good morning kick it's tuesday today i
want to talk about the phrase h of g
which is maybe my very favorite saying
of the many many many sayings of dr paul
farmer the co-founder of partners in
health who died last month at the age of
62. h of g is short for a hermeneutics
of generosity now if you're anything
like me you run screaming from the mere
existence of the word hermeneutics like
there are many reasons i chose not to go
to divinity school after working as a
hospital chaplain but the thought of
having to use the word hermeneutics a
lot was certainly on the list but
basically hermeneutics just means
interpretation a hermeneutics is like
the interpretive lens you bring to
looking at a text especially a sacred
text and because i was a double major in
english and religious studies by the
time i graduated from college i had been
hermeneuted half to death and the word
had sort of lost all meaning to me
until that is i heard dr farmer talk
about a hermeneutics of generosity
here's how paul wants to find an h of g
i know you're a good guy therefore i
will interpret the things you say and do
in a favorable light that's the h of g i
know you're a good person so i will
interpret what you say and do in a
favorable light even if i don't know you
i will assume that you're a good person
unless i have very strong evidence to
the contrary because almost everyone is
trying their best and almost everyone
sees their own actions in a generous
light and so i'm gonna try to do that
too now the h of g is like most things
much easier to say than to do what are
things that are easier to do than they
are to say
rumination it's not that hard to say
it's just so easy to do anyway the age
of g is hard to do in practice right
like imagine you're in a grocery store
and you're on a tight schedule and you
only have a couple items and the person
in front of you has like 14 crumpled
coupons that they are smoothing out one
by one so that they can be scanned and
the whole process is taking forever it's
relatively simple to deploy the hfg in
this situation right you just tell
yourself that maybe this person's
children crumpled up the coupons and
that the coupons are really important to
them being able to afford groceries but
what if this person is digging those
coupons out of a designer purse that you
happen to know cost four thousand
dollars what if they're yelling at the
supermarket clerk for failing to scan
the coupons fast enough or yelling at
you for reasons that aren't entirely
clear to you now it's getting much
harder to deploy the hfg harder but not
dr farmer would argue impossible when
people yell it is because they are
afraid or angry and i have found that
when i can deploy an h of g which
certainly isn't all the time i am on
average more empathetic more curious
more engaged and less judgmental angry
and miserable now this is not in any way
to minimize the role that anger and
disgust play in bringing about change i
think we should be angry about injustice
and i think the world's shared apathy to
the most poor and most marginalized
should bother us but i also think if we
look at the world through a lens of
generosity and a presumption of general
good faith the shared big problems of
injustice and inequity are no longer
merely about people being terrible or
systems being inherently crappy instead
these problems become about failures
failures of empathy failures of resource
allocation and failures of will we can
address those failures they aren't
inevitable or necessary we can see from
history how they've already changed and
so now progress feels possible not only
that but the world's profound and
horrific injustice becomes even more
profound and horrific because we know
now that together we can choose a better
world and so i think an h of g is hard
work precisely because it asks us to
believe that together we can address our
shared problems the failures of empathy
and resource allocation that lead to
marginalization and impoverishment dr
farmer left us many legacies but that is
one i'm trying to hold on to in these
difficult days hank i'll see you on
friday