Three Resolutions to Make a Better World

Three worthwhile resolutions that are more about how we can improve our relationships with others rather than just improve ourselves.

Welcome back to The Burnett Breakdown and Happy New Year! There is no better way to start than to like, subscribe, share, and comment on this newsletter.

I am practicing what I preach because I want to share with all of you my wife’s newsletter that she just started called Eats by Alexa which you can read here. She is a registered dietitian and loves helping people, especially families, eat healthy so GIVE HER A FOLLOW!

New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve written before about New Year’s resolutions (which you can read here) and my affinity for them. While I understand the argument that people can evaluate areas of their lives to improve and set about making those improvements at any point in the year, it is undoubtedly true that the first day of a new year forces the issue upon us more than other days. Instead of saying that this shouldn’t be, I think it’s useful to embrace it and encourage people in their pursuit of fulfilling their resolutions.

With all of that said, that’s exactly what I want to do with this newsletter. I want to spur each of my readers on to make and keep some particular resolutions, though a particular kind of resolution. Think of these as resolutions to help make the world a better place.

Keep in mind that I am not a utopian who believes that humans have the capacity to make the world a perfect place. Not only that, I don’t really think humans have much of an ability to improve the world through programs or other top-down approaches. However, I do think that we can each individually make our small corner of the world better than it otherwise would be which, when done en masse, will create a net better world.

You’ll notice a couple of things about these resolutions. First, they are purposely focused on this very thing of making our small corner of the world better. Second, they are less focused on improving ourselves exclusively and more about how we relate to others.

Now on to the resolutions.

Hang out with one friend a month

This one is pretty straight forward but could actually be one of the most meaningful changes you make all year. Every month pick one person and set up a time to hang out, one-on-one (or as couples if you have a significant other). This can be in the form of coffee, drinks, dinner, having them over, or whatever else works. This can be the same person every month or you can switch it up, but I would recommend hanging out with people that you don’t normally see monthly.

In the world of social media, it is the sad reality that we no longer feel the need to “catch up” with others because we see all of their life updates on our phones. We know when they went on vacation or had a baby or got a new job because it’s usually posted somewhere. We feel like we’ve kept in touch, but we haven’t actually talked to them in who knows how long.

Unfortunately, this isn’t real. Instead of actually being friends, we relate to our “friends” the same way we do celebrities. We know when anything big happens (or with celebrities that have 24/7 paparazzi, seemingly mundane updates) but we don’t actually know the person.

When you actually spend time talking with someone, you don’t just get the highlights, you hear the struggles they have experienced. You also see bits of their personality that you don’t get on the internet. You even get to develop new experiences with that person when something happens while you’re together that you can laugh about or remember later.

These are the types of relationships that we need more of in our world. Real relationships like this inspire more hanging out, more community, and more opportunities to help others, and it gives us less time to focus on the worst aspects of our world and our own lives. Our world would be a better place if everyone substituted one night of watching Fox News or MSNBC with spending time with someone else. How much better? Who knows, but it’s worth a try.

Talk to a non-household family member once every two weeks

This one is oddly specific and the timeframe can be adjusted (there’s nothing special about every two weeks) but I’m more concerned with the idea and putting concrete numbers to it. It is no secret that in America we prioritize our individuality over any and everything. This is a real benefit in some ways. If you come from a family background that is a wreck, then American culture is very encouraging of you “rising above” and making a better life for yourself.

On the flip side, this can also be a real detriment. We purposely keep our distance (both physically and socially) from family, the people God has created to love us more than anyone else. In fact, they are biologically designed to care more about us than other people do. And vice versa. We are biologically designed to care more about them than we do other people.

In spite of this design, our individualistic culture tells us to become our own person and separate from our family. Your own career and personal life are just too important to sacrifice to spend more time with your family.

By deciding to call a family member who you don’t live with, we are ever so slightly fighting against this corrosive trend in our culture. We are ever so slightly acknowledging that God designed the basic unit of society to be the family and doing what little we can to keep our own intact and healthy.

Because families are the basic building block of society, the more we can do to make ours healthier, the better the world will be.

Join something local

This one is a little more vague but also allows for a little more creativity. With this, I mean commit to some sort of local organization, league, group, or whatever. I’m thinking anything from the local Republican/Democrat Party, softball league, chess club, HOA, knitting club, book club, etc.

The emphasis here is on the entity/organization being local and in-person. As sociologist Robert Putnam wrote about in his book Bowling Alone, American society has experienced a significant decline in civic engagement and, as a result, a decline in what he calls “social capital”. Essentially, we have become ever more disconnected from each other because we spend less time with each other.

Putnam spends the whole book talking about the consequences of this but I want to highlight one that is particularly pertinent right now. He writes, “People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.”

I think a good chunk of the disfunction in our politics today can be traced back to a lack of local engagement. I don’t just mean a lack of engagement in local politics but a lack of engagement in anything local. Put simply, we don’t know our neighbors who we would be inclined to trust, so we don’t trust anyone. As a result, everything becomes a national issue, which are inherently harder to solve.

The only Democrats we “know” are the people in the media who live in San Francisco with blue hair and “no gender” or the only Republicans we “know” are the proud boys who stormed the capitol.

As we get more involved in our local communities, it won’t be long before we realize that actually Joe who you met through trivia night at the local bar is a [insert opposite political party] and you get along great with him. Or, we will never know someone’s political affiliation but will know them well enough to work with them to solve some local issue that comes up and it not become a “political” issue.

By committing to some local something, calling a family member, and hanging out with a friend once a month, we are doing what we can to rebuild the social capital that American society has lost and making the world a better place even if ever so slightly.

God Bless,
Hunter Burnett