It’s important. So, why don’t we get along?

I will start with a spoiler: Everybody knows what it takes to get along with others. The problem is not that we don’t know how to do it. The problem is that much of the time we just don’t do the things that we know would work.

For the sake of completeness, I will provide a quick summary of the key ingredients for any kind of healthy exchange. But first, ask yourself if anybody ever said the following:

“What a terrific ride to work this morning! I got cut off three different times, and the third time almost sent me headfirst into a semi! I hope tomorrow is as much fun as today.”

“That new mechanic is terrific! He charged me almost three times as much as his estimate, and on the drive home I could tell that the problem is still there! I am going to tell all my friends about this guy.”

“I have got the best boss ever. He insisted that I work late every night last week, and he still hasn’t approved the raise he promised me six months ago! I just do not understand people that say they hate their job.”

Nobody ever said those things. And everybody understands this.

So, just what does it take for us to get along with each other?

Getting along requires these three habits when dealing with others

The three essential ingredients for a mutually beneficial transaction (or “getting along”) are communication, consideration, and integrity.

Communication. It is endlessly frustrating when something changes for one party in a transaction and they don’t bother telling the other.

Consideration. Recognizing the way your decisions can affect others in your life can go a long way to keeping the relationships healthy.

Integrity. Telling the truth, acknowledging and keeping your commitments. I think it was the Texas Rangers who used to say, “Do all that you say you will do.”

None of this is complicated, and I believe that everybody understands this intuitively. So why is there so much trouble? Why don’t we consistently do what it takes to simply get along with each other?

We would get along better if we treated each other better. So why don’t we?

Here are some of the reasons why we don’t always treat our fellow humans as well as we could:

• Seemingly endless financial stress
• “Quiet lives of quiet desperation”
• The “Plutonium Rule”
• Our coercive society

Financial stress

This one is pretty obvious: when people are worried about keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads, they are more likely to have trouble getting along with each other.

Financial worries are also the most obvious social problems directly related to our irrational and conflict-prone society. Simple arithmetic dictates that the wealth required to fund our endless wars is no longer available to fulfill human needs. Back

Quiet desperation

I have long appreciated the well-known quote by Henry David Thoreau regarding the lives of “quiet desperation” lived, according to him, by much of humanity. Here is the longer version of the quotation:

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

There must be something to this, since this quotation is still quite popular. A good way to ensure that people will have difficulty getting along would be to structure society such that few people find their lives fulfilling. This could also be a clue regarding the endless conflict in our world. Back

The Plutonium Rule

Most of us have heard of the “Golden Rule.” It sounds really good: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Who could complain about that? Don’t do anything to someone else that you wouldn’t want someone else to do to you. Concise, easy to remember, and logically consistent. World peace, here we come!

There is only one problem, and it is a big one: This is not, in fact, the principle which actually determines an awful lot of human interaction.

To add clarity, I propose a new rule: the Plutonium Rule. Before I explain it, I should warn the reader that it is not as positive and uplifting as the original, the Golden Rule. I prefer optimism whenever possible, but I also believe that the best guide to understanding others is the simple, unvarnished and sometimes unpleasant truth.

The plutonium rule says, “Do to others as you believe has been done to you.” I am certainly not advocating this approach to life; I believe that much of our conflict and unhappiness results from widespread adherence to the “Plutonium Rule.”

The so-called “cycle of violence,” that endless loop in which one party’s bad behavior triggers the other party’s retaliation, is being played out on the world stage as I write this (August, 2024). Lather, rinse, repeat.

The  Plutonium Rule is to “getting along” as Kryptonite is to Superman. Back

Our coercive society

My personal experience with attempts at self-improvement goes back many years. When I first got involved with what at the time was referred to as the “Human Potential” movement, it was understood that many individuals’ problems were at least partially due to our dysfunctional society.

This understanding seems to have largely vanished in recent years, which I have found puzzling. Psychologist Bruce Levine provided me with a big clue to this mystery as he discusses our coercive society and its impact on individuals:

“In the 1970s, prior to the domination of the biopsychiatry-Big Pharma partnership, many mental health professionals took seriously the impact of coercion and resentful relationships on mental health. And in a cultural climate more favorable than our current one for critical reflection of society, authors such as Erich Fromm, who addressed the relationship between society and mental health, were taken seriously even within popular culture.

 

But then psychiatry went to bed with Big Pharma and its Big Money. Their partnership has helped bury the commonsense reality that an extremely coercive society creates enormous fear and resentment, which results in miserable marriages, unhappy families and severe emotional and behavioral problems.”

(Unfortunately, the link to the article quoted here no longer works. You might want to explore Dr. Levine’s website, however, as he has written extensively about the relationship between our broken society and the resulting social and individual problems.) Back

Closing thoughts

These are just a few of the many reasons why we don’t get along with each other as well as we could. You could include, for example, things like corporate greed, over-the top-competitiveness, and our excessively litigious and conflict-happy society. I will probably discuss these in the future, but the examples here are a good start.

The point of these examples is not simply to play the old “Ain’t it awful” game, although “awful” does seem to fit. My goal is to show that the seemingly inevitable difficulties we have when it comes to simply getting along with each other are in fact not inevitable.

These difficulties have identifiable causes — and they have solutions. If you like the idea of improving some of your dealings with others, be sure to check out the next article in this series, “How the freedom preacher can help.”