Everyone should have a credo. Consciously-developed beliefs, understood and articulated so that they can guide individual actions.
So what is my credo?
I believe many things, and, like any credo worth its salt, all of those things have implications for action.
First, I believe we all have equal human value, even as we are unequal in what we can contribute to the collective at any one time. No one is inherently better or worse – or worth more or less – than another because of their specific talents. The value to our community of those talents may ebb and flow, but fundamentally we are all worth the same, and as such we deserve the same basic communal benefits.
I also believe that every dog will have its day.
Meaning that we will eventually need those folks whose talents and skills and experiences are out-of-season today. We don’t know when, but their days will come, and we want them healthy and committed when they do. So we must provide to each other food and shelter and education and basic healthcare, all of those things that ensure survival and growth, regardless of what each of us contributes to our immediate needs.
I believe that people should be rewarded for their efforts and the positive outcomes that result (positive outcomes are those that improve collective utility). Every dog will have its day, but the dog that hunts today rather than tomorrow must get some benefit, lest that dog withhold its talents.
Why would a dog withhold its talents? And why wouldn’t we insist that it make its contribution to our collective benefit?
Because I believe in full agency. In fact, I might believe in full agency as my foundational truth.
Until our decisions and our actions hurt someone else, we must be allowed the widest discretion to choose our own paths. Each of us is uniquely human, a complex stew of ambitions and experiences, influences and knowledge, skills and blind spots, and we exist in a complex and dynamic environment. I cannot know what’s best for anyone else. I’m not sure I can know what’s best for me, given how much everything changes both within and around me. And since I cannot know what’s best for you, I cannot tell you what to do. I can suggest action, I can provide data so I feel like you’re better informed, I can share what choice I would make, but I cannot force you or even manipulate you into a decision. You must be free to choose your way, just as I must be free to choose mine.
I believe people are communal. We form tribes. Even introverts like me relish other people’s company (at least sometimes!). A shared laugh is so much more fulfilling, so much more robust than a solitary chuckle. We find meaning in community. We find purpose in working with others towards common ends. We want to belong with other people.
When someone holds themselves outside our community, it’s possible they’re just an antisocial asshole. But I believe it’s far, far more likely that they just feel rejected by the rest of us. They feel unappreciated or vilified or ignored. They feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. So when we see someone isolated, instead of asking what’s wrong with them, we should ask ourselves whether we’ve made that person feel welcome. Or, looking forward rather than backwards, let’s ask how we might help them feel welcome, so that they will join our community and strengthen it. Regardless, people must freely choose to join community, not have it forced upon them.
(If Gallup Strengthfinders is to be believed, Includer is my greatest strength, and it likely comes from this part of this fledgling credo – helping others feel like they can be part of our team. I see value in others, and I want to bring people together in a way that makes each individual feel valued.)
I believe we all strive to matter. We want to make a difference in the world around us. We want other people to know that we are here. So we strive to achieve. We create. We don’t need other people in order to achieve or to create, but other people add dimension and perspective to our accomplishments. And they allow us to achieve even greater things, more complicated things, more intimidating things when we band together with them. Many hands make light work, after all.
We can accomplish more when we work together. Not only do we have more capacity for work, we also have more creativity, more imagination, and more energy to call on. We have countless examples of individual genius, but we have many more examples of teams that accomplished amazing things because they combined the knowledge, wisdom, skills, experiences, energy, and creativity of many minds and bodies.
So put it together, and my credo is that we make community to accomplish things that benefit us collectively while recognizing the value that each of us contributes, knowing that those contributions will be uneven, always favoring some of us over others. We need to recognize those who contribute more, but we need to care for everyone so that they are ready when their turn comes and we need them. And all of it has to be chosen freely, individually, by each member of our community.
That’s my credo. Or at least the start of it. I’m sure more elements will occur to me as time marches on.