A few things kids say these days have been bothering me. They are:
1) You can should hang out with anyone because all people are equal.
2) You can do anything because YOLO.
3) You can say anything as long as it is the truth.
You can and should hang out with anyone because all people are equal -
One of the marks of a developing person is understanding that all people are not equal and neither are we! Not all people run equally slow; not all people are equally smart; not all people are equally lazy; not all people are equally nice! Any simple observation about people shows without equivocation that all people are not equal - they will not equally perform in any number of activities and hence they were not created equal (in spite of how the Constitution reads)! Our young adults are not dumb they must know that! It surely doesn't take a PhD in social science (which by the way is much more complicated that rocket science) to figure out that not all people are equal. But maybe what our kids and young adults are really trying to say is that we should try and treat everyone as equals.
Well, this sounds good and I agree - we should treat everyone equally! Logically, it follows, if we should treat everyone equally then we should let everyone be our friend. However, before we jump on that, two things need to be understood about treating everyone equally. First, equal treatment in not identical treatment. Second, given that all people are not equal it seems reasonable to conclude that not all people will have an identical impact on who we are and who we will become.
As a teacher, professor, and parent I know that while I treat all my students and kids in my life equally I don’t not treat them identical. Especially at an inner city community college, I have students who come to me with very different skill sets, as a foster parent I have kids who, while the same age, have vastly different backgrounds and skills, and as a parent I also know that 10 year olds and 15 year olds have vastly different needs.
Yet, I am expected, and correctly so, to treat all these kids equally! But to be clear I do not nor could I treat them all identically. I make judgments about where they are, what they can do, and where they should be after doing whatever it is that we might be doing at that time. I treat them all equally and fairly but by no means identically. To treat them identically would be crazy!
To treat a student who has english as a second language, and is just mastering writing in english, identical with someone who has been writing all their life and has had the best schools in their educational background would be wrong! To treat a 10 year old the same as a 15 year old would be just as wrong and crazy. So equal and fair treatment are not identical treatment - we need not nor should we treat all people identically - not everyone should be my friend.
Secondly, because not all people are equal not all people have an identical impact on me, my life, or who I will become. This principle naturally follows from the fact, as we discussed above, that not all people are equal. For example, a foster kid who is very good at math will have a different impact on my life and who I will become than one who is a very good at skateboarding. They may very well have an equal impact but by no means an identical impact.
The Buddha knew this some 2,500 years ago. The Buddha tells us time and time again to be very careful whom we choose as friends (e.g, Dhammapada, 61, 64, 65, 78). The Buddhist Psychological principles behind this are based on the idea that our minds are very “sticky” (e.g., Buddha Mind, Buddha Body. Thich Nhat Hanh, 2007). That is, what we practice, think, view and do have great impacts on who we are at any given time and who we will become in the future. The more and more we run things though our mind, i.e., expose our minds to things, the greater and greater impact they will likely have on our minds. In addition, as we are learning from research in physiology we know that the brain is very plastic as a young person but more and more we are discovering that the human brain retains that plasticity throughout our lives. Our minds are sticky and we must guard the doors to our minds - eyes, ears and so on - alass we are what we do!
The third point regarding this issue is that discrimination is part of life! Not only do we discriminate but we must discriminate to survive in this world. Many, many things are actively excluded from our lives on a daily basis. We can not pay attention to everything in the world. If we attend to every noise in our environment we would go crazy and not even be able to function. In order to focus, to concentrate, to actually do simple things like cross a street or write a computer program we must discriminate - “this I must attend to, this I must not!” Now to be clear this is a discrimination based on accurate facts and information - not based on made up things like race or stereotypes (another blog at another time).
Just try it, just step outside and try to pay attention to everything, then try and do something while at the same time maintaining that same attention to everything else - you can’t! In the same way we simply can not have every person as a friend, if we did we would have no friends. We would not be able to do anything. Recall back to the halls of your high school. Try to go from class to class but instead of talking to your regular friends stop and talk with everyone as if they were your friends. Forget it! It can’t be done. You couldn’t even get out the door of your first class!
So, as we grow and develop in life we understand that equal treatment is not identical treatment, with whom we hang impact who we become, and like all things in life we must pick and choose! The difference of the impact for friends on our life is that the stakes with friends are among the highest in our lives, for both us and our friends! You must choose your friends so please do so wisely!
Peace, Love and Equality,
Dr. B
