You Can’t Build Yourself Up By Tearing Somebody Else Down

A lot of people seem to believe that if they put somebody else down, they can build themselves up and be the top dog. They think if they beat up an Asian person, kill a black person, or discriminate against a disabled person, they will be superior and make this country great again - but they’re wrong. You can’t build a great nation based on hate and contempt and you can’t build yourself up by tearing other people down. The way to build yourself up is by doing good things in the world and lifting up other people. Knocking somebody down might make you feel superior in the moment, but it’s not going to do you any good in the long run and won’t make you feel good about yourself. People need to learn how to have good emotional skills because they are more important than ever before. If you don’t know how to communicate calmly and talk to others, you’re going to get into a lot of trouble and have hate in your heart. In order to make this nation great, we need to instead have love and compassion. I think we should organize webinars, town meetings, and campaigns telling people that kindness is the way to go because beating people up is not how we should be solving our problems. We need to teach people how to civilly sit down and talk to one another. Most angry people probably came from a background where they never got to sit down and talk to their family about their problems or feelings. Because they never got those experiences, we now need to teach them the proper emotional skills and let them know that they can’t build themselves up by putting other people down. To you and me, it might seem easy to learn how to be kind and compassionate, but it might not be so easy for them, especially if they’ve never encountered any form of kindness before. All in all, we need to demonstrate problem-solving skills and show these people how to be successful without resorting to violence.

American democracy as it currently exists is simply not going to survive much longer if hate and violent acts continue to occur. Nobody is going to fight for a nation in which they might end up hurt or dead anytime they walk out the door. That price is too much to pay and nobody is going to accept inclusion, equality, and diversity at that cost. If we want these things, we need to create a safe, stable country. As it is right now, school shootings are still happening and we are living in a world where 6th grade girls are wounding others by carrying guns and opening fire in their schools. Because of this, parents are praying on their knees every single day, hoping their child doesn’t get shot when they send them off to school. You might like to think that everybody would be kind enough not to take up a gun and start shooting, but the grim reality is that this sort of thing is happening far too frequently. We need to take action and make some major social changes if we want to prevent more people from getting shot. It might not be easy at first, but I think a step in the right direction is to help these hate-filled people and give them the tools they need to be successful, competent people.