Are we just the sum of everything we’ve ever said? Does this include the angry things? The drunken confessions. Distracted outbursts. And misery fueled rants, colored by depression, pain, or anxiety.

If everything we’ve ever said is sitting in the docket, which of us would receive acquittal from our judges?

If the real you or me is displayed by anger, drink, or lapses in judgement, who can claim kindness? If the real you is the one displayed in private, when you are the weakest version of yourself, with all your guardrails lowered and your defenses down, then “Be kind” is just an admonishment to the wind. “Hate has no home here” is just an ironic yard sign meant to capture the evil spirits of our drunken or irrate moments before they hit the fence line.

If we are all just the sum of everything we’ve ever said, laid bare beneath an inscrutable eye, which of us would not find the stake at our back and the flames leaping high? Even the most pious “Be Kinders” and “Don’t Haters” will eventually find themselves upon the pyre in a world that flows to this logic.

Have we not learned from millennia of human history that vain piety and superstition create more human carnage than all the tyrants combined? In the digital age human sacrifice is even more public and often just as final.

In the 21st century, we don’t need to learn to be kind. We need to learn to be human– rather than highpriests in a new religion.