Two Ways of Living

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By Adonai ha Aretz

Image by JaredSMassey from Pixabay

 

Using two common terms in the language of business, we might say the way of give is relational, whereas the way of get is transactional. For example, transactional marketing focuses on a single point-of-sale event, while relational marketing emphasizes building long-term customer relationships. One is all about closing the one-time sale; the other is about creating an enduring positive relationship.

The relational versus transactional model is not limited to business. It shapes all human relationships and even influences international affairs. In interpersonal relationships, the transactional approach reduces interactions to win-lose. Only the one who dominates wins. This is also true at the level of nations when one side seeks to overpower the other in a trade war or a territorial war.

On the other hand, the relational approach seeks mutual benefit through mutual cooperation. This promotes win-win, because equity and equality are in play. Relational thinking requires giving up something of self for the common good.

The wise man went further in describing the way of give as “outgoing concern” for others equal to concern for self—a key aspect of empathy. The way of get, he said, expresses itself in grasping and taking, the pursuit of personal profit, and the selfishness that defines so much of human interaction. When get is the way, competitiveness and violence are close at hand.

Martin Luther King Jr. made many eloquent pleas for equality of opportunity for African Americans. On one occasion, recognizing the gravity of the problem in context of the nation’s future, he said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” As a Christian leader, King’s underlying ethic was the biblical principle of loving neighbor as self, combined with awareness of the biblical wisdom that counters foolishness.

The same biblical source expands empathy to include treating strangers with love and respect, as well as protecting and preserving the environment. Transactional thinking—the way of taking, not giving—has little room for loving concern, for empathy. It is exploitative, which is by definition unloving. Everything in that world becomes a potential commodity; it’s just something to be traded for profit.

A well-known transactional businessman said of late, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Yet that empathy is what helped rebuild Europe through the US-funded Marshall Plan following Hitler’s catastrophic war to grab territory at all costs.

In his 1947 address at Harvard University, secretary of state George Marshall said, “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” He concluded: “Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibilities which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.”

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants—a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Prison psychologist Gustave M. Gilbert to Justice Robert H. Jackson at the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials (from the TV documentary Nuremberg, 2000)

The Marshall Plan emphasized the way of give, prioritizing cooperation and recovery. Hitler’s ideology was the stark opposite, rooted in the way of get. Hitler was an autocrat with a massive empathy deficit. He liked dogs and children yet showed no feeling for the nearly 6 million Jews and more than 5 million others he murdered. He followed the way of get to the destruction of his nation. Hitler personified the transactional actor and regarded the biblical principles we’ve referenced as part of a timid and weak religion. Thomas Schirrmacher, president of the International Institute for Religious Freedom, told Vision, “Hitler believed that God created the world to be at war all the time—the races against each other, and all the races against the Jews.” For the Führer, empathy and peace between peoples had no place.

Yet empathy makes life worth living. It empowers community. It compels help for the disadvantaged—the duty of care. Given this, the wise man’s description of life being governed by two opposing ways of living seems particularly timely.

Transactional thinking will not save us; so why not choose the way of give?

David Hulme – https://www.vision.org/insight-two-ways-living-9784

ROPE

Is the World Morally Well-Ordered?

1 thought on “Two Ways of Living”

  1. The question remains why do certain people choose violence and destruction? Reminds me very much of our two-party system. The problem is everyone is righteous in their own particular choice – or are they?

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