From "I" to "We"

Two visions for a better world.

Some of us are old enough to remember that weird John Lennon song, “I Am The Walrus,” and its equally weird opening line: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” It made about as much sense as the repeated line, “goo goo g’joob.” In truth, that was one of the most comprehensible lines from the entire psychedelic-babble song which appeared on one of the Beatles most forgettable albums, “Magical Mystery Tour.”

And yet . . . .

I’ve been reading two books of late that, in different ways, strike a similar theme. The first, which I finished a few weeks ago, is “Morality,” by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. For anyone of a philosophical, religious, and/or humanitarian bent who cares about the current political climate and the future of the human race, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s one of the few books that, as soon as I finished, I wanted to begin reading again.

The other, “The Wisdom Pattern,” was written by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who approaches the world through the lens of Catholicism but whom some Catholics accuse of being an atheist, a pantheist, or both. Although I identify as a Catholic Christian myself, I have to admit that I find Sacks’ approach more relatable than Rohr’s, yet I have read more of the latter’s books and listened to many of his podcasts. The two books intersect in a way that would make John Lennon proud.

Let’s start with Sacks. He focuses on moving our culture from being centered on “I” to “We.” He recounts historical swings back and forth between the public’s commitment to the greater good and a more selfish focus on the primacy of the individual.  Think of the people who insist on their right to travel mask-less through a pandemic, compared with those who beg them to accept responsibility for the health of their fellow travelers. Or consider the movement from “The Greatest Generation” that sacrificed individual personal interests to fight the Axis powers during World War II, to the “Do Your Own Thing” mantra that began to redirect Western society in the late 1960s. As Sacks explains in the opening paragraphs of his important book:

Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element: morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is good for “all of us together.” It is about “Us,” not “Me”; about “We,” not “I.”

In the final chapter of his book, Sacks identifies a concept which, he says, “has immense and transformative power.” The concept is covenant. He contrasts covenant with contract. A contract, he explains, is generated by self-interest. A covenant, on the other hand, is based on a mutual commitment to the welfare of the other person:

Recall that what makes it different is that in a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone. Unlike contracts, which are entered into for the sake of advantage, covenants are moral commitments sustained by loyalty and fidelity, even when they call for sacrifice. They are about you and I coming together to form a “We.”

Covenant, Sacks says, is the answer to the angry state of our divided society. It adds the element of morality that is missing from our exaggerated sense of individual self-importance. It is what leads a person to care about and act to prevent injustices imposed on groups to which that person does not belong. It is what causes the person who does not believe a virus will harm them to put on a mask for the benefit of others. Without the moral bond reflected in a covenantal relationship, Sacks suggests, society simply cannot function.

Richard Rohr takes this kind of thinking to a different level, or at least in a different direction. I won’t attempt to describe his philosophy because I am still trying to understand it. It is less a practical call to morality and more a mystical call to a higher level of being grounded in a non-dogmatic faith. But the construct Rohr describes is both simple and useful.

He calls it “the cosmic egg.” An egg, he explains, has essentially three components. The smallest, most interior component is the yolk; the next largest, moving outward, is the albumen, or egg white; the largest, exterior component is the shell. Rohr calls the first layer “My Story,” the second layer “Our Story,” and the third, outermost layer “The Story.” The “My Story” layer is where we focus on ourselves, our individual identities, and our own self-interest. In “Our Story,” we connect to others; it is our group identity, our sense of belonging. “The Story” is where we find cosmic reality beyond ourselves and beyond our groups. Rohr says that these are not sequential, but are simultaneous realities, all of which are good and necessary, and none of which is sufficient without the others.

Sacks’ pragmatic focus on moving from “I” to “We” in covenantal relationships does not parallel Rohr’s more mystical cosmic egg, but in some respects they are telling the same story. Both are saying that an exclusive or exaggerated attachment to individual self-interest will not solve the world’s problems or result in personal fulfillment. Both are saying that we are social creatures, and that we need connections to other people to achieve higher levels of meaning in our lives. And perhaps the ingredient of morality that Sacks describes as essential to a functioning society is, at some down-to-earth level, a reflection of “The Story” that Rohr describes. It is a belief in a higher, objective good that binds people together and has the power to save us from ourselves.

I didn’t mean for this writing to become quite so philosophical. I guess that’s unavoidable when one writes about great minds and souls like Sacks and Rohr. What I really want to convey is much simpler. It comes down to this.

There are a lot of people on this planet. Our world cannot thrive, and maybe can’t survive, if we don’t show more concern for the common good. American individualism has reached an unsustainable extreme. If we don’t move past our focus on our individual rights, real or imagined, or the interests of the groups with which we identify, and look more to our responsibilities to care about, and care for, the other person, even those who are different from and disagree with us, we will cause irreversible damage to our society and our world.

That’s it in a nutshell. Or maybe an egg shell.

I am the walrus.

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Postcript. There seems to be quite a bit written about the meaning of “I Am The Walrus,” and its mysterious phrase, “goo goo g’joob.” If you want to explore it further, I found this article to be an interesting place to start: Goo Goo G'Joob. And here is a link to the song itself: I Am the Walrus