“I don’t want an angry mob to stone me for wearing argyle pants or growing good pumpkins. If you care about someone, and I argue that should be everyone – care enough to argue with them respectfully,” writes “Kindness” columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.  

HISTORY teaches us heaps – we don’t need to relearn physics or molecular biology, on account of boffins having laid the groundwork already, what with the accelerators getting linear and the apples falling on your Newtons. 

All we have to do is sit on the shoulders of giants and learn and develop. 

Every now and again some newbie will come along and disrupt the linear progress and off we go, new technology and everybody gets a Tesla.

Except everybody doesn’t get a Tesla. Because, as everyone in STEM spends the requisite years learning, what we already know in order to either build on it, commercialise it or teach it to others, in the social sciences, we don’t accept the universal truths of earlier generations.

Which is quite good if those universalities include teeny little problems such as slavery, colonialism, entrenched misogyny and a couple of other shockers. Not sure I’d like to have been a woman in any one of the ten thousand or so generations before this one.

So, the social types make changes. New perspectives, new thinking. I love it, but I’d love to hang on to the good parts we learned. The bits about sharing life’s bounty with everyone sounds cool. Whereas anybody who needs to learn twice the immutable fact that a possum goes the full Schwarzenegger on your melon if you muscle in on its roof space is dumber than a possum. We must learn from the past, not ignore it or pretend it never happened. 

In years past, some poor woman with a wart or whose pumpkins grew better than Raelene’s next door, may have been accused of witchcraft by Raelene’s husband Wayne, whose pumpkins were lousy, and who was the village mayor. 

The poor gardener was accused by an unruly mob, and if she didn’t drown she’d be burnt at a stake. Monty Python, but real. A greedy mob, disrespect for logic or reason, cruelty in the name of some deity or philosophy, no intelligent debate or defence. An unfair society. I hate it more than Kafka.

So here we are in the enlightened 2020s, free from mob mentality preying on those who are just trying to grow their pumpkins in peace, free to voice our views without being shamed, free to articulate an opinion and know that the prevailing opinion makers will debate with us thoughtfully, and respect what we have learned just as we respect them, and come away from meaningful discourse with a deepened admiration for each other as well as the underpinning of the other person’s views. Hmmm.

One summer morning in the late Cretaceous era, I was sitting in the milk bar when Mrs B, proud and gentle woman of the Gumbaynggirr nation (in those days referred to as something considerably less accurate or respectful – things do get better) at the next table addressed her nephew: ”Larry, those argyle pants look pretty sharp on you, boy. But there’s some that would look even better again!” 

Larry, an awesome kid whose smile could repower a dead power station, grinned and replied: “Thanks, aunty. Which ones would look better?”

“Pretty much all of them, love” she said, and shortly after they trotted off to Vinnies and I never saw Larry in those appalling pants again. Mind you, he looked cool in anything, so possibly not the finest example. 

It is, however, a great exemplar into how we have learned intergenerationally and without dispute from any but the most visually impaired of golfers, that there is no place in a decent society for argyle pants. 

Similarly, Mrs B had learned over 60,000 years that the best way to deliver important feedback was kindly, inclusively, without insult, and (literally, in her case) holding someone’s hand and taking them closer to the solution. 

We don’t all need a Tesla. But I hope that as we continue to build on the learnings of scientists past, we find new and exciting tools to improve our lives and are granted the leisure time to love each other better. 

And I hope the social scientists discover ways to influence each other like Mrs B did – with love. I don’t want an angry mob to stone me for wearing argyle pants or growing good pumpkins. If you care about someone, and I argue that should be everyone – care enough to argue with them respectfully. 

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader, and nerd. There is more of his “Kindness” on citynews.com.au