Handling the negative

Today, I'm grateful for toilets and running water.

If you want to stop reading there, go for it. Because what follows is an assortment of thoughts that have been floating around my brain for a few weeks. Bear with me.

To me, one of the most important requirements for civilization is a good wastewater system. When you are living by yourself or with just a few people, you don't need a fancy system. If there's no one else nearby to worry about, you can probably figure out a way to get rid of it that doesn't make you sick. But as soon as you get a lot of people living close to each other, you need a good system or there will be a lot of water-borne illness. So when a city has figured that out, I count that as a huge success, one that will really allow people to get out of poverty because they won't be dying of cholera or dealing with hookworm. (Look up Lowndes County, Alabama. It's a problem there.) When a society can handle something this unpleasant in a sanitary way, they can do a lot of other things right. (And conversely, it doesn't matter how ornate the architecture is if the city streets are filled with sewage.)

Then I thought about another scenario when people live close together -- in a family. As soon as you have people in close proximity you have the possibility of bumping into each other, both physically and metaphorically. And in order to stay civilized, you have to learn how to deal with negative.

I listened to a song growing up which described being a mother to "four little, five little, six little babies of my own" as a dreamy time with cookies and yellow balloons. And while there are some idyllic moments, more often the cookies break and the siblings want to grab each other's balloons. And so in order to live together, we have to teach our kids that "it's okay to have big feelings, but I will not let you hit your sibling." The point isn't to suppress the feelings but to channel them in appropriate ways. The way we teach them how to deal with the negative matters even more than how much positive we introduce.

Come to think of it, I think that's how a lot of things work. The gut. Any relationship. Any institution. You can tell the health of the system by how it handles the negative. How it tolerates dissent. How it deals with criticism whether valid or not. As soon as humans are involved there are going to be mistakes and negative things happening. And that's okay as long as we can deal with it in healthy ways.

And of course, since it's early November, there's a political analogy here too. A lot of people are concerned about the demise of democracy. And you might wonder, "What would the big deal be? What if we just end up with politicians who do what I always want anyway?"

But then I realized that democracy is another healthy way to deal with dissent. If your society is small enough, sure, maybe you can have an enlightened despot in charge that will be able to please everyone. But as soon as you have enough people, you will start having factions. And what you do with the opposition defines whether your society will be healthy or not.

Just look at Iran right now, killing protestors over a piece of fabric. Why can't they just let it go? Because, then, where does it stop? If you have been violating human rights for decades then you have put yourself in a very dangerous position. You have no real allies. The only tool you have is violence.

Democracy avoids that. When the opposition doesn't need to fear violence from the ruling party, everyone is safer. When criticism can be addressed rather than suppressed, you have a leader rather than a mob boss. Sure, there will always be resentment, anger, and disappointment, but those can be channeled into better campaigns rather than being left to fester.

So we need to be grateful for democracy! Like toilets, it can be a bit stinky, but it is much better than the alternatives.