5 AM-ish is the perfect time for coffee, especially on May 25, 2017, when the world turns sepia-toned, the tin roof echoes the gently falling rain, the robin joins in, not exactly singing but offering unabashedly itself. And the Amish-made rocking chair on the back porch, along with the man in it, creak just a bit.
Most Thursdays for the past decade would likely have found me at Starbucks when the door opens, 5AM, often the one on the corner of the Beltway and Route 1, pondering matters academic, like everybody else, wondering. Whatever: how we got here, how to get out without completely betraying the soul.
I don’t think humans are born nice and we’re not born mean either, but it sure looks like it. There’s a book within reach of my desk called Just Babies, mostly not-yet-read, but the point is that we’re born, at least most everybody is, with a capacity to prefer goodness and even with discernment of good guys. Just—as in born-with justice. Even before speaking or walking infants can choose the person who was nice, looking away from the actor who meanly stole the toy from another child, preferring the one showing love.
What happens? How can so many people fail to see corrupt wanna-be leaders who are going to betray them without batting an eye? How can folks choose to watch a network spewing lies and hate? And then go to church, even send missionaries! The good book, just about any of them, warns of this. Freedom, this gift given humans, means suffering and most would rather not. The textbook we used in Good Stories preaches reciprocal altruism and asserts the necessity of imposing disincentives even to persons who collaborate with and who do not resist the evil-doers.
Other good books teach purification. The person who wants to stone the one caught in adultery is not to be hated or vilified. The resistance needs to come from a clean heart because harboring hate destroys. So the person who committed the horrific hate crime on campus, the persons who support a power-crazed politiican, those who maim horses to win competitions—all these should be stopped but best not by those calling them nasty names.
Somehow love is still the answer. And it must be a love greater than we have grown, one inseparable from justice, mercy, compassion.
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