RESPECT, Find Out What It Means To Me

RESPECT, Find Out What It Means To Me

I just got an email from my Alma Mater, Cornell University, where I was supposed to be headed this week for my forty-fifth undergraduate reunion. Needless to say, they cancelled our physical reunion with great angst, given the amount of fundraising reliance rests on the shoulders of the reunion process. After being a major donor for many years, even I considered whether I should skip this year and just reconsider donating next year. That is undoubtedly exactly what they want to avoid, especially from such a regularly generous alumnus like me. They are having a virtual reunion and I was not even so sure I would participate in that since I’m not sure most of the people I haven’t otherwise already done my Zoom catch-up calls would benefit from seeing my shining face in a small box among dozens of other small boxed faces, all squirming at whether to speak up or stay silent. As a note, I was President of my class (~2,500 Souls) from 1995-2000, so in theory, I am one of the loyalists who will hang in. As you may also recall, I have a home on the edge of the campus that is used every years several times for alumni gatherings such as reunions. I have joked many times that I bleed Big Red. Nevertheless, I am in a bit of a quandary.

This Alumni email I got was specifically to address the current state of affairs of our country at this time of racial unrest, overlaid on the medical unrest of a global pandemic. I am not sure that even a thoughtful and decidedly liberal school like Cornell completely knows how to deal with this much national and global angst all at once. All leaders of any sort know that if they in any way ignore the human side of these sorts of crises, they will be quickly and roundly criticized for their insensitivity. It is not business as usual, and in this instance it may never be business as usual again. That is not a statement of pessimism at all, but a statement that we should all expect and embrace the coming change and help to see that the new order is as reflective of our collective humanistic conscience as we can make it. This is, without a doubt, a moment of great humanism. On the COVID-19 front we are asked every day to choose between personal comfort and public safety, personal economic progress and the gut-wrenching choices of families and friends at mortal peril, the meaning and value of protecting those on the front lines that protect us every day. Now, in the renewed Black Lives Matter movement and demonstrations, we are being asked to address not just one or two instances of racial injustice of horrific circumstance, but centuries of accumulated social injustice across a broad, long-term and deeply-felt divide between the haves and have-nots of our country and perhaps our world. That’s an awful lot of humanity to settle with all at one time, to say the least.

I think that this compounding of crises may have been what was needed to finally get the societal wake-up call that we have all been sleeping through for so long. Even though we recoil when people suggest that a lot of progress has been hade over the last 100 years, since it implies that there is no reason for such angst over the inequities that still exist, at least a lower and lower percentage of people are able to completely ignore the need for change and improvement. Perhaps they are being driven by the imminent threat more than the righteousness of the complaint, but anything that gets the majority broadened and mobilized to action is a good thing. I don’t know that every leader, whether corporate, governmental or educational is true in their soul about the need for and desire ability of this change. I doubt they are. But better that they go on record in favor of change than stand defiantly questioning whether it is necessary. Do I really care about the depths of such people’s souls? Maybe I should, but the experience of the moment and the imperative to seize that moment overwhelm that concern.

It all starts at the top. The horrific nationalistic and autocratic leaders that dominate our world at the moment, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, Nicolas Maduro, Ali Khamenei, Bashar al-Assad, and, of course who can forget Kim Jong-un. This does not include the other forty-three dictators in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Asia-Minor. Technically, neither Trump nor Bolsonaro are listed as dictators, but I would choose to differ. If you add them, there are 53 out of 195 countries in the world or 27% that live under autocratic rule. But on a population basis that represents 50% of the world’s people that live under regimes that undervalue human rights. The inexorable trend since WWII has supposedly been away from autocracy and towards democracy, but that seems to have come to more of a halt than any of us prefer. I believe that this is not a case of routine ebb and flow of socio-political balance. That might be presumptuous of me to assume that our time is so different than other times, but I will stick with that assessment on the grounds that in the course of humankind there are certain secular trends that change everything. I feel that there are three such trends which are irreversible and have converged on us at this turning point.

The first secular trend is simply that of this global pandemic. It is less about the specificity of the damage to life that COVID-19 will inflict (which looks to be considerable, particularly to a country like the U.S., whose citizenry is used to getting the better end of the stick in such brutalizing events. That has not happened this time (at least not yet) and it would seem that we are being disproportionately put-upon statistically, and we are rattled by this fact. It is the psychology that we are not safe against all sorts of manner of infection that can visit the earth and mankind. We are used to being the ones neglecting the endangered species, not the one designated as endangered. This will forever keep us off-balance and in need of caring about others, since it is a quick pathogenic path from them to us.

The second trend is ubiquitous global communications. Like the old Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley and Sidney Poitier movie Sneakers, there are no more secrets. Everyone knows everything immediately. It takes a supercomputer and high-speed fiber optics to engage in high-frequency trading and get even a millisecond of information advantage in the markets. There are no secrets and everyone has expectations based on their awareness of what everyone else has. It is far harder for haves when the have-nots know what they have.

The third secular trend which is not, Un fortunately, going away is the problem of global warming. We need a solution that will most certainly involve big lifestyle changes for all of mankind.

I can choose two lines of reasoning based on what I consider to be these facts of life. I can choose to believe that the world is over and we are all doomed. Or, I can assume that this convergence will cause mankind to seize the initiative, recognize the importance of change to modify the socioeconomic state of affairs and get onto a better path. I have enough respect in mankind to think the later and eschew the former. That is what respect means to me.