It can seem rather quaint to stand athwart the miasma of our politics and culture wars today imploring fundamental decency, but that’s what I’m going to attempt here. 
In my column last week, I spoke about death and how it arrives sort of like love, to quote John Green, “slowly and then all at once.”
If I died five minutes after writing this column, I would want to be remembered as a fundamentally decent human being. Not as a Republican or a Democrat. Not as a stalwart member of one team or another. But as decent.
Decency is one of those “first principle” sort of ideas. That is, be decent first, and then everything else flows from that and through that, be it politics, social issues, and basic interpersonal relationships.
Too many people seem to have reasoned that decency is for chumps and that the “ends” justify the means, whatever those ends are. Or sometimes, as Atlantic writer Adam Serwer famously said (and has since written a book about), “cruelty is the point.”
The ‘means” are brutishness, wielded in ways we normally wouldn’t treat people if they didn’t have the preconceived political team tags we associate with them.
But I digress. I’m not quite here to make much of a political statement. Rather, I believe fundamental decency can be achieved each day, in small and big ways.
For a small example, if I like a book or a movie, particularly from smaller presses and filmmakers, I try to tell that person.
There will never be any harm in disseminating good vibes into the world.
At a bigger scale, this month marks a year and a half since I altruistically donated my kidney to a complete stranger. I regret nothing and on the health front, I feel great.
I don’t expect everyone reading this to do likewise, but imagine the difference you could make.
About 100,000 people are waiting for that new lease on life. Some have been waiting five to 10 years. About 5,000 people die every year waiting, and another 5,000 are taken off the waiting list because they are no longer healthy enough to donate, according to the Living Kidney Donor Network.
Deceased donors account for two-thirds of donations, or 18,000, but that’s obviously not enough. Those on waiting lists need living donors to step up.
Donating a kidney is not only doable, but safe, and I would argue, a fundamentally decent way to disseminate more “good vibes” into the world.
But I get it. It’s your kidney! So, why not donate blood or plasma then?
Hoxworth Blood Center in Cincinnati is regularly pleading with citizens to donate blood. They try any and everything to encourage people to donate blood from promotional tie-ins with the Cincinnati Reds to Kings Island tickets.
In addition to offering support for cancer patients, blood transfusions are needed for organ recipients, trauma victims, women in childbirth, and patients with sickle cell disease, among other conditions.
To meet the demand of local hospitals, Hoxworth has to collect a minimum of 400 units of blood and 40 units of platelets every day.
You could be that person who steps up and helps.
I began regularly donating plasma at my local CSL Plasma center this year. Yes, that pays as an incentive, but I would say two things to that. First, I would still do it without the incentive. Secondly, profit isn’t in contradiction to decency.
One could argue, as I have, that a profit incentive could help with the aforementioned discrepancy in kidney donations. But I digress again.
Plasma donation is different from blood donation. When you donate plasma, your blood goes through a centrifuge that separates the plasma from the rest of your blood and then circulates the blood back into your body.
According to CSL Plasma, “Patients who use our products need them to replace missing or deficient proteins that allow them to lead healthy and more productive lives. These patients generally require regular infusions or injections throughout their lives as their conditions are genetic and chronic.”
Plasma centers, like Hoxworth Blood Center, are also always in need of more donors. In other words, even financial incentive isn’t enough to close the need gap. What closes the gap then? Fundamental decency.
Fundamental decency costs you nothing — okay, it cost me a kidney, but I don’t need it — except time and effort.
The constitution of being a fundamentally decent person primarily consists in the “nots.” Not being a brute. Not assuming the worst in someone. Not making someone’s life harder than it already is.
But, as I’ve shown, there are also proactive and practical ways to turn being a fundamentally decent person into actions, big and small.
Tell someone you appreciate them. Tell a stranger you enjoyed their work. Donate blood or plasma.
To learn more about blood donation, visit Hoxworth at hoxworth.org, and for plasma, visit CSL Plasma at cslplasma.com.
And if you want to take that big step of donating a kidney and have questions, please contact me at bmilam@www.clermontsun.com. I’ll help you out.
Start today. Right now, in fact. Because you never know when death will come “slowly and then all at once.”