What if people had visible stats?

It would be important for the information to also emanate from their car as well. I’m pretty good at treating people with dignity until I get behind the wheel. Something happens to me that makes me see every driving indiscretion a sign of utter incompetence and as my husband would say, “bad breeding.”
I’m working on it.

I think we do have something very much like this, but it takes a whole lot of sensitivity to “read” the stats. Our social brains can be incredibly good at picking up on subtle visual clues to another person’s state, often without ever knowing exactly what we’re keying into. My Zen teacher was very good at this, far better than I am.

Not long ago, A woman showed up at our temple and told me that my teacher had given a guest talk at her church. Afterward, he had come up to her and said, “I can see that you’re going through a hard time. Here’s the phone number of the temple if you feel like you want to talk about it.” So there she was.

This wasn’t psychic. It was just the kind of sensitivity that can operate when you’re not too self-absorbed to really see the person in front of you.

There’s a saying that at 40 we all have the face we deserve. There’s something to that. Life experience writes on our faces and bodies in a script that we’re wired to read, but that requires an uncommon inner quiet.

I believe if most people were concerned about how others feel and what troubles they had experienced, our civilization would be so much more humane. What we need is more people who care rather than visible stats. Until people really care about the experiences and burdens of others, I believe little will change.

@Dr_Lawrence: “What we need is more people who care rather than visible stats.”

I’m not advocating for some future where stats are visible. Rather, I’m wondering if the lack of caring you describe would disappear (or change) if we were able to actually see people, as @thorninmud describes. Is it that we lack empathy and compassion, or is it that we operate in a delusional or blind state? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that the blinders that keep us from actually seeing people might be what keeps us from truly meeting and reaching out to people as people. I am as guilty as the rest of us. We rush around and feel that everyone is an extra in our little play. They are things that are in our way.

This reminds me of a video I saw a while back (which I can’t find now, of course). It showed a deli and its surrounding area filled with random people. All of the people looked fine (or at least not bad) on the outside, but each person had a little blurb above his head, revealing what troubles they were dealing with:

just lost her job
has cancer
his wife recently died
is in an abusive relationship and doesn’t know what to do
worried about his elderly mother

…and so on. It was meant to encourage compassion for others, and it was a good reminder to me. The quote “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” pops up on my Facebook feed every now and again, and reminds me anew.

It’s sad that we need reminding at all, but it’s so easy to get all caught up in our own traumas and dramas. If we were constantly exposed to visible stats, I wonder if we’d eventually become inured to them and go right back to being self absorbed. I think we just might. :(

@augustlan, I think it might have been a United Church of Christ or a Methodist ad.

@Judi Yes, that sounds right.