Does fear of vulnerability explain our culture of cruelty?

During a recent Republican presidential candidate debate sponsored by the Tea Party and CNN, audience members cheered the suggestion of leaving a man to die for lack of health insurance coverage.

As reported by Amy Bingham for ABC News, the debate moderator posed to candidate Ron Paul a “hypothetical question about whether an uninsured 30-year-old working man in [a] coma” should receive health care:

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul responded, adding, “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…”

The audience erupted into cheers, cutting off the Congressman’s sentence.

After a pause, Blitzer followed up by asking “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” to which a small number of audience members shouted “Yeah!”

Fear of vulnerability

Differences of opinion over health care policy are fine, but how do we explain this spontaneous expression of cruelty?

In a recent essay (see below for details), Dr. Brené Brown, a leading scholar and commentator on shame, vulnerability, and moral courage, believes that cruelty is often a manifestation of our fear of vulnerability:

Cruelty is both a type of invulnerability shield and the outcome of a culture that is collectively losing its tolerance for vulnerability. In a world facing political, environmental, economic, and social uncertainty, we rage and humiliate to discharge our own fear and anxiety.

Could this explain the reactions of the Tea Party debate audience? It’s the most charitable explanation I’ve encountered: By cheering the possibility of leaving someone to die because he doesn’t have health insurance coverage, they are shielding themselves from the reality that they are one job loss away from being in the same position.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of this cruel, punitive, “I’ve got mine” thinking around this country right now. If we don’t start to recognize our common vulnerabilities, a lot of people will suffer for it.

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Brené Brown’s “The Strength of Vulnerability” appears in End Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life (2011), a collection of 62 essays by leading thinkers and business leaders, compiled as a fundraising book to combat malaria by the Domino Project, associated with Amazon.com.

A better way to live, work, and prosper?

In closing out my blog posts for this year, I’d once again like to share a vision for a truly kinder and gentler society, offered in 1981 by John Ohliger (1926-2004), a pioneering, iconoclastic adult educator, community activist, and writer (not to mention dear friend):

My picture is of a future where we live more relaxed and more modest lives with an abundance of unmeasurable and infinitely available non-material (or better, trans-material) resources. All the travail and pressure we’re going through right now may be paving the way for that future. This future could be one where we will have a choice of “goodies”; not ones requiring scarce energy, minerals, or dollars; or ones permitting some people to get rich while others go hungry, but choices that we create with our own hearts and heads and hands among people we know and care for.

Although John’s political views placed him squarely to the left of center, he was not one for ideological browbeating. Even his frequent use of the term “radical” suggested more a general distancing from mainstream technocratic and consumer culture than a rigid sociopolitical and economic worldview.

Now more than ever?

The society John envisioned becomes ever more compelling in the wake of this economic meltdown.  It is likely that many of us will have to moderate our buying and owning of “stuff” during the years to come. As the obscene term “jobless recovery” is shaping into a reality, we are knocking on the door of a long-term period of a difficult job market and lower pay and benefits.  Retirement, where possible for those in their later years, will require judicious spending.

In sum, the years ahead may require us to think about what makes for a good and fulfilling life.  John’s vision invites us to consider a potentially healthier and more satisfying way of living, even if material goods are in shorter supply.

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For more about John Ohliger, go here.