uniquely capable of casually dropping a powerful observation or insight into a conversation and moving on as if nothing of consequence had occurred.

Honestly, I don’t know when the last time I’ve seen Vinnie is, but I suspect that it wasn’t this century, which means that it’s been quite a long time indeed. He’s a great example of why I’m so thankful for Facebook, despite its myriad flaws, because he and I reconnect through this medium on occasion and I’m reminded of the many, many times Neon would drop some knowledge on us or, even more often, a humorous observation, anecdote or joke that would keep us laughing for days. If memory serves, he’s in the DC area now and doing some sort of consulting or engineering or other endeavor where he’s using that powerful mind of his.…

Julie Devine is a college classmate of mine whom I came to know when she went by her maiden name, Friedli. I always thought of this as a variation of the word “friendly,” because that she surely was and is. In fact, she’s one of the most effervescent people I’ve ever known and, in her adulthood, has matured into one of the most compassionate and passionate as well. It’s funny how life works, but at college she met a high school friend of mine, one year our junior, and married him. The college sweethearts have been together for decades now and raised a family, several members of whom have attended our alma mater as well.

And there’s more to the story: that friend of mine whom Julie married is actually the younger brother of my high school classmate to whom I lost the election for the presidency of our student senate. It was a crushing blow at the time, compounded by the infuriating reality that I lost by a handful of votes but about ten of my classmates whom I considered friends had skipped school that day and missed the election: man, did that suck!

More representative of how funny-wonderful and strange life can be, a year later that younger brother ran to succeed his older one – who had, in fact, succeeded an even older one – and his opponent, now a Jesuit priest, asked me to give his nomination speech. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when word got out that I had agreed, to the point where the administrators in charge of the election actually censored my speech. But Tim went on to win and serve brilliantly in the role and then join Julie and me in Cambridge a year later … and the rest, as they say, is history: he and Julie met, they’ve been together ever since and had a wonderful life together and Tim has gone on to enjoy great success in his career as an attorney, including in its latest iteration focused on the public interest.

It’s funny how life works, but I’ve seen Tim and Julie just a few times in the past few decades, but, again, via the medium of Facebook, have come to know them even better as adults than I did when we were students together, and, even better, my esteem and admiration for them has grown even more so.

One of the most indelible memories of our last class reunion is reading Julie’s heartfelt, raw and amazingly honest meditation on her concern for our society and the role she felt compelled to play in addressing its challenges in our Class Report. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think that she couldn’t have found a better and more aligned life partner than Tim, which brings me joy to this day. I’m so happy that they found each other and that I’ve been blessed to know them individually and as a couple throughout this journey of our shared adult lives.…

The person whose birthday notice caught my eye and drew me in was none other than Jon Isham, a dear college friend who’s now a professor at Middlebury. Jon and I were cool but not especially close in college, though I shared one of my most memorable adventures with him back in the day. Since our time together, he’s gone on to craft an impressive and impactful career in academia, highlighted by his application of economic science to real world social issues and concerns. How do I know this since I haven’t seen him this century? Yep, Facebook.

In addition to his sterling and contributory career, Jon’s raised a family, shared a sabbatical year with them teaching in Africa and become an influential and socially aware and engaged pillar of the community in Vermont. But when I first got to know him, he was my club brother who lived in Central Square – which, at the time (long before it was gentrified), was considered a bit seedy – and commuted to campus via bicycle. And he always looked a little shaggy and, dare I say, ‘informal’ (read = scruffy), so I assumed that, like me, he was a working- or middle-class kid work-studying his way through our tony Ivy League college.

Wow: how very wrong I was, it turned out! Which has been a lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.

In reality, Jon is about as WASPy as one can be, the scion of a distinguished family from Newport, Rhode Island. I can only speculate as to their wealth, but what was most impressive is that it was so old that they’d reached the stage where rather than advertise it, they lived simply and humbly so as to seem without it.

But one weekend I was treated to a fabulous adventure: as part of its pledging process, our club decided to have a series of weekend road trips, including two in which I participated, one to New York City and one to Newport. The latter would not only reveal a completely contrasting picture of the one I had of Jon to that time, but it proved so indelible that I’ve never forgotten its lesson: never, ever judge a book by its cover or a person by his or her appearance. Here’s why:

We piled into somebody’s car – or possibly Frank Foster’s dad’s customized, carpeted and tricked out ‘n’ tacky Econoline van (you know, just like the one you’d expect every uber wealthy, patrician Texan to have) – and proceeded on the less than two-hour jaunt to Newport. We would be staying at Jon’s house, which, given how modestly he lived, struck me as a perfect venue for a bunch of rowdy college bros and their aspiring associates. As we arrived in town, we took a left turn onto Ayrault Street. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I gazed ahead and saw one of those beautiful mansions at the end of the street, the kind that make you look twice and think to yourself “Wow, whoever lives there must be rich as hell!” And then Jon instructed us to pull into the driveway!

How incredible was his family abode? Let’s just say that it’s the only home in which I’ve been – and Lord knows I’ve been to many incredible homes as well as lived in a few myself – that featured a central five-story spiral staircase with a glass skylight at the top that we let in sunlight so radiant that the entire place glowed warmly. In a word, the Isham abode named, appropriately, Ayrault House, was splendiferous! In fact, the only memory I have of it now, in addition to first seeing it positioned strategically and majestically at the end of its eponymous street, is that incredible spiral staircase which, for a poor boy on work-study and financial aid from inner-city Detroit became my inspiration: someday, I promised myself, I would live in such an incredible mansion.

That Jon was embarrassed to be found out was one of my favorite memories of the trip: no, he wasn’t some regular kid workin’ his way through college, he was a silver spoon scion too down to earth to ever let anyone know … until he hosted that pledging party, that is. Thereafter, I could kid him legitimately, because it turns out that he was to the manor born but playing a working-class kid on the make, while I actually was one.

What I didn’t realize at the time was just how intellectually aligned Jon and I were. Sure, we had many pleasant conversations about things somewhat meaningful to twentysomethings as well as about trivial ones, but we never really discussed our shared intellectual and academic interests. It’s perhaps ironic that Jon took more African-American history courses in college than I did, but, I’m happy to report as an adult that he, too, is a passionate student of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among other shared heroes, and is one of the most socially concerned and influential of my friends.

Not surprisingly, my appreciation for Jon has grown greatly in recent years, but, so, too, has a sense of regret: man, what a missed opportunity it was for us not to connect on our shared academic and intellectual passions back when we had hours of free time to indulge them! We chat occasionally over Facebook (Messenger) now and I find myself invariably Liking or otherwise responding to his posts, but I’m ever mindful of what could’ve been: imagine how much closer we could have been and could be as friends had we fully appreciated our shared interests and passions before the world and our adult lives took us on such widely divergent paths. Simply put, Jon’s among a select group of college friends who remind me just how blessed I was to come of age physically, emotionally and intellectually in such a fertile environment with such incredible and incredibly gifted people. I’m thankful for them every day, even though the gift of them dates to a century and a decade long past.…

The fourth and final of my friends for whom September 18^th was his birthday is the hardest to write about because, even a decade later, his passing still hurts. He was a young man of such promise who didn’t live to fulfill it fully; indeed, a tragic loss for us all.

Dominic Morabito was on my leadership team and served as our in-house tech guru. Simply put, Dom had a gift: I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed to be able to figure out just about anything having to do with technology eventually, so I both admired him as a young professional and felt undeservedly fortunate to have such an incredibly talented young man on my team.

Don’t get me wrong, Dom wasn’t an angel: as savants are wont to do, he had to learn to overcome his innate impatience with those not technologically inclined either from a skill or will standpoint. Suffice it to say that I had to intervene more than a few times with several of my most senior and influential financial advisor colleagues whom he had managed to anger with his precociousness. Yep, one of Dom’s “developmental opportunities” was to develop the ability to serve others far less gifted as well as less inclined to learn, at least about his domain of mastery. After several quite candid and even pointed conversations, he began to take my guidance to heart and thereafter was a joy to behold: sharing his gifts so freely but more effectively was an inspiration to us all.

Like most tech geeks, truth be told, Dom was a bit socially awkward. Once you got to know him, you couldn’t help but love him … but he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, at least initially. In other words, he was an older version of my eldest son, who at the time was entering his double-digit years with incredible gifts with respect to technology, music and automotive pursuits but was not exactly particularly socially adept. He and Dom hit it off immediately, and I made an effort to include Junior in as many opportunities to hang out with Dom as I could. On occasion, I would bring my son to conferences that I sponsored so that he could hang out with Dominic and help him run the tech infrastructure that animated the event. They were both in their glory.

So when Dominic passed away a few years later after some struggles with depression, it devastated both of us and all who knew and loved him. To this day, I think back to the last conversation I had with him the week before he died in which he expressed pride in having mentored a family member successfully to make positive choices in his young life. He was really looking forward to being this young man’s older brother by proxy, a role that I hoped he’d also play in my son’s life as well. But it was not to be.…

A few years before I retired and left the company, one of my last adventures was to treat my wonderfully diverse, extremely hard-working and supremely successful team to a half-day paintball extravaganza. Even those of us who’d never indulged in this pursuit previously, or had any awareness of the huge subculture associated with it, had a blast. And I learned something about my protégé on that day: Dom was a paintballer, and a highly skilled one at that. Though we switched up the teams several times, I had the opportunity to benefit from his exceptional skill more often, thankfully, than I was subjected to it.

Someone took a picture of the two of us, mid-stroll, reviewing our learnings from the last session and plotting our strategy for the next. It’s one of my most treasured memories of him and every year when it pops up in my Facebook feed, I smile broadly and then begin to cry. I miss my friend and protégé dearly and am so saddened for all of us who knew and loved him and for the world that he didn’t live to manifest his beauty and brilliance fully. He deserved that, as I hope, did we.

But my most indelible memory of Dominic is a private one: he called and asked if we could meet, just the two of us, because he wanted to seek my guidance. It turns out that after the tragedy of 9/11, he’d been searching for a way to be of service and to help heal the wound that we all felt, lingering so long as it did after that fateful day. He had considered pausing his career and joining the military, but instead decided to become a volunteer paramedic.

In order to do this, however, he needed a favor from me: his training would interfere with his regular work schedule and he needed me to approve a modified one so that he could pursue both of his service passions. I look back and laugh a little about his discomfort asking me: he was truly nervous that I might say no. I laugh because there was never any chance of a negative response given that his choice filled me with such pride that I was honored to be able to grant his wish.

He went on to serve for several years with distinction before he met his own untimely end. Truth be told, I don’t know that any of us who knew and loved him have fully recovered since….

So on September 18th each year, I thank God for the blessing of Vinnie and Julie and Jon in my life and shed several tears for dearly departed Dominic. Collectively, they represent the wonder and wounds of life: beautiful people who’re blessings but also gifts whose term is unknown, as is our own.

Yesterday, I cried a little more than usual as I realized that Dom’s been gone for a decade now, though I’m also heartened by the continuing and ever-increasing realization how great a blessing he was in my life. So I carry his spirit forward with me and remind myself to slow down occasionally and revel in the continuing gift of his fellow Virgos, a diverse and wonderful bunch they are.

Each of them remains forever in my heart and, I hope, in yours as well, though for you they’ll have different names and have gifted you with different memories and moments of meaning. Ah, youth: that time of life when we’re bestowed with so many blessings and yet too often insufficiently mature to appreciate them fully.

While I can’t go back and change the past, I can be sure that I carry these cherished souls with me now and into the future with an ever greater appreciation for who they were and are as unique souls and beautiful human beings as well as for the profound sense of gratitude that they’ve engendered by being such blessings in this, my one and only life.…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll take a cup o' kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

- Robert Burns (Traditional, 1788) 

Bryan Stevenson Gives Me Hope ... and Other Reasons to Believe Right Now....

(U)ltimately, our humanity depends on everyone's humanity. ... I've come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I believe that for every person on the planet. ... And, because of that, there's this basic human dignity that must be respected by the law. I also believe that in many parts of this country, and certainly in many parts of this globe, that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

- Bryan Stevenson, TED Talk (2012) 

Bryan Stevenson gives me hope. Few things do at this confounding moment in our national history, but his profound and impactful example inspires in a way that I can’t fully explain … except to say that every time I ‘re-discover’ him, I’m healed, lifted, made hopeful and steeled to continue to fight for equality and justice in our country and our world.

And each time I encounter him again, I ask myself why I ever lose touch with him from time to time….

Have you seen his 2012 TED Talk? If not, you absolutely should. No, you absolutely must.

Have you seen his Super Soul Sunday interview with Oprah Winfrey? If not, you absolutely must.

Have you read his book Just Mercy? If not, you absolutely must.

Do you want to be more hopeful in life? Learn more about Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative.

Do you want to believe that we can be better (read = more equitable, just and inclusive) as a society than we are now? Learn more about Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative.

Do you want to do something meaningful to help us evolve into a better world? Support Bryan and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative (especially by donating/investing in it).

I was reminded of this reality and opportunity earlier today when, after reading the transcript of his Ted Talk (which I have viewed again last week), by chance, I saw his Super Soul session with Ms. Winfrey. I’ve now watched the latter twice and cried both times. It’s hard not to be struck, wounded and yet inspired by two juxtaposed realities: Mr. Stevenson works with some of the worst situations that humans ever experience and yet he’s emerged bigger and better for it. As Ms. Winfrey’s described him, a Super Soul, indeed….

He’s dealt with myriad demonstrations of man’s inhumanity and yet in response become more compassionate, more incisive and brimming with a hopefulness that can’t fail to inspire. He is, in a word, who we all hope to be on our best day.

When he speaks of the need for Mercy and Grace in our lives, I can’t help but contrast his constructive bent with the ugliness and evil so prevalent in our society (and not just that of those who commit crimes and deserve to be punished, but also, and perhaps especially, that of those whose presumed vengeance compounds rather than consoles). When he speaks of each of us being better than our worst mistake and therefore deserving of Dignity and Compassion, I can’t help but flash back to scenes of the abject hatred and inhumanity so broadly on display in recent months, much of it in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, as if any effort to recognize the humanity of any group of our fellow humans is a bad thing. And when he speaks of the Redemption possible on the other side of Forgiveness, I can’t help but think of how comfortable we’ve become judging each other across the divide while continually failing to recognize each other as brothers and sisters.

In other words, I can’t help but marvel at his ability to see and experience the very worst of us regularly and yet to have compassion for our – and his own – brokenness to such an extent that he veritably radiates Hope and Love. Again, he is who we hope to be on our very best days.…

And, I’ve come to believe, he’s also the model for our own redemption as a society/world. As is so painfully clear so consistently now, if we continue to make the choice to divide ourselves along fictitious, superficial lines, this’ll continue to accrue to our mutual detriment: really, does anyone of goodwill honestly believe that disunion due to Difference is a good strategy to achieve harmonious social relations? Does anyone among us who affirms the humanity of us all really think it’s a good idea to perpetuate and/or establish hierarchies within our shared humanity in order for us to share that humanity ever better?

Sadly, though the responses to the preceding questions may seem obvious on their face, the reality is that we answer in opposition with our behavior every day. That we continue to allow the social construct but biological fiction of race to divide us is proof of this. That we continue to value the lives of the already fortunate few over those of the deserving many is proof of this. That we can’t even engage in a civil and constructive discourse about these realities is further – and perhaps the most damning – proof of them.…

Which brings me back to Bryan Stevenson’s example: simply put, if we want ours to be a better world, we must emulate it … or we’ll continue to reap the bitter fruit of our choice not to.

And don’t get me wrong, I know that it’ll be supremely challenging and painful, wounding even … but what’s the alternative? Clearly, what we’re doing now isn’t working, and since it, too, is already supremely challenging and painful and wounding, why not take Mr. Stevenson’s contrasting approach?

No, I’m not naïve, and, in fact, am well-versed in our history of how we treat Apostles of Love and Light. But, maybe, just maybe, we’ve all heard and seen enough right now to be willing to face the pain of change to position ourselves to envision and then evolve into a better world. Especially since there’s virtually no defensible rationale for not doing so, either by maintaining this sub-optimal equilibrium or by engaging the fantasy of progress through regression into the past.…

In this spirit, then, I urge you to become a fellow disciple of Mr. Stevenson. No, he’s not God or a god, but a highly evolved fellow human whose example is most worthy of our emulation. And who among us doesn’t want to realize his – and our – vision of a more equitable, just and inclusive world?

Thanks to Bryan Stevenson, I can envision this, which is why he gives me hope.…

I believe that despite the fact that it is so dramatic and so beautiful and so inspiring and so stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology, we won't be judged by our design, we won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society not by how they treat their rich and the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it's in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things about who we are.

- Bryan Stevenson, TED Talk (2012)