Creating a Society Where It Is Easier to Be Good

Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, once said, “We need to build a society where it is easier for people to be good.” I thought of his insight when I heard about the exhibition basketball game that was played by KU and MU to raise money for hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Some of the people who watched the game might already have donated money for this cause, but nonetheless, the opportunity to see this particular game between longstanding rivals led them to reach into their pockets to contribute an additional $1.8 million to help people devastated by hurricanes. This money wouldn’t have been raised if Bill Self, the KU basketball coach, hadn’t pushed the idea of the game and if the schools hadn’t gotten on board to make it happen.

In my Spirituality of Emotions class, we recently read about how easily people were led to commit genocide in Rwanda and Jedwabne, Poland. Although we can build a society where it is easier for people to be good, we can also build a society where it is easier for people to perform horrific acts of violence. As Herman Goering said at the Nuremburg trials, “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Humans have a deep instinct for self preservation. Instead of trying to overcome that instinct, we need to redefine what we mean by “self.” When we recognize that we are interconnected with everything that lives, we understand that what happens to another living thing also affects us; then the borders of the self expand, and suddenly self preservation means preserving all life, not just the life contained within our own skin. Christians understand it as being part of the body of Christ, and it is why we defend life from conception to death, which encompasses (among other things) opposing war, the death penalty, euthanasia, and poisoning of the earth. It is why we are about building the kingdom of God, a place where it is easier for people to be good.