The Suffering Bully

There are people who are “suffering bullies.”

What do I mean by this? I mean people who, no matter what you’re going through, have always got it worse. These are a variation on the “suck it up” crowd. These are zero-sum sufferers.

Have you seen this in action? Has this ever been you?

Stupid question. Of course it has. It has been all of us. We’re human. Our own suffering is going to hit harder because we are the only ones who can feel it. This is the beauty and the tragedy of our collective humanity.

Zero-sum thinking and its limitations are among my primary bailiwicks. I have a strong distaste for what competition does to our species. In a live version of “Born To Run,” Bruce Springsteen once exclaimed, “Remember in the end, nobody wins, unless everybody wins.” That stuck with me.

I’ve been called a “Pollyanna” for holding such beliefs. It’s one of the greatest backhanded compliments I’ve ever received. In a world of finite resources, we often forget the distinction between the finite and the infinite, treating everything as a scarce commodity. A la mode.

Comodification – n. the act of turning something into a toilet. to Commode-ify. Puts me in a depressed mood. ¹

Humans have a love/hate relationship with sharing. I started to type “humans suck at sharing,” but then I thought of countless examples of selflessness. I wanted to type “humans are good at sharing,” and the spin cycle of my analytical mind rinsed and repeated until the detergent was down the drain and the neurons were gripping the side of the basin like a carnival centrifuge. I spin out. It happens.

If we documented our status in 2008-era Facebook terms, “Humans and Sharing” would list their relationship as “It’s Complicated.” So much of it is cultural, environmental, and “hierarchy-of-needs-ical”—relational and situational. But I know I feel good when I give. And then I immediately ask myself: “Would I give if it cost me more of my comfort?”

I wonder why that question even has to exist.

I used to think I was being pragmatic. It is so hardwired into our common sense that to step outside of it feels akin to Neo sticking his hand through the gooey mirror. Something happened in the cultural handoff between the Levant, Judeo-Christian monotheism, and Hellenism that proved politically advantageous when certain Roman emperors needed to manufacture consent rather than throw people at lions. (The lions were getting too fat and were having no effect on the imperial infestation of zealots.)

Somewhere through the warring states of the Dark Ages, the West realized the concept of “Original Sin” encapsulated a political economy far more elegant than an iron fist. If I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God—if I can only attain grace through sacrifice to a strict but benevolent deity—well, I’d better get my act together. Even death couldn’t liberate me from that hellfire.

So Constantine said, “Hey, it would be awfully nice a’ ya to have a meeting in Asia Minor and come up with a pithy ditty—a Creed, I believe we’ll call it.” It was a pledge of allegiance to the One True God, ensuring nobody would ever force people to chant something mindlessly in the name of said God ever again. The end.

And so it was that the zero-sum, “worthless sinner” mentality of Western civilization became part of our collective trauma. It snakes down our family trees like a tapeworm. (Is there an arboreal tapeworm? I need a botanist, stat.)

Along the line, we Westerners were sold a bill of goods—a hard sell, since cash is a finite resource—that giving to others meant sacrificing for ourselves. That’s why finding that line from the Buddha about lighting thousands of candles from a single flame without diminishing the original flame is so life-affirming for those of us who feel like we don’t fit in this society.

This thermodynamic framing—that all that is good can be neither created nor destroyed—can lead to a quite pressurized universe. But the four dimensions of spacetime are hiding manifolds in plain sight. We think if there is nowhere to go in the three dimensions of space along the axis of time, we’re out of options.

I enjoy reading about theories in physics from the last century or so. I find the philosophical and symbolic implications of various interpretations of quantum physics fascinating. Subatomic physics suggests that “empty space” is inexplicably teeming with potential energy all the way down to the Planck scale.

So I wonder: If we go outward, we are bound to run into the boundaries of spacetime—whether she’s spherical, saddle-shaped, or a hyper-torus. Theoretically, we’ll hit an end or come back to the start. But what if we make like Mandelbrot and become a fractal?

You zoom in on a fractal and you never reach an end, yet it is spatially contained. I think they say infinite boundary but finite area.

The dominant symptom of this “scarcity” mentality in our society is greed, but it isn’t the only one. Greed leads to bullying because the weak and fearful need a sense of dominance to counterbalance their insecurity. But there is a different bullying: the martyring greed of suffering.

We’ve all held our suffering as a commodity to buy and sell against that of others. If you haven’t been this person, you’ve seen them. They become the person you don’t want to share your problems with because their love language is, “Oh well, I’VE GOT IT WORSE…”

You stand there holding the emotional bag, saying, “Um… sorry you went through that.” You walk away realizing you’re just a worthless cog in a society with a finite amount of empathy.

I’m being hyperbolic, but the point remains: a surefire way to alienate your loved ones is to forget that we’re all carrying something. And the heaviest thing each of us carries is the heaviest thing each of us carries. We need to meet each other where we are.

So don’t be that gal. Don’t be that guy. As the great Ram Dass so famously said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Why does this matter?
Look around you. People who can’t pay for their own healthcare are cheering on the torment of those less fortunate than they. We have this why should my tax dollars go toward… mentality predicated in the belief that my neighbor’s well-being detracts from my own.

We pay lip-service to the notion that this is not the case… but look around you. I know I implored you already, but seriously… Look.

There is enough on this planet for every human, every being, to live a meaningful life in relative comfort. Isn’t that what any sentient being wants? To move away from pain and toward pleasure? Aren’t we hardwired to care for one another? Isn’t that how we evolved to dominate the supposed food chain?

Shouldn’t we at least ENTERTAIN the notion that zero-sum gives the whole world nothing?

Love, compassion, empathy—HUMANITY—is not a zero-sum game. We love more fully when we love together. Love is simply feeling human. It’s a tale as old as The Golden Rule. If we see each other as fellow travelers with similar needs, our journey isn’t simply drudgery from point A to point B. It’s an ever-flowing river encompassing all time and all space.

1. Depressed mode? That wouldn’t be fashionable news. I’ve heard blasphemous rumors that some just can’t get enough of my sick sense of humor, and others enjoy the silence. ↩︎