I recently watched The Daily Show’s answer. Although there are some good points, it doesn’t actually offer an answer. No one ever offers an answer. But I think we do know, but, like angsty teenagers, we don’t want to talk about it.
It’s not violent tv, video games or access to guns. These are consumed by many millions of people who are not mass murderers.
Next we like to reach for mental health, but anger is not a mental disorder.
Have you ever worked somewhere with a toxic culture? Where hatred and anger spread like wildfire. All decisions are made in self interest and people don’t help each other. Things keep getting worse and worse until it becomes almost expected for Milton from the mail room to show up with a gun.
This is America. We have a toxic culture. The amount of hatred we hold, it isn’t healthy. Left and right, white and brown, atheism and religion… We have so much hatred that our anger boils over and violence spews out of the seams.
Hatred leads to anger, which leads to violence. That is the answer, but it’s not the whole answer. It doesn’t satisfy that anxious itch. How did we get here? Why has America become so toxic. And why doesn’t the rest of the world live with us in our pit of despair?
America has a lot of skeletons in its closet: genocide, slavery, eugenics, internment camps… but we’re not the only country with an atrocious past.
I think our toxic culture stems from something deeper, something fundamental to our way of life.
The lie that America is built on
That America is a meritocracy, that success in America is based on hard work. If this were true, if America really was a meritocracy, then maybe everything would be ok. But this lie eats us up.
America is not a meritocracy. The hardest working Americans get paid the least.
Success in America isn’t hard work, it is privilege and luck. This lie feeds our hatred in three fundamental ways.
1. The way we feel about each other
A narrative rises up about those that aren’t succeeding. If we believe that America truly is a meritocracy, then the people who aren’t succeeding aren’t working hard enough. They aren’t contributing their fair share. We don’t want to give people something for nothing, because we don’t think they have earned it. The lie that hard work is how you succeed justifies our cruel treatment of others and fuels our hatred.
2. The way we feel about ourselves
When we’re struggling, the ideas of meritocracy tell us we have no one to blame but ourselves. We tie success to our own self worth. Failure causes us to hate ourselves. But we don’t want to hate ourselves, we look outward, grasping at straws, trying to find somewhere to redirect this hatred. If only those people…
3. The way we help each other
In a meritocracy, success is about an individual’s hard work, not about the hard work of those around you. We don’t want help, and we don’t want to help other people, because that isn’t how we feel successful.
This leaves us hating ourselves and each other. And we’re not willing to help each other out of this mess.
Where do we go from here?
Changing culture is hard. But somehow we need to stop pretending America is a meritocracy. We need to redefine what success looks like. The measure of success shouldn’t be about individual wealth, or wealth at all. Success should be about our health and happiness.
We need to start taking care of each other. When our backs are up against a wall it shouldn’t feel like we are all alone, it should feel like there are 300 million other Americans in our corner with us.
We need to let go of our hate. It’s not your fault, it’s not those people’s fault we live in a broken system.
The fastest way to fix things is implementing universal health care and a universal base income. This is the best way to put everyone on more even ground and to have each other’s backs. Because I believe in:
