The Importance of Mutualism

I have a coworker who I really hate working with. As it’s a professional setting, and overall, they are still part of the team, I kept this to myself for a long time. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when masks were in short supply, I sewed them a mask like I did for other coworkers, friends, family, or community members.

I thought nothing of it.

Soon after my manager asked me if I wanted to be part of a team spearheaded by my least favorite coworker.

“I would rather quit this whole job,” I said outright.

My manager looked at me in absolute shock. “But you made them a mask.”

I said, “I don’t want harm to come to them. I just don’t want to work with them.”

Thinking about this situation made me realize how nuance and mutualism are dead. According to my manager and many others who saw the interaction, they thought that my helping to protect someone was the same as me claiming that this person was my best friend when that couldn’t be further from the truth. In their eyes, I should have left this person to suffer or find their own way.

This rampant sense of individualism, thinking everyone should do everything themselves, just doesn’t work in a healthy society. Everything you do depends on, is made possible by, or aided by someone else. Someone sold you the computer or device you’re reading this on, someone transported it, someone crafted the parts to make it, and someone mined the minerals used to make the parts. Unless you’re living out in the woods as a hermit, you are dependent on the work and wellbeing of other people.

Not helping my coworker with a protective measure against a global pandemic wouldn’t benefit me or anyone else, unless my own goal was a personal vendetta.

For some people, immediate personal gratification and “winning” against others seems to be the only goal. They want anyone they don’t like to suffer, even if it means they will suffer alongside them. This is utterly short-sighted. You don’t have to like someone to accept their worth for the greater good.

To quote one of my favorite bands, Architects, “No tree can grow to heaven, ’til its roots reach down to hell…We all fall in parallel.”

I fear that the United States has failed to learn this lesson and it’s too late to do so before millions get hurt. We did not let ourselves be uncomfortable enough to accept our issues and work to fix them. Instead, we’ve scapegoated and fearmongered ourselves into a situation where the pain or elimination of others seems to be a reasonable solution to our problems. If someone we find undeserving gets something to help put them on an even playing field, it’s a personal affront. Instead of looking at the bigger picture, that we’re only as strong as the weakest member of society, it’s about the immediate gratification and what overtly helps or hurts us.

I don’t know how to fix this other than trying to show others how little this attitude and extreme individualism help. We are in a massive group project, for better or worse. Unfortunately, some folks will have to suffer greatly before they realize how bad things have become.