All People Matter

Someone recently asked me if people matter.  Do all people matter, or are there some people that the world would just be better off without?  My initial response was—of course, all people matter!  But I try to teach my students that a statement without evidence is just an opinion.  Something that is fact is much stronger than a mere opinion.  (This I learned from Mortimer J. Adler:  The Radical Academy).  My gut, my heart, tells me that each and every person matters, but I need evidence before I can say that opinion is fact. 

I like what John F. Kennedy wrote in Nation of Immigrants:  “The contribution of immigrants can be seen in every aspect of our national life.  We see it in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, in education, even in athletics and in entertainment.  There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background.”  People who are different matter because all of society is enriched by diversity. 

I have a certain kind of personality, and that personality helps to color the way that I see the world.  I was in New Orleans for a concert once, and because of how horrible our hotel was, I was spitting mad.  Ready to go home.  I walked the streets of New Orleans and saw it as an ugly, evil, hateful place, until a guy stopped me on Bourbon Street and gave me a pretend ticket for “Not partying hard enough.”  He was working for the food bank collecting donations, but his easy smile and delightful demeanor helped me to change my attitude, and then I saw New Orleans in a whole new light.  It’s like the city morphed before my eyes.  Was the city one way, and then it became another?  No, it was always the same city, but I couldn't see it at that time.  I needed another person to help me.  

I also have a set of life experiences that I filter the world through.  No one is capable of seeing the world as it truly is because we do not have limitless attention to be able to see all aspects of the entire world.  We filter things out simply because we cannot see it all, and we filter things out based on who we are and what we have seen.  The world doesn’t always fit into the scripts we create for it, and that is when we feel frustration, because we do not know the world or our place in it.

If we only read a certain type of literature or watch a certain type of television show, then we skew what we see and know of the world in a specific and limiting way.  Each and every person matters because they can tell us what they see of the world and in the world.  When we add that to what we already know, then we can start forming a clearer picture of the world.  The more we know, the more we can see how it fits together.  We learn more about ourselves and our place in the world when we truly understand the experiences of others. 

We are deprived when people are silenced, whether it is because they are killed or because their voices are silenced.  And we silence people way too much.  Poverty silences.  Denying people the right to vote silences, whether through actual legislation or through practices that make them feel as though voting would be a waste of their time.  Lack of education silences.

All of these things must be fought at every instance.  If we could know the perspective of everyone in the world, then we could see the world as it truly is.  If we could know everyone’s experiences of the world all at once—I think this might be the mind of God.