I have but one cheek

     Perhaps playing Senior Care for a living, I am hyper sensitive to "kindness".  Regretfully, I have far too many stories of lightly veiled anger, for kindness  not to be a dominant theme in my life.  Not that all of the stories recall young mistreating old.  Old often doesn't show forth as weakness, and often youth is instinctively kind. 

     In a culture which is saturated with the "The Golden Rule" moral platitude, it is perplexing as to why there is so much "I am me and you are not".  My best insight, at the moment and likely only to be held for a day or two, is that:

•      The human identity spectrum, "conservative to liberal" is a marker for the most fundamental spectrum, "survival strategies"   
•      "Free will", or mimetic, we all choose, Darwin, or Christ, which is to say, we polarize around the unknown truth about "altruism", namely is it a self thing, a kin thing. a group thing, or a cosmic thing.
•      At the conservative end of the spectrum, we prioritize self and kin, offering surplus as charity to those less fortunate.  We embrace self reliance, accountability and compassion...but,for us,  the Universe compels "survival of the fittest". Therefore, we cannot waiver on our truth, that "I am me and you are not".  
•      At the liberal end of the spectrum is the frightening insight, right or wrong, that we can't/won't survive unless everyone survives.  While we may or may not believe in "group altruism" per se, we choose inclusion in only that group that contains all groups.  Therefore, we cannot waiver on our truth that we are all "one".

      So far, as I read history, both the Darwins and the Christians are propelling the world culture in the direction of peace.  Clearly the well being of the species is ascending on average.  The median, not so much. However, with half of the people promoting "obligated without entitlement" and the other half promoting "entitled without obligation" there is going to be some slapping....on both sides!

 PS:  There is an obvious bizarreness about the colors claimed by those scattered along the "self vs one" altruism spectrum. Clearly, the Darwins are Darwins, but, being the dominant tribe, they have first claim to the Christian tag... while the Christians, clearly more aligned with Christian sensibilities, disavow the Christian tag so as to not identify as " Darwins".  As such, they have acquiesced to being tagged humanist, unitarians,  new agers, socialist, Marxist, etc.  For distinction this has probably been a good thing.  Two books with the same name is not good for either.