No Mercy / No Malice: Each Other

Scott Galloway (0:01)

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Scott Galloway (1:31)

I'm Scott Galloway and this is No Mercy, No Malice. The most effective policy solutions all share the same Achilles heel. Our capacity to see people who are different from us and decide they need and are worthy of help. We have the solutions, but are missing the social bonds to renew the American dream.

Each other, as read by George Hahn.

George Hahn (2:04)

I've been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles lately and I don't recognize my hometown. LA remains a platform for conspicuous consumption, but even inside the luxury bubble, it's obvious that the social contract has been breached. Dostoevsky famously observed that prisoners were a good barometer for the degree of civilization in a society. In America, it's the homeless. The problem is nationwide, but it's most visible on the West Coast. Seven of the top 10 metro areas with the greatest proportion of unsheltered homeless people are in California. Over the past decade, Angelenos have voted to raise taxes on themselves four times to house homeless people. It hasn't worked. A project begun with compassion for society's most vulnerable is failing and creating fissures where unity is needed.

Homelessness is frequently seen as the product of three overlapping crises, mental illness, drug addiction, and unaffordability. Our collective failure to address these problems opens the door for extremists to weaponize them. The leftist view is we're not spending enough money, that we've criminalized poverty. The journalist Anand Giridharadas, author of Man in the Mirror, told me, The right-wing view is that the government is incompetent or doesn't care. Both sides have a point, but both dodge the more difficult issue of a society whose members have stopped caring about one another. To Giridharadas, homelessness is the most visible symptom of a citizenry that's lost faith in itself to solve big problems. So many of our failing systems contribute to the sense that people feel abandoned, that systems don't see or hear them and are condescending towards them, that nobody is coming to save them.

Researchers at UC San Francisco, in a comprehensive study of homelessness published in 2023 that shed light on the roles that unaffordability, mental illness, and addiction play, also identified a common denominator. Ninety percent of homeless people are single adults, i.e. they don't have friends or family they can ask for help. Moreover, sixty-three percent of homeless people surveyed, cited social issues, conflict with others, not wanting to be a burden, violence or abuse, etc., as their reason for leaving their last housing situation. Among all Americans, thirty-eight percent say they're estranged from a family member. At the top of the homelessness funnel is a kid who graduates from high school, works a remote job, doesn't have any family, and isn't investing in relationships. As Girdardis explained, being needed, being part of things, having someone wonder where you are, is essential. The absence of those connections is at the root of what's going wrong for so many Americans. I think our ancestors would have intuitively understood that, but it's something modern Americans miss.

Almost immediately after they were born, a nurse placed each of my sons on their mother's chest. That moment is singular. A new sentient being, expelled into an alien world alone and distraught, and then physically reunited with his mother, silence, comfort, love. The skin-to-skin contact catalyzes a chemical reaction in mother and child, releasing oxytocin, a hormone strongly associated with love and bonding. That primal understanding of belonging is foundational for humans. I often say greatness is in the agency of others, but in fact, nearly everything we do, good, bad, and ugly, is in the agency of others, as we're social animals. Humans successfully colonized the planet, not because we were the strongest or most aggressive apes, but because we were the most cooperative. That's our superpower. In their book, Survival of the Friendliest, Duke Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Psychology, and Neuroscience, Brian Hare, and his wife, science journalist Vanessa Woods, argue that early humans selected for pro-sociality, shunning bullies, rewarding cooperators, and expanding their circle of empathy. Survival of the fittest, which is what everyone has in mind as evolution and natural selection, has done the most harm of any folk theory that has penetrated society, Hare told the Washington Post. People think of it as strong alpha males who deserve to win. That's not what Darwin suggested or what has been demonstrated. The most successful strategy in life is friendliness and cooperation, and we see it again and again.