Cruelty

The minor cruelties of life are the most socially erosive. I see examples of these minor cruelties every day in my crowded urban environment. The adolescent thug lounges across three subway seats as people stand around him in the aisles. Groups of young pedestrians push past a tenuously balanced elder on a crowded sidewalk. The entitled customer holds up a cashier line for no reason with little regard for those behind him. Drivers routinely risk the well being of others by running red lights.

When I walked into my 90-year-old mother's hospital room last evening on a relatively quiet hospital floor in a renowned urban hospital, I found that the meal server had placed her food tray just out of her reach and had not helped her raise her bed to an eating position. My mother, having had a hip replacement two days earlier, had been struggling to reach her meal prior to my arrival. I later saw the meal server when she collected the tray officiously. It was obvious that she was oblivious to how cruel and alienating her attitude was.

The minor cruelties add up to the major atrocities in society. This is a well known process. It can be reversed only by education and example. I consider it part of my practice as a humanist in society to foster attitudes of cooperation and consideration of all human beings in life situations. As a citizen, I believe I can do this best by modeling considerate and cooperative civil behavior in public situations. In work situations, modeling cooperative and considerate behavior with peers is a way of working against a culture of cruelty. As a supervisor, intervening against cruel or antisocial behavior is an ethical responsibility in my opinion.

The politics of fear in America have many side effects. One unfortunate side effect is the obvious hesitancy of people in public situations to engage with strangers. This generalized social isolation is destructive to the fiber of social cooperation and consideration. It makes open expression of compassion a rare commodity. And, it makes each of us more vulnerable to the cruelty of others.

Engagement

The death of manners in American society has been rather precipitous and jarring for me. In the last two decades, the general public behavior on American urban streets has deteriorated. This has accelerated with the public use of PDAs, iPods, iPhones, netbooks and mobiles. The advent of hip hop culture prior to onslaught of these devices laid a perfect groundwork for isolationism and marginal aggression in the public space.

I understand the seductiveness of earplugs in modern urban America. I travel subways and walk frequently through urban neighborhoods, which are jammed with cars, bicycles and baby strollers. I can see a day when pedestrians may be wearing hi-tech glasses, equipped with GPS and a virtual reality, projected on the inside of the lenses. These, combined with earplugs, would provide the perfect mobile womb.

I happen to believe that staying engaged, despite the annoyances, is an important part of being a practitioner of humanism. So, I venture out unplugged daily. I hold doors open for others. I say thank you to store clerks. I make eye contact and smile at people on the subway and sidewalk. This is an essential part of my humanist practice as I see it. This is my own way of taking responsibility for improving my environment. Retreating into technology, in my opinion, is an irresponsible and antisocial approach to the stresses of urban life. Regular, peaceful engagement in the public space, I believe, is a way of promoting greater peace in society.

Engagement

So much of being human is being engaged in human community. Human dysfunction often accompanies isolation and withdrawal from the human community. For example, when minorities are marginalized, they become dysfunctional in the greater society. Crime and addiction flourish.

The process of engagement with the society is a two-way process. The society which does not promote public engagement fosters fear and isolation. The aftermath of the 911 attacks is still evident in the urban American environment. People on subways and streets are obviously shy of one another. Here in a tourist city, out-of-towners prowl around in large packs and do not readily interact with strangers.

The cure for isolation is not complicated. A smile, eye contact and a nod on a street or subway usually gains an automatic, human response of recognition. Offering help to someone looking at a map on a street corner doesn't require much time or trouble. Holding a door open for someone behind you is a message of engagement. Each small behavior like these builds a sense of belonging to the world outside your personal environment much more effectively than looking at your Facebook homepage.