We Cannot Be Decent
We are trembling under the burden of success. The desire for success, the beg for want of resources, for status, and perhaps most of all: respect. I remember looking at a co-worker once, who was quite the insidious individual when he could get away with it. I asked him, “why can’t we be decent people?” He gave me the most incredulous, tight, and pinching expression that I have ever encountered. He said nothing to my question, but his answer was in his silence. It was clear from his body language — No. No, we cannot be decent people. We as humans cannot, or perhaps, refuse incessantly from within the very marrow of our bones and biological nature to be decent just for the sake of decency.
We want to crush. We want to stand on top and submit others. To be a winner, there must be losers. There must be established the public and irrefutable announcement to a social crowd that you stand above others on a shifting social hierarchy. We are perhaps keen not to accept anything else. Equality? Kindness? Those may as well be associated with weakness in comparison.
The hyper-competitive nature of our modern world grinds those below, be they parent or child, student or adult. The parent slaves at work, the child at school, and all operate within hierarchies that tie to the greater whole of society.
Hello! We’re D.J. Hoskins
We are Davena and Jason Hoskins, co-authors of 30+ books and siblings who write under the pseudonym D.J. Hoskins. Three years apart and in our twenties, we have been fascinated by stories from a young age. Davena is a student attending Princeton University, and Jason attends Georgetown University.
