Faith … in Humanity

As I begin to write this, I’m just back on an early Sunday morning, after a nice sweaty run-walk of the kind I include among my workout routines. Along the way I happened to notice an unusual bumper sticker on a parked pickup truck. The sticker said: “Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.”

Haven’t we all felt that way? We try to be honest and what do we get in return? Lies and deceptions. We try to be considerate and what is our reward? Rudeness and lack of respect. Or so it seems on the surface at times.

I think there are several problems going on here. If I examine my own occasional disappointment in the human race, I see that this feeling usually comes over me when I have some broad sense of unhappiness in my own life. I’ve noticed that when someone is nice to me during such low periods, I tend to forget about it quickly. “Yeah sure, he let me pull my car into traffic. Big deal!” But if someone is rude, it’s suddenly a very big deal – and yet another indication of what a miserable world this can be. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t let me pull into traffic! People can be such idiots!” In making that judgment, I went from the specific to the general, instantly, based on an insignificant incident. Besides, chances are good that the other driver may not have even noticed me, perhaps preoccupied with his own worries.

I also find that when I’m angry at people in general, I focus narrowly on my personal perspective on the world, laboring under some assumption that this is a true picture of reality. In other words – to offer another driving example here – let’s say I see a parking spot at a mall. I head toward it just as some other driver rolls in and parks there. “Rude jerk,” I’m thinking, right? But I couldn’t see things from her perspective. Because as it turns out, her smaller car was hidden from my view and she had actually found the parking space first. It’s a very simple example to make a broader point: we get ticked off at humanity partly because we don’t try to look logically at these kinds of daily situations. Our perspective is confined to our point of view and we’re not thinking clearly enough to recognize how limited that is. If I’d thought more carefully for one instant about the parking situation, I’d have realized that the other driver might have been right.

This is not to suggest that people aren’t sometimes unfairly, needlessly rude to us, or hurtful or worse. That’s part of life. But only a small part, really. When that colors our entire perception of humanity to the point that we begin losing faith “one person at a time,” perhaps we should try some tough, critical thinking on this issue. When we do, I believe, we likely will recognize that everyone else is trying their best, just like us. And struggling with their lives, just like us too. This insight can save us a lot of anger, stress and sickness over time, I think. And it may even prevent us from slapping any silly bumper stickers on our cars. It’s actually possible to gain faith in humanity, not lose it, one person at a time. – RSK