Disinteresting

The nicer we are to us,

The worse we are to others—

If that’s a zero-sum game,

And it’s looking like it is,

It might be the most tragic.

Ratcheting human kindness

Would always amp violence

And cruelty at the borders

Between every us and them.

The mind recoils. Contrary

Anecdotes spring to defense.

And, besides, that would imply

The flip side, that cruelty—

Deliberate cruelty—

Must bring people together,

Bond torturers like brothers,

And surely that can’t be true.

The commandants of death camps

May tend to be as banal

In their evil as Arendt

Argued, but banal isn’t

Anywhere near angelic.

Still, the well-documented

Tendency of shared trauma

To bind frayed groups together

Suggests that, collectively,

The trend is to harmony

When there’s a clear enemy,

And how often have you read

Quotations about the love

And strong sense of shared purpose

People felt among vast groups

Of unrelated strangers—

Whole cities, nations, empires—

So long as all were members

And their agglomeration,

However abstractly carved,

Was threatened by entities

Imaginable as Them?

What if the best we could do

To ameliorate grief

And the unbroken screaming

Of great civilizations

Would be to annihilate

Fellow feeling? A species

Of people indifferent

To people would dissolve groups

Swiftly, but would that be worse?

No one would belong or care

To belong or care to know

Who belonged, what borders were.