The Sandbox Revolution Deferred

When I was a child, my mother used to encourage me to share my toys in the sandbox with other children who came to play. I will confess that I found this a difficult challenge, especially when I did not know the other children involved. "How can I trust that kid?" I would ask myself. "What if he plays too rough with my toy dump truck? I only have one. Let him play with someone else's truck." I was inconsistent when it came to following my mother's advice and, even when I did as she urged, I was rarely enthusiastic.

Then there were times when I arrived at the sand box to find other children playing with their own toys, and I was in the position of hoping that those other children would be kind enough to share with me. Sometimes they did; at other times, they ignored me as I had ignored so many others. I felt the sting of being left out. The hurt feelings gave me pause, but never turned me into a Communist. I've always felt that some property ought to be private, even if it means that sometimes I would have to play alone.

Nevertheless, my mother's admonitions continue to haunt me. The simple orientation towards generosity and learning to share has a real beauty to it. Why not share? What if the other kid is too rough and my toy is broken? Will my life be ruined?

When the lessons of the sandbox begin to be heeded by children and adults alike, the revolution will come. All of the ideological scaffolding that we invoke to convince ourselves and others of the rightness of our cause--whatever cause we support--amount to very little beyond posturing before the crowd, preaching to the choir. The sandbox revolution requires no complex ideological apparatus to be convincing; the appeal is to a simple ethic of inclusion: we all share this same, small sandbox, why not make it a welcome place for everyone who arrives to play?

Governments can adopt this point of view and attempt to institutionalize generosity. As a Tolstoyan, I prefer to preempt government involvement. If the individual conscience is pricked in the sandbox, the government can play a secondary role of facilitation--if that. Of course, I am well aware that the political right has adopted this libertarian rhetoric; the problem today is that the right hides behind this rhetoric in order to avoid the application of the ethic of inclusion. The sandbox revolution is inhibited by a politics of obstinate dishonesty. At present, there seems to be no way forward. We remain trapped in a childhood we should have outgrown decades, if not centuries, ago.