The Gift We Need to Give the 21st Century

The Under-Appreciated and Unrewarded Part of Us — And Why It Matters Most Now

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I want to continue talking about something I mentioned yesterday. What do we do…about…this mess? It’s 2023, and every day that rolls on is a little…bleaker. Is it just me? I’d say most people I know feel that way. Things go on breaking down, and by now…it’s as if we’re just supposed to act accustomed to it. Oh, totally normal for the planet to be melting down, fascists on the march, and economies sputtering out. Nope, nothing to worry about there.

I think that we are going to have develop a very deep appreciation of…ourselves…if we want to make it. If we want civilization and democracy to make it. There is a gift that we have which we’re failing to give.

This is a complex and subtle idea, so I’m going to begin with history. How do we think of “gifted” people? Well, something like this. Those who were gifted at violence and war became “nobles.” They claimed divine rights and land and the labor of others. Then the Industrial Revolution happened, and those who were gifted analytically came to be lionized. For a time, in the 20th century, as democracy’s golden age peaked, we thought of those gifted at dealmaking as people to look up to, like JFK, perhaps, or Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s first Secretary General, or, in a cruder sense, the archetype of Gordon Gekko from Wall St. Three waves of human talents.

But now? Things are very, very different. None of those old gifts are going to get us out of the mess we’re in. Certainly violence and war aren’t going to help our civilization survive a dying planet. But neither is Industrial-Revolution-Style analytical ingenuity, because then we come up against the problem of, well, why bother saving those poor souls in the first place? And you can’t make a deal with a dying planet — maybe you can use that talent to eke out more resources for your nation, being the better negotiator, but that’s about it.

So what kind of gift does the 21st century demand from us? Do we even have it?

I think that we do, but I think when it’s not under-recognized, it’s almost demonized. Some of us have what feels more like a burden. We are morally gifted. This is a very, very different kind of gift than the others, and so far in human history, it’s gone under-appreciated to the point that if you do have this kind of gift, well, you’re often an outcast, because it cuts against the grain of hierarchy and hatred, which are what history is still being made of.

What do I mean by this? Now that I’m older, I can see it very, very clearly. But young people who have this gift, this moral sixth sense? It’s so unrecognized that they don’t even know they have it. They just know they’re…not like the others. Did you feel like that as a kid?

I’ll give you my own example. My parents, being typical brown parents, were desperate for me to enter the “gifted” program in grade school. So off I went for the test, and I was in. They were ecstatic. And me? I was horrified. Because I’d entered a world that was like Lord of the Flies meets the Hunger Games, by way of Slytherin. To be “gifted” meant that you were analytically skilled, basically. And so our teachers — this program — saw their job as taking the humanity out of us, from day one. They’d pit us against one another, in zero-sum games. And I’d ask them, angry, why do I have to play this stupid game of beating and belittling people who should be my friends? Why can’t we all win?

I didn’t know it, because there were no words for it. But I had a moral gift. Now, don’t take that to mean that I’m saying I’m special. It’s not about grandiosity or narcissism. We all have gifts. And those gifts make us all unique and special, which might sound cliched, but it’s true. Me? I’m completely useless with my hands. Some people, though, can work magic with theirs. I can’t draw to save my life — ask me draw a cow, and you’ll get what looks a demon in dog form. Some people can put pencil to paper and take your breath away. Some people can turn a wrench or a screw because they just know, and things work again. Some can see the layout of whole cities or transport systems or airlines in their heads. So it goes. This isn’t about putting anyone down, because, well, think about the end of the last paragraph.