Gloria Steinem edition
I do love a good memoir, and I recently picked up a great one. Not only did I gain the perspective of a celebrated feminist, but also what it means to foster change by listening to others and gaining empathy. Plus I found a gem of a quote like this one:
When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses.
Gloria Steinem
This is one of my favorite quotes from her book My Life on the Road. It really does express a concise and valuable assessment of what is wrong with society.
I’ll begin explaining this quote with something I teach all of my clinical students as a hospital-based physical therapist. It’s important to emphasize that everyone who works in the facility is important. Just because you have more education and make more money than the folks who clean the floors or deliver food to the rooms does not mean they are any less valuable to our work as a team. If the floors aren’t clean or my patients don’t get fed, it makes my job as a clinician that much more challenging. We say “Hi!” to everyone. We treat all of our colleagues with respect. Everyone’s role is valuable.
If we look at the greater society as a whole, it’s really not that much different.
As I pass unhoused people living under a bridge to I95 on a morning run with my training team, I don’t consider them lazy or less than human. I try to understand how they got to this point in their lives. In this particular stretch of underpass, it seems like the nursing home area. Everyone has a rollator or walker, and they sleep close together to protect each other.
Imagine if this was your life.
How do we fix the systemic issues that allow the ranking of our fellow humans?
This is the method the world at large used to allow for atrocities like Jim Crow laws and segregation, the Holocaust, and multiple other instances of genocide. Blaming those who are different for the faults of society is cowardly and doesn’t solve any problems. Yet this playbook gets action repeatedly.
When we view others as less than human, this is when we fail morally as a society.
Why is it that humans expect everyone to assimilate to a white, male-led world? How can we dare discriminate due to factors beyond our control? Yet, as human observers, we celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of the animal kingdom.
Let’s look at birds, for instance.
In the city, we see lots of sparrows, pigeons, starlings, etc. You may have even heard people refer to these as “trash birds.” You know, nothing special. But when you see something unusual, say, a blue jay, a woodpecker, or maybe even something as special as an indigo bunting, we ooh and ahh.
Not only that, but all of the males in the bird kingdom are more beautiful than the females, and they have to work to earn a mate. In the human world, it’s the females who take this role. It seems extraordinarily unfair.
So why don’t we celebrate people who are not the norm? Why do we discriminate and “rank” others as less than deserving of equality because they fall outside what is common for people?
Taking socioeconomic status out of the equation, we can look at race, sexuality, height, gender, intellectual ability, physical ability, and neurodivergence among distinguishing traits. Sure, in some instances, these characteristics are celebrated. But definitely not always.
Imagine how stale our world would be if we all looked alike, thought alike, and acted the same.
It would be boring, for sure. And innovation would certainly die.
We should celebrate our differences as gifts. We should respect each other’s places in the world as equally important.
Except this isn’t our reality. We fight over the things that exclude us from each other, like religious beliefs. Countries and people fight over resources. There are very ugly parts of world history about colonialism and imperialism as Western nations sought to gain more territory.
We punish those who are poor because society paints a picture that makes it seem like it’s their fault they are economically disadvantaged. They’ve committed some moral failure which means they will not be rewarded by society. Yet much of the time, it’s systemic issues and predatory laws and practices that keep poor people poor.
We paint more primitive societies as savages who need to be saved, when in reality, their culture may function just fine for them. Is it really our business to convert them to Western ideals?
One can only hope that in the ranking of the world, you are higher up than your neighbor, for you will inherit many privileges. This is reality. But what happens if you aren’t one of the lucky ones? Is that fair? Is that respectable? Is that moral? Absolutely not.
Gloria Steinem skillfully evaluated humanity in this quote. We do truly fail as a society when we rank the importance of others. For this world to succeed, we need to begin to help one another, respect each other, and celebrate diversity in human nature. Or else we are no better than any other animal on the planet.
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Did any of this strike a chord with you? I’d love to hear about it!
As always, I hope you all are safe and healthy.
Anne the Vegan 