[Left to do: See if you can bring what Vibha said into this a little more.]

With her post, “A Boy with a Bunny Hat,” (check it out), my colleague and friend Vibha Akkaraju shares her compassionate response to the photo of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos as he’s taken into custody by ICE in Minneapolis.

By also putting herself in Liam’s captor’s frame of mind, she wonders with compassion how he might have come to this. Her approach demonstrates how the ancient saying, to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” takes root.

Good sense

When thoughtfully practiced, loving thy neighbor as thyself makes practical sense. It’s not some sentimental idea. Let’s explore it a bit.

The statement first occurred in the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:18. Then Hillel and Jesus, Jewish contemporaries, taught it as a fundamental principle of Jewish teaching. Jesus declared it a “law,” second only to loving God. Hillel said, “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

Their people were divided in many ways then, as we are today. Jews struggled within their own community, even as they lived under the heel of Roman occupation. So their teaching most likely meant other Jews you don’t agree with — or probably even like, for that matter.

They were attempting to inspire creative ways other than treating the opposition with hate. They advocated a new norm — i.e., loving thy neighbor as you would love yourself — to establish a spirit of interaction rather than dispute, of relationship rather than enemy-making.

Seemed like a good idea when nothing else seemed to be working. Alas, their teaching wasn’t heeded. “And the rest is history,” as the saying goes.

We might think of the “law” as attempting to create a new norm to enable us to move beyond the rampant plague of right-wrong thinking and work together toward solutions rather than just shouting at each other.

To find common ground. Oh yeah, I’ve heard that before, you might say, as I have.

Advance to today. What we’re doing in America isn’t working. It’s shouting and blaming. It’s either-or / I’m-right-you’re-wrong thinking. This is called the “false dilemma fallacy,” i.e., either-or reasoning, oversimplifying something complex as solvable in only two ways.

Exactly what’s happening today. Will we keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Or could we be creative and think our way out of this box we’ve put ourselves in?

Beyond right and wrong

While being right makes us feel good (endorphins must be involved!), we’re soon disappointed.

Treating our neighbors as ourselves enables us to think anew. Who are our neighbors? Citizens, immigrants, people who think like me, and people who don’t.

Border security is important to most of us. Surely, there are more creative ways of dealing with the issue than shoving a five-year-old into a van! Or killing citizens. Or spitting on ICE agents, for that matter.

When it’s us vs them, monstrous actions are made right in the mind.

Have you never justified in your mind something you later said to yourself, I knew better?

The old phrase, “evil is justified upon itself,” is what I’m talking about. It means we can trick ourselves into doing something we’d ordinarily interpret as immoral, yet we rationalize it as necessary. Even good. And with zeal. That’s the kind of mindset that created the condition little Liam found himself in and made it OK.

But how do we move beyond?

Our task is actually to be disobedient to our conditioning — to take a bite of the forbidden apple, find something new within ourselves, find another way.

Vibha shows us how not feel superior to those detaining the child. Read down to how she ends her post. “What did the man holding Liam by his backpack feel?” she asks. She tries to put herself in the captor’s frame of mind. How might he have learned whatever it was that caused him to do what he did? She allows herself compassion for someone doing something unthinkable.

But I’m not being all namby-pamby!

Not at all. Unwanted ICE presence in American cities must be stopped! This is accomplished through right execution of the law. It’s the court’s duty to impose fair and proper judgment — judgment which must be carried out. Good people must stand up. If enough do, it will be enough to make the law reality.

And there’s this: Some neighbors are too damaged for society. Not everyone is ready to be a neighbor. Our only recourse is to stop them forcibly by legal means.

Those of us who believe we have a better vision of America have a greater responsibility. You see, we’re all part of the problem. All of us contributed one way or another to the situation facing the immigrant population. I’m of the liberal, “woke,” persuasion. Haven’t people like me forced our values on others who weren’t ready to accept them? If our values and beliefs are better, then why haven’t we found better ways to bring them about than simply legislating them into existence and angering the other half of the population? Or demonizing those who disagree with us?

A third way

Values and beliefs are more about learning than legislation. Legislation has its role, but learning is the bedrock on which democracy and legislation must be grounded.

I’m not referring only to education in the schools. I’m talking about educating ourselves and our neighbors and learning new ways of reaching out. We show a better way when we live it.

We need both-and solutions, not either-or. Demonizing others doesn’t work. We can find solutions that aren’t my way or your way, but a third way: ours. A warning, though. Those solutions won’t satisfy us. They never will. They’ll be slower, less ambitious. But if we can build relationship and trust, who knows what can happen?