The third road between severity and mercy

The other day on LinkedIn’s cringe-feed came a post from an entrepreneurship influencer.

 

The man’s young son, who would be no more than 4 or 5, dropped his ice cream cone on the ground.

 

To “teach him a lesson”, the man refused to buy him a new one.

 

Then decided to post about it on social media for a status boost.

 

This is the sage wisdom of our betters.

 

This is putting your life into the dancing clown-carnival of social media in return for Likes and Shares.

 

Am I irritated? No, not at all. My disappointment in human beings is a well with no bottom. I came to terms with that years ago.

 

We’re a competitive species, and a healthy portion of the upper tiers of the richest (for now) countries satisfy that competitive urge by jockeying for status.

 

Instead of conquest and plunder, it’s “hey look at me!” followed by “hold my beer!” as the next guy one-ups the last guy.

 

The post meant to teach a lesson about the School of Hard Knocks attended by every Boomer on Fcebook.

 

“Life is hard, nothing is easy, everything will be a struggle.”

 

Think of how mind-twistingly weird this is. We live in such comfort and abundance that we have to manufacture the ceaseless cruelties of nature all over again.

 

There’s a powerful lesson in this, though. I don’t even think Mr. Influencer was entirely wrong.

 

Competition is in the fabric of life and nature.

 

So is cooperation.

 

To survive, much less thrive, you need a grasp of both.

 

The question is how we’re going to teach it.

 

Even small cruelties when used for social media cred wander into that space of robotic psychopathy that infects so much of the terminally online sub-cultures.

 

The wise soul appreciates both severity and mercy, and the balance between them.

 

Harshness used to win engagement on your posts probably isn’t the wise choice.

 

Being on social media at all probably isn’t the wise choice.

 

Whenever a choice is limited to two options, there’s always a third path.

 

And if there’s three, then there’s no real limit at all.

 

 

Matt Perryman
https://matts.email