I wanted to discuss a couple things that seemed only distantly related at first. Upon further reflection, however, I think both have to do with the human tendency to harden our hearts. And so I kind of want to begin with a Bible quote instead (for those of you who aren't very religious, please take this as coming from someone who had a religious upbringing and finds it easier to talk about this by drawing on those experiences. It's not meant to proselytize or convert anyone.)
"Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:8-9
Most people discuss this one, rather obviously, when they want to talk about divorce. Yet I want to discuss the concept of a hard heart more. So much of the politics of today seem to require hardening your heart in one way or another. Mostly in self-defense, I think. After all we've all seen people begging on the streets, and most of us find some reason to ignore them. (For me, personally, I would rather support a homeless shelter or food pantry that will hopefully be more involved in their lives and make sure my donation is used well. In other words, I don't really trust the people asking for money on street corners. Everything I know about the world says that's probably a good thing, yet there's an inner voice that says being able to ignore suffering when it's right in your face is not really what God asked us to do.)
I wanted to tie this in with two different topics. The first touches on a strain of thinking I've noticed on the right. I dated someone over a decade ago who once said he thought we should nuke the entire mid-east and turn it into glass. At the time I ignored it, because I didn't think he truly meant what he was saying and I also knew he was not in any position to actually make it happen. In other words, idle words by someone expressing an emotion rather than a real policy. He was condensing an entire region down to a shallow and superficial caricature that he considered a threat, and indulging in wishful thinking. In reality, any such plan would be horrible.
Every region of the world has families. Children. Women. Men. Some people who may be cruel or a threat, and others who are just trying to raise their families in some semblance of peace. There's an entire field of thought focused on what would make a 'just war', what's considered a reasonable and proportional response, and what he was suggesting was so clearly out of proportion that it wasn't even worth taking seriously.
And yet I hear comments like that, still. Even worse, we have a presidential candidate who seems to believe the same thing. What was almost laughable in someone with absolutely no power to make it happen becomes pretty scary when it's said by someone who could.
I understand, to a certain extent, why we harden our hearts like that. You can't serve in the military, can't make peace with what you are being asked to do (to other human beings, albeit from an opposing force), without finding some way of closing off your empathy. Hell, I hate terrorists so much sometimes that it kind of scares me. The things they do are horrible. I understand why people choose to do so, and yet I think it's in some ways a mistake. I suppose in some ways I'm influenced by a book I read some time ago, in which the author talked about how prisoners of war were not affected by PTSD the way soldiers were, despite both dealing with awful and traumatic events (with the exception of Holocaust victims). That part of the reason soldiers were affected was because of the things they did during the fight. In other words, we harden our hearts to fight a war...but it has consequences. A part of us knows that what we are doing is done to people who in other circumstances are just like us.
I, personally, don't like to forget that. Not because I think we should stop fighting, because if I believe it's worth fighting even knowing that, then it's truly important. I sometimes wonder if that explains some gender differences I've heard of off and on. No scientific studies of it, of course, and I hate to say there's a gender difference for sure. Yet even though men do the bulk of fighting and spying I've heard that the women who get involved are often even harder and more dedicated than the men. Spying, for example, involves lying and betraying people you are spending a lot of time with. Time that generally leads to some sort of sense of fellowship. That's actually really hard to do. But if you've convinced yourself it's worth doing, worth fighting for, then it's a little easier.
And so I can say that jihadists are human. They have feelings, and are trying to do what they think is right. If they gave up fighting and chose to live a quiet life in peace and security somewhere, I would be okay with that. Maybe even pity them. But as a movement, as a belief system that justifies murder, torture, rape and slavery...they are worth fighting against. (And we'd better make sure our own belief system doesn't justify the same sorts of things.) And that is also why I oppose overly simplistic beliefs that justify hardening our hearts and lead us to say inhumane, stupid, and poorly thought out things like "let's nuke the middle east".
The second, related, topic goes back to my question on modern slavery. "How can anyone justify doing that to another human being?". Clearly, the managers and business owners that are dependent on debt bondage and control have hardened their hearts to the people working for them. Sometimes it's necessary. Hell, I manage people, I know exactly why and how it's necessary. You get someone who isn't performing well, and who isn't a good fit, and who isn't really improving despite your attempts to train and develop them, and you have to let them go. It sucks to know what sort of trauma doing so causes. The job loss, the uncertainty, the pain of not having any money. And if they have a family, you know it will cause all sorts of difficulty for them as well. For children, even. All you can do is hope that they find a better fit somewhere else, some other place where they can excel and succeed...because they clearly are not doing so where they were.
We have this image of the good businessman as someone who makes the tough decisions - and yet to make those tough decisions, they have to harden their hearts and ignore the very human costs to the people under their responsibility. And yet I think there's another way. I tried finding an article I read years ago, unfortunately all my search terms come up with other studies. It was a company that ran into trouble and had to downsize. As my search terms indicated, there are a whole bunch of problems that come when a company lets people go. The ones who stay are more afraid of losing their jobs, morale suffers, the company as a whole suffers. So much so that some people debate whether downsizing really pays off. The article I read said that this company managed to avoid most of the backlash, and they did so by opening up the decision on who to let go to their employees. The employees met in groups, and their recommendations didn't always have to do with who was the best worker. Sometimes it was "so-and-so has a family of four that would suffer more if they lost their job". Yet allowing the employees that level of engagement and control meant the ones that the company as a whole did not suffer as much when they did downsize.
And so a parallel seems apparent. Just as a soldier hardens their heart to the enemy, and yet can probably be an effective fighter if they don't (I would even argue a 'more effective fighter', except that the type of fighter I envision won't fight for unjustified reasons...which can cause problems with discipline if you've got leadership that doesn't appreciate that), so a business man or woman hardens their heart to their employees, and yet might possibly be an effective business leader if they don't. Perhaps even a more effective business leader.
It goes against the grain, goes against a lot of cultural beliefs. Just consider the pressure Costco gets for paying higher wages. Or the backlash against that company that decided to pay it's employees $70,000 a year.
Yet what if the hard-hearted business leader is actually a bad thing?
"Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:8-9
Most people discuss this one, rather obviously, when they want to talk about divorce. Yet I want to discuss the concept of a hard heart more. So much of the politics of today seem to require hardening your heart in one way or another. Mostly in self-defense, I think. After all we've all seen people begging on the streets, and most of us find some reason to ignore them. (For me, personally, I would rather support a homeless shelter or food pantry that will hopefully be more involved in their lives and make sure my donation is used well. In other words, I don't really trust the people asking for money on street corners. Everything I know about the world says that's probably a good thing, yet there's an inner voice that says being able to ignore suffering when it's right in your face is not really what God asked us to do.)
I wanted to tie this in with two different topics. The first touches on a strain of thinking I've noticed on the right. I dated someone over a decade ago who once said he thought we should nuke the entire mid-east and turn it into glass. At the time I ignored it, because I didn't think he truly meant what he was saying and I also knew he was not in any position to actually make it happen. In other words, idle words by someone expressing an emotion rather than a real policy. He was condensing an entire region down to a shallow and superficial caricature that he considered a threat, and indulging in wishful thinking. In reality, any such plan would be horrible.
Every region of the world has families. Children. Women. Men. Some people who may be cruel or a threat, and others who are just trying to raise their families in some semblance of peace. There's an entire field of thought focused on what would make a 'just war', what's considered a reasonable and proportional response, and what he was suggesting was so clearly out of proportion that it wasn't even worth taking seriously.
And yet I hear comments like that, still. Even worse, we have a presidential candidate who seems to believe the same thing. What was almost laughable in someone with absolutely no power to make it happen becomes pretty scary when it's said by someone who could.
I understand, to a certain extent, why we harden our hearts like that. You can't serve in the military, can't make peace with what you are being asked to do (to other human beings, albeit from an opposing force), without finding some way of closing off your empathy. Hell, I hate terrorists so much sometimes that it kind of scares me. The things they do are horrible. I understand why people choose to do so, and yet I think it's in some ways a mistake. I suppose in some ways I'm influenced by a book I read some time ago, in which the author talked about how prisoners of war were not affected by PTSD the way soldiers were, despite both dealing with awful and traumatic events (with the exception of Holocaust victims). That part of the reason soldiers were affected was because of the things they did during the fight. In other words, we harden our hearts to fight a war...but it has consequences. A part of us knows that what we are doing is done to people who in other circumstances are just like us.
I, personally, don't like to forget that. Not because I think we should stop fighting, because if I believe it's worth fighting even knowing that, then it's truly important. I sometimes wonder if that explains some gender differences I've heard of off and on. No scientific studies of it, of course, and I hate to say there's a gender difference for sure. Yet even though men do the bulk of fighting and spying I've heard that the women who get involved are often even harder and more dedicated than the men. Spying, for example, involves lying and betraying people you are spending a lot of time with. Time that generally leads to some sort of sense of fellowship. That's actually really hard to do. But if you've convinced yourself it's worth doing, worth fighting for, then it's a little easier.
And so I can say that jihadists are human. They have feelings, and are trying to do what they think is right. If they gave up fighting and chose to live a quiet life in peace and security somewhere, I would be okay with that. Maybe even pity them. But as a movement, as a belief system that justifies murder, torture, rape and slavery...they are worth fighting against. (And we'd better make sure our own belief system doesn't justify the same sorts of things.) And that is also why I oppose overly simplistic beliefs that justify hardening our hearts and lead us to say inhumane, stupid, and poorly thought out things like "let's nuke the middle east".
The second, related, topic goes back to my question on modern slavery. "How can anyone justify doing that to another human being?". Clearly, the managers and business owners that are dependent on debt bondage and control have hardened their hearts to the people working for them. Sometimes it's necessary. Hell, I manage people, I know exactly why and how it's necessary. You get someone who isn't performing well, and who isn't a good fit, and who isn't really improving despite your attempts to train and develop them, and you have to let them go. It sucks to know what sort of trauma doing so causes. The job loss, the uncertainty, the pain of not having any money. And if they have a family, you know it will cause all sorts of difficulty for them as well. For children, even. All you can do is hope that they find a better fit somewhere else, some other place where they can excel and succeed...because they clearly are not doing so where they were.
We have this image of the good businessman as someone who makes the tough decisions - and yet to make those tough decisions, they have to harden their hearts and ignore the very human costs to the people under their responsibility. And yet I think there's another way. I tried finding an article I read years ago, unfortunately all my search terms come up with other studies. It was a company that ran into trouble and had to downsize. As my search terms indicated, there are a whole bunch of problems that come when a company lets people go. The ones who stay are more afraid of losing their jobs, morale suffers, the company as a whole suffers. So much so that some people debate whether downsizing really pays off. The article I read said that this company managed to avoid most of the backlash, and they did so by opening up the decision on who to let go to their employees. The employees met in groups, and their recommendations didn't always have to do with who was the best worker. Sometimes it was "so-and-so has a family of four that would suffer more if they lost their job". Yet allowing the employees that level of engagement and control meant the ones that the company as a whole did not suffer as much when they did downsize.
And so a parallel seems apparent. Just as a soldier hardens their heart to the enemy, and yet can probably be an effective fighter if they don't (I would even argue a 'more effective fighter', except that the type of fighter I envision won't fight for unjustified reasons...which can cause problems with discipline if you've got leadership that doesn't appreciate that), so a business man or woman hardens their heart to their employees, and yet might possibly be an effective business leader if they don't. Perhaps even a more effective business leader.
It goes against the grain, goes against a lot of cultural beliefs. Just consider the pressure Costco gets for paying higher wages. Or the backlash against that company that decided to pay it's employees $70,000 a year.
Yet what if the hard-hearted business leader is actually a bad thing?
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