Some Thoughts Some Days After Election 2024
As I return to Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, I thought I’d offer some thoughts in a Merton-esque manner.
I am fortunate to teach at what has historically been a fine liberal arts institution. Now, given potential changes going on, it's impossible to say how long it will remain such an institution. Or even how long I'll be allowed to keep teaching there. That said, I'm fortunate that I teach at such a place because I genuinely believe in a humanities-driven education—an education that first and foremost focuses on training people what it means to be human. An education that through a focus on philosophy, religions, literature, history, and science deals regularly with what it means to be a human being. Even a good human being. Of course, one of the things that I am constantly reminded through teaching that it means to be a human is the gift of caring for those other humans around me. The grace to develop a sense of empathy and concern for the world around me and for other human beings.
As I thought about things going on in our country this week, that sense of empathy—part of what it means to be human—has really been in the forefront of my mind. As I have engaged with social media, I've seen more than a few posts that focus in a negative and non-empathetic way on the fact that some people are struggling with the results of the current election. Usually these posts have either explicitly or implicitly called those struggling people weak or soft or something of the sort. What has made many of those posts even worse in my estimation and especially troubling to me is that many of them were made by people who identify as professors at undergraduate and graduate institutions as they comment on the fact that some students were overwhelmed and struggled with making their way to class on Wednesday of this week.
After twenty years of undergraduate teaching, I have to wonder not only about an individual teacher, but also about the sort of place one teaches at when one rejects empathy and doesn't treat students as humans.
Now to be fair, I don't teach on Wednesdays this semester so I didn't have to go to class yesterday. Instead, I stayed home and read and listened to music, dealing with my own thoughts and concerns in that sort of way. For fill disclosure, if I would have had class yesterday, I would have led my classes—mainly because that's the way I engage with and process what is going on around me. But I also would have understood that some of my students might not be there. There is always any number of reasons that a student might miss class and I typically tell students to make decisions about being in class because I understand that sometimes not being in class is the decision they need and ought to make. But it grieves me to see undergraduate and graduate instructors and professors mocking students publicly because they are struggling. When professors do that—when anyone does that—they’re not helping others learn to be good humans. Heck, they're not even being good humans.
I also saw posts from friends I care about who are struggling with the election in decided and definite ways. Perhaps because of the color of their skin or their sexuality or identity or a combination of the above, some of those friends are struggling in ways that I am not and cannot. And as I see these friends express their fears and concerns, I simply wonder why is it so hard to recognize that people are hurting. When the fact of a president-elect Trump frightens students and friends, it is both foolish and inhumane for me to act like they shouldn't be afraid. I don’t even need to be a historian, which I am, to admit that fact. Their fears haunt me and grieve me. And, I suggest, such ought to grieve you, as well. As a human rather than mocking people’s fears, wouldn't it be better to comfort them? To offer some sort of care? Of course it would be better. But it would also be harder and maybe messier. Thus, far too many people opt for the easier—and less human and humane—path.
Another friend of mine posted the following (in part) after meeting with her classes yesterday:
“The terror in my classrooms was palpable. I was upfront with my students when I told them that as a middle-aged white lady with some financial means, the leopard is not going to eat my face first. I am immediately much more concerned for them, for my students, and for my vulnerable friends and colleagues. But I also told them that I fully expect the leopard to come for me too, and that my whiteness and relative financial security is not going to protect me forever. At a certain point, the leopard will start to eat everyone's faces. I wonder then how many people will wish they had voted for harm reduction?”
In doing so, she treated her students with compassion. She treated them with empathy. She treated them humanely. She modeled how to be a good human being. And, if my own experience holds, they will likely remember that lesson more than any of the historical content she will capably cover this fall.
My friend David Dark regularly and rightfully reminds me (and all of us paying any semblance of attention) that there are many ways to love God. Find some of those ways. Stop mocking. Pursue empathy. Care for the humans around you. Be a good human being.