It’s personal, whether you realize it or not

Our psychology is not naturally suited for empathy or long-term planning. Daniel Kahneman used the acronym WYSIATI - “what you see is all there is” - to explain the limits of our cognition. If something isn’t in our immediate personal view, then it may as well not exist.

Thus, we procrastinate on important things until they become urgent. We don’t exercise or eat vegetables until a doctor finds our blood pressure creeping up. We don’t think about saving for retirement in the crucial wealth building decades of our 20’s or even 30’s because it seems so far away.

We also ignore injustices when they happen to other people. “That could never happen to me or my family,” we think.

When we let these incidents slide, though, we give our tacit approval.

I liked how author Ryan Holiday described this:

According to the Founding Fathers and many philosophers before and since, the rights to life and liberty and property are beyond constitutional: They are inalienable.

The right not to be murdered, to not be harassed by people with guns, to not be targeted, exploited or incarcerated unfairly, to speak your mind, to pursue your religion, for your home to be a safe haven, these are not things that governments give to their people. These are things that God—or generations of evolution and progress—have endowed us with at birth, and we in turn give governments the powers to protect.

All of us.

What you are seeing in the video where a police officer kneels on the neck of a black man crying for air and his mother, what is happening in a video where a black man is strangled to death over selling cigarettes on the street, what has been occurring in my county where Latinos are targeted with ticky-tack traffic violations so they can be detained and then deported, is a betrayal of that compact. It’s a heinous violation of the rights of human beings.

Silently allowing these violations for others only increases the odds it will happen to us. If injustice is allowed to spread, it eventually becomes our problem.

Tribalism makes this lack of awareness even worse. The more committed we are to our tribe, the likelier we are to ignore injustice when it happens to the other side.

This has worsened with the increase in political polarization in recent years. Something I’ve observed over this time is how many seem to have lost a sense of principles and care for their fellow citizens in favor of getting a “win” for their team.

Their opinion on justice or any given issue sways according to who benefits or suffers. Laws only apply to people I don’t like. Free speech and debate work when I agree with what’s being said. Being an asshole is fine as long as it makes the right people mad.

Injustice and unnecessary suffering is dependent on who it happens to, as well. State law enforcement employed by taxpayers abuses citizens? Hasn’t affected me, my loved ones, or people who look like me, so I’ll just go on with my life. Tens of thousands people die from a virus due, in large part, to an incompetent government and public health response? That’s a problem for old people/minorities/people in NYC, not me.

Of course, I’m not immune from these inconsistencies. None of us are. We are all imperfect. We’re naturally tribal and lack the mental bandwidth to think deeply about every issue.

We can’t avoid confronting these biases within us, though. When we ignore them, we ignore those inalienable rights being taken from others. We allow incompetence and corruption to proceed without consequences.

We silently approve of it. The more it’s approved, the more it will grow in scope, and the more likely it becomes to affect us personally.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. - Martin Luther King Jr

We’ve all experienced how change can happen slowly, and then suddenly. Bad habits slowly grow and seep into other parts of life. We don’t become overweight or broke overnight. Many seemingly small decisions and habits compound over time until we find ourselves in a position we never meant to be in.

This is true for societies, too. Injustice or incompetence may not affect us now, but left unchecked, it eventually will. We have to make such abuses of power personal. If we don’t now, we may have no choice later.

Does making it personal mean we have to watch the news all day or quit our jobs to become activists? No, not at all. We just have to remind ourselves that the people we see suffering from far away are humans and citizens just like us. We should take some time to understand why that suffering is happening and address it as we see fit with our votes, our dollars, and our actions toward others. We should remind ourselves of what we believe is right and wrong and evaluate issues in a principled way. It takes less effort to make an impact than we think.