Recognizing Our Common Humanity

U.S. Supreme Justice Thurgood Marshall left us with this: In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. 

Perhaps it’s this failure to “recognize the humanity of our fellow beings” that lies at the core of what we’re getting so sorrowfully wrong at this point.  Look at all the woes of the world that all decent people would like to vanquish, and then look, for a moment, at what is common to each one of them.  Consider environmental degradation for profit, our failure to provide healthcare, quality education, and other life essentials to all, life without parole prison sentences for juvenile offenders, cruelty at the U.S. southern border, or anything else that strikes us as an institutionalized evil.

The schism that is widening, at least in the United States, has this at its crux.  Some people naturally get this, and others simply don’t.

When I was a boy, someone told me that unbridled capitalism is based on the principle: Let us ignore the needs of others.  That’s not “paying ourselves the highest tribute,” is it?