A New Mantra
No Me Digas. Op-Ed: Keith Price
Sitting through a pandemic, having lived through the most contentious national election in all of our lifetimes while some of our “fellow” citizens continue to lose their ever-loving minds, we can safely admit that we have been living in a bizarre space of crazy for the last four years. Now that it feels like we can breathe as a nation again, I have spent the previous few days dancing around like Diana Ross in the movie musical, THE WIZ. I know the role should have been Stephanie Mills, but this is all many of us had as kids.
I feel that this new world order now requires a simple mantra that will honestly bring us together. Nay, I say, create world peace. While repeating it, a mantra can quickly center you and your behavior while moving you towards your path of enlightenment. For me, that mantra is, “DON’T BE A DOUCHEBAG.”
However rude or crude you may find this statement, please note that current times have lacked basic civility and simple empathy. Snap out of it and stop being so precious.
Frequently this mantra could be equated to “treat people the way you would want to be treated” or “Do unto others.” As much as I admire the sentiment and the semantics, they lack the punch of “Don’t be a Douchebag.” Wouldn’t you agree?
In my opinion, to categorize someone or their behavior as that of a douchebag (D-bag), it requires the following. D-bags exhibit a lack of empathy and/or short-sightedness brought on by a deficit in critical thinking. As a nation, we are losing the art of critical thinking and the practice of being empathetic. And it has made our descent into Douchebaggery as a country very easy.
So much activity falls under The Douchebaggery Umbrella of Behavior. In some cases, D-bag behavior’s impact can sometimes be brushed off as a mere annoyance. In other cases, it also can stretch across time and intensify as it goes unchecked. Throughout history, challenging choices have been made. And at almost every one of them, I wager that it all boiled down to making or not making a douchebag move.
There are varying machinations like socioeconomic status, racial attitudes, and self-worth, to name a few, working within individuals as they generally make choices. Those machinations may be so deeply ingrained that an individual is only left to become a D-bag without critical thinking and empathy, hence one’s preferences.
Let’s take Slavery for an example of how one D-bag move can have lasting effects over time. During the Biblical ages, some D-bags got it in their head to make people slaves and wrote it down for the generations to use as some template. Now, if these original douchebags would have had any human empathy to understand that making people slaves was not the way to treat others while building commerce, then perhaps the Slave Trade might not have happened.
However, it did happen. More douchebags with varying economic interests, social status, and opinions on race have decided that it should continue until it helps build a nation with varying economic interests, social classes, and even MORE views on race. As time goes on and with a shit ton of convincing, half of the nation eventually says Slavery is not a good thing because slaves are people (expressing empathy). They also believed that if we all work together without this divide, we can all make money and prosper (critically thinking without short-sightedness). This is certainly not acting as an agent of Douchebaggery.
Moreover, about half of the nation decided that it wanted to continue Slavery because free labor was excellent for an economy (lack of empathy). It was worth seceding and starting a civil war (lack of critical thinking with short-sightedness). Those D-bags then lose the war that has divided a nation, and the country loses the president that officially freed the slaves. When the non-empathetic vice president succeeded as president, he decided to encourage Reconstruction’s insanity, which brought Jim Crow laws and related terror to former slaves and their descendants for another 150 + years. This D-bag move annihilated almost every moment of the progress of former slaves and their descendants.
You can also see how those D-bag moves spawned many other obstacles for women, native Americans, immigrants, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ population, and every other marginalized community.
Does Slavery sound like a total D-bag move to you now?
As you move through your day, many opportunities will present themselves with choices that might require empathy and critical thinking. Self-reflectively, you should then ask, “Am I making a D-bag move?” Using the mantra in that moment of a decision could be a lifesaver to you and possibly an entire nation of people. Like with many of our politicians, their lack of either of these skills has caused them to do things that have left many of us in a figurative financial and/or emotional pile of sh*t. Hence, they are D-bags.
As we move forward as a nation, let’s think of the great strides we can ALL make by living with this new take on a golden rule.
