It occurred to me today that I’ve been in a bit of a rut, lately.
This will be my forty-second consecutive daily post, if I get it completed and posted on time.
I barely got yesterday’s post done at all.
It’s been hard lately, trying to think of things to write about. I think I’ve been in a rut.
* * *
A little more than two years ago –so, the Spring of 2018– my wife called me on a Sunday afternoon to tell me that she’d gotten our mini-van stuck in an open field. So, I got in my car and headed out to her location to inspect the situation.
Upon arrival, I jumped in the driver’s seat of the van to try my best to get the van unstuck. Living in Michigan, you know how vehicles tend to get stuck in snow and mud, and you get taught how you might be able to ‘rock’ them out, if you are strategic about moving the vehicle forward and then backward and then forward and then backward to the point where your momentum, either forward or backward, can be added to the force of the traction of the tires to just be enough to get you out of being stuck.
So, I rocked the van, forward then backward then forward then backward, but it was no use. I got out, and I asked my wife to get in, and she took over while I went to the front of the van to try to see what was going on.
That was when I discovered the problem. She was in a rut.
Which is to say that the wheels had dug themselves into the mud, through their spinning force, so deeply that the van was aground. The bottom of the van was resting on the ground because the tires were so deeply entrenched in their ruts. As my wife tried to do what I’d just tried to do and I stood in front of the van and watched the tires, spinning pretty freely in their self-made valleys in the muck, I realized that this was quite a mess.
So, we called a friend with a tow strap who came and latched on to the van and pulled us out of our predicament.
That was quite the experience with ruts.
* * *
My wife and I have been married for nineteen years, and together for twenty-six. During that time, we’ve been cautious about getting into ruts with our marriage; going through the motions, doing what needs to be done, day in and day out, following the expected pattern and meeting the needs of the family as they pop up, but not really making any progress. She’s usually the one who notices before I do, because I’m pretty thick sometimes, and she will draw my attention to the fact that things have gotten stale and that we might be in a rut.
So, that’s when we will try something new, to spice things up, but those flash-in-the-pan experiences don’t usually work and we end up in the same pattern of survival, which is no way to be in a marriage. A lot of times, the best way to get out of a rut in a marriage, and to stay out of the ruts in a marriage in general, is communication. When we find that we are in a rut, it’s usually because we’ve gotten away from communicating. I become involved in a project for work, or she becomes busy with her job, or we start consuming too much media, or some crisis with the kids pops up; these things will end us up in a rut.
Luckily, we’ve never been in a rut in our marriage that has required us to ‘call a friend with a tow strap’, which is to say that we’ve never been in a rut that we couldn’t ‘rock our way out’.
* * *
We’ve all been in ruts before. We keep doing what we’ve been doing, because it’s working and nothing’s going wrong and the status quo is okay for us for now, but we can’t stay in those places. Progress requires moving forward, and I’m starting to think that the status quo is just an illusion that keeps people from seeking change. Is it ever really possible to maintain a complex set of circumstances –a system– for any length of time before entropy and change tear it apart?
This is my forty-second consecutive post on my blog. I don’t think anyone is reading any of these anyway, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I just stopped. But, at this point, it’s about the streak. I want to keep this streak going and I think that this mandatory writing has been good for me.
But, I need to get out of this rut. I need to change up my topics.
It occurred to me today that we’ve got some fixes that we need to make, and putting them off has been hurting us.
I have, at many points in my life, been witness to systems not working.
I’m a Notre Dame football fan, and have been for my whole life. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Notre Dame football was a broken system. And, I remember hearing many times during those years, from different people discussing the subject,
“We need to get back to basics.”
I work in a school district that has struggled for significant stretches of time during my employment with the school district, in different ways. During those stretches, when people have been wondering what ought to be done to make things better, I’ve heard people say,
“We need to get back to basics.”
People say this when something is going wrong and we don’t know why, and normally people only say this when they’re talking about a complex system, since you don’t have to get back to the basics when things are already pretty basic. If my pen isn’t working, I’m not ever going to say that the solution to the problem is that my pen and I need to get back to the basics. After some basic troubleshooting, I’ll likely just throw the pen away and get a new one.
I think our society is at a point that it needs to get back to the basics.
The question then becomes, “What are the basics for a society?”
I can’t pretend to know or understand, but I think that something needs to be done and we can’t keep putting it off.
We need to get back to the basics, because we have a society that’s not working right and it’s time to fix it.
* * *
When you think of what “basic” means, and how to break something that’s complex down to its basic parts, it’s a pretty simple concept. Even the most complex of all systems can be understood and diagnosed by subdivision –> taking what is complex and looking at its subcomponents, and then looking at the subcomponents of each of the subcomponents, until you are able to understand the individual parts that comprise these complex systems. Our American society, as complex as it is in its many, many parts, has a basic foundation to which we must return our attention.
In fact, all societies have the same basic foundation. It’s pretty elementary, when you think about it…
PEOPLE.
For our society, and to a greater extent, our world, to be able to fix what’s wrong, we need to get back to the basics. We need to get back to people. As complex as American society has become, it is still, at its base, about people and their interactions with each other.
This is where America has become broken. We need to get back to being concerned about people.
And not just the people that we like, not just ‘our people’, we need to get back to caring about all people.
There are more than 320 million people in the United States, and each one of them, on each and every day, is interacting with other people. If every one of those people started being about the business of making sure that everyone of those interactions was a kind, friendly, considerate, compassionate, and open-minded interaction, we would have a better society. Because, getting back to the basics for our country has to be about getting back to being about people.
And I’m not just talking about live interactions, either.
Imagine if every one of our interactions with each other, on the internet and on social media, was an attempt at being kind, friendly, considerate, compassionate, and open-minded. In fact, I would dare to say that this is where a lot of the problem is coming from these days. It takes a particularly bold person to be rude, inconsiderate, nasty, and inhumane to a person in a live situation, but any coward can be a jerk on the internet, with very little fear of reprisal.
We need to get back to the basics of being kind to people on-line.
And, unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, we have some problems being kind, friendly, considerate, compassionate, and open-minded in our politics these days. Rather than listening to each other and valuing the ideas that might come from this political group or that political group, we have become confrontational and bigoted against our fellow humans just because they have different political affiliations. Politicians, and their fans, who spew hatred and lies and nastiness at human targets should be shunned, and the politicians who would spew hatred at the politicians who are spewing hatred are just as bad.
We need to get back to the basics of being kind to people in our politics.
One of our biggest problems, both historically and currently, is a tendency to treat people differently than we would prefer to be treated, based on how different they are from us. I feel like this is probably one of the stupidest approaches to handling one’s interactions with the people around, because for every perceived difference that I might have with someone else, there is ALWAYS more that I have in common with them than what makes us different. We are not different –> we are the same. That should govern how we interact with each other. If I’m going to legitimize, in my mind, mistreating another human being because I think they’re different than me, I’M JUST WRONG.
We need to get back to the basics of being kind to people who are different than us.
* * *
Our world is hurting, and it’s broken, and the system is so complicated that it’s hard to figure out what is working well and what is not working at all. In situations when it’s hard to know what to do to fix the problems, we need to get back to the basics. In America, we need to get back to being kind, friendly, considerate, compassionate, and open-minded with each other.
It occurred to me today that we aren’t even sure what the real problem is.
I was on Facebook earlier today and I saw a coworker of mine in an argument with a former student of ours about the George Floyd tragedy.
As you no doubt are aware, the events of May 25th in Minneapolis, resulting in a man’s death while in police custody, have sparked, once again, the national debate about race relations and police brutality in the United States.
But, this argument that I noticed on Facebook had a bit of a different spin on it.
The student, an intelligent young man for as long as I’ve known him, was arguing that this case isn’t an issue about race at all, but rather, it’s an issue about the abuse of power.
Which got me to thinking.
What is power? Why do people want it so badly? Why does it tend to change people who have it? What is life like without it? How is power related to race relations?
Some of these questions might not have easy answers, but while I was thinking about how race relations and racism are related to power, it occurred to me, as I’m sure it has occurred to most people, that racism has an inherent connection with the the question of who holds power and who lacks power and who is abusing their power.
I’ve often heard rioting –like that which has been occurring in Minneapolis for the last four nights, like that which is now occurring, as I write this, in cities all over the country– is a psychological response to a feeling of powerlessness. The people who riot are without options to express their frustration and and hopelessness, and so they are attention-seeking in a way that works when their voices and opinions and concerns are left unanswered through other means.
Additionally, people who look at rioting as non-sensical or counter-productive tend to be people who have very rarely experienced powerlessness to the same extent that the underprivileged in our society experience it.
You never see rich middle-aged white guys rioting, do you?!?!
I can certainly imagine being without power for a prolonged period of time and then feeling like I wanted to lash out. What I can’t imagine is having to live like that. Over and over again.
All the time.
Powerlessness is a real problem in our society. The question is, “How do fix the feeling, that the underprivileged have, that they are without options, without power, without a voice?
People need to feel empowered. They need to feel like there is justice. They need to feel that they have some control over their lot in life and their course into the future. When people feel empowered, when they feel like they have a voice and that voice is heard, they participate in the societal processes that (we believe) will move us forward into progress.
You don’t see voter registration initiatives in the suburbs, do you? The people in the suburbs already feel empowered, so they register to vote and they take part in the other processes that continue to guarantee that their voices are heard. The citizens in the metropolitan neighbors, who are often ignored, don’t participate in the process and the self-fulfilling prophecy –whereby they are voiceless and powerless– continues.
That’s on a good day.
On a bad day, their voices are actively ignored by abusers of power.
What people want in this world, and what they seem to so often be denied, is justice. The idea that injustice, especially injustice that results from abuses of power, spark the deep feelings of powerlessness that lead to rioting.
Where is the justice when the powerless have no voice, and even when they do have a voice, it is ignored?
When power is abused, so that those in power can stay in power and so that those without power will remain powerless, justice is denied.
Do you happen to know of anyone in the United States right now, beholden with an immense amount of power, who also happens to be a racist? Anyone? Do you happen to know of anyone in the Unites States, maybe even the same person as you were just thinking of, who has a lot of power and misuses that power?
The examples of power abused seem to be so numerous as to stagger the mind. The problem with this is that those abuses of power don’t bother people with their own power in the same way that they bother the people without power.
Empowered people view abuses of power with (maybe) heightened levels of concern.
The disenfranchised in our society view abuses of power, especially abuses of power at the highest levels, as confirmation that the system is corrupt and that justice doesn’t actually exist for everyone.
The last three words of the Pledge of Allegiance are particularly stinging as I end this post, thinking about George Floyd. I doubt them in times like these.
It occurred to me today that you have to be careful what you wish for.
SECTION 1:
I just read a story on a local news website about a boy who set fire to a bucket with kittens inside of it.
Yesterday, I watched a video of a police officer with his knee on a man’s neck while the man called out for help. The man later died.
Last month, I watched a video where two men chased down a third man while he was jogging and shot him to death.
And the problem with this list is, I could keep adding to it without end. They never stop coming, these stories that I’ve heard about people who seem to be unhinged, lately. I’m sure that you’ve seen the videos and you’ve heard the stories and you’ve wondered WHAT THE HELL is the world coming to?
SECTION 2:
Video games where our children kill each other for sport.
Abortions performed in the name of convenience.
Our elderly thrown away like a used paper cup.
Middle-aged balding fat white guys shooting rare animals on foreign continents in the name of sport.
Human trafficking on a global scale, people being bought and sold.
Animals bred to be vicious killers so they can be forced to fight other animals.
And on, and on, and on.
But, here’s the deal: if you find yourself disturbed by anything in Section 1, but you would condone anything in Section 2, I’ve got some news for you…
We got what we wanted. We brought this on ourselves.
We should have been more careful with what we’ve been wishing for.
Our American society does not value life, and you might be part of the problem.
If we are to undervalue any life, then we undervalue all life. If you don’t like that stance, chances are you don’t like that stance because you have some particular type of life that you’ve decided to not value and I’ve offended you.
Too. damn. bad.
Here’s the bottom line: we should either decide that we are going to stop all of the fake outrage, when our society and its members do something to demonstrate their lack of value for life, or we need to start to walk the road that heads back to the place where we value life.
All life.
The irate new broadcaster who is angered by the school shooting, who put his elderly mother in a nursing home last month just so he wouldn’t have to deal with her any longer –> his outrage is fake.
The PETA activist with three abortions in her past –> her outrage is fake.
The pro-life demonstrator who bets on dog fights on Saturday nights –> his outrage is fake.
The father who plays video games with his kids where they team-up to shoot the enemy with sniper rifles, who then rails against human trafficking at church on Sundays –> his outrage is fake.
STOP THE HYPOCRISY!!
* * *
Of course, the outrage is easier than the change that will be necessary for us to get to the place that there doesn’t need to be any more outrage. Yes, all of that stuff in Section 1 is horrible stuff, and any human with a soul would be mortified by those stories, but that’s the easy thing to do.
Somehow, I’m thinking that this isn’t going to be one of those easy fixes.
So, how do we stop the devaluing of life? We are probably going to have to start out with some baby steps. Maybe those baby steps could lead us to bigger steps one day, but at this point, I’d take any progress.
Maybe the baby step should be to value all human life, or maybe the baby step could be to end all animal abuse, or maybe the baby step could be to stop the sale of people. We’ve got to start somewhere. Our failure to do anything, just because we are daunted by the enormity of the task, doesn’t excuse us.
No one travels a thousand miles without taking some small steps. When you are in a hole, step one is to stop digging.
* * *
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to be an extremist. I’m not opposed to travel by car because of all of the air-born insects that are savagely slaughtered by automobiles every moment of every day. I am still going to smack that mosquito on my arm at the campfire even though that mosquito is just trying to feed her kids. I still set mouse traps in the opening between my kitchen cabinets and my stove because I can’t have that going on in the same place where I prepare my dinner.
And perhaps, that pegs me as just another hypocrite.
But, we have to start drawing some lines in the sand. We have to start by making some decisions about the behaviors that we aren’t going to tolerate any more. And, let’s not put this in the hands of the politicians, shall we? They seems to be mostly incapable these days and they haven’t been the source of real change in our society at any point anyway.
This is going to have to be something that each of us decides to stand against.
It occurred to me today that I might be a coward, and I didn’t know until now.
Call me crazy, but I don’t want to go out, as my state’s restrictions start to ease. I’m not interested in traveling all over tarnation just for the fun of it. I don’t want to get close to people if I haven’t been close to them for the past ten weeks.
I think I would rather stay inside and see what happens to those people who are running around like chickens with their heads cut off after what amounted to a pittance of time under quarantine. Am I wrong? Am I the only one thinking that it really wasn’t that bad, to have to be isolated from the world for a while?
To be honest, I kind of liked it (but don’t tell anyone).
Of course, my wife and I have both been working from home, and our children have been safely at home with us, and we haven’t been adversely affected by the pandemic in the same way that many people have. I can certainly understand people wanting to get out from under the quarantine so that they can do what’s necessary for them to survive.
But, something tells me that it’s not the case that all of these people are now running around, fighting for their survival.
Does anyone reading this know what a red shirt is? If you’re a Star Trek fan, you probably do (and if you are, check out THIS POST about Spock and Kirk). The red shirts, in the original Star Trek series, from the late 60s, were the no-name crew members of the Enterprise, wearing red shirts, who were bound to be dead by the end of the episode. They would get beamed down to the planet first, or they would end up reporting to an emergency somewhere on the Enterprise first, and BAM! Dead red shirts. You didn’t know about them as characters, so you really didn’t care.
Is it wrong of me to agree with George Takei (Lieutenant Sulu), thinking of the people running out into the post-quarantine world as ‘red shirts’? I think I’ll watch the numbers and the red shirts before I start making decisions about what my family’s going to be doing out in public in the near future.
Am I a coward? I think some people around me, watching me, so reserved in my return to the world, would say I am a coward. They talk about how contagious COVID-19 is and how low the mortality rate is and I think about the numbers that I’ve been focusing on: approximately 350,000 people dead worldwide, more than a quarter of those deaths occurring in my country. I think about the word “asymptomatic” and how dangerous it is that people are carriers of the virus and they don’t even know it.
I prefer to think of my approach as caution.
But, as I often say, extremes are to be avoided and “in medio stat virtus”. So, the other extreme, I suppose is the hermit who would stay inside until the coast is clear and the vaccine becomes available. I understand that this extreme is as unfortunate as the other.
So, we find a middle ground, I guess, by doing what we need to do, out in the world, while also taking precautions to protect ourselves and each other. My wife made masks, along with some of the other ladies in our church, and each of the five of us in our family has a couple of different masks to use and we’ve been washing our hands more often and we’ve been maintaining a social distance from other people when we do go out.
But here’s where I start to get a little nervous all over again –> I think at this point, I am more afraid of other people than I am afraid of the virus. The virus is going to do what the virus is going to do, but the people who carry that virus around and aren’t doing anything to keep others from being infected makes me start to question humanity. Stack on top of that the people I know who are making mask-wearing a political issue and who think that the virus is a hoax and who think that those of us who are concerned are sheep being controlled by some overarching conspiracy.
They scare me more than the virus does.
Maybe, we should all be more scared of humanity than we are of this virus? How’s that for being extremist?
I mean, how many people have died as victims of hate crimes in America? How many people have been murdered in America? How many senseless deaths have happened in America because of the conscious choices of humans who shouldn’t have gone so far?
It occurred to me today that I am not sure about America anymore.
There are a number of reasons why this is true, but one of them is the two-party system.
My children and I were having a conversation recently about the Constitution. We were cleaning and rearranging in our library (yes, we have a library) and we came across some copies of the Constitution that I’d purchased years ago, one for each of the kids to have at some point. So, we started talking about the Constitution and talking about the foundations of the country. Eventually, we got around to discussing politics. One of my children ended up asking, “Why are there only two choices for a president?”
So I explained to them that there are more than two choices, but that America has been a two-party system for a very long time and that the other candidates –like Darrell Castle, the candidate that I voted for in 2016– never end up getting enough votes to win.
So, then we started talking about options and what does one do when you don’t like either of the options and what would it be like if you only had two options in other situations. Imagine a restaurant with only two items on the menu or a clothing store with only two different blouses for sale.
Basically, discussions like these in our house always end up leading to a bunch of questions –many without answers.
So, I told my children that the things that exist in the world that no one understands, or even appreciates, many times exist because no one has thought of a better way to do it. Ideas, especially better ideas, lead to better ways of doing things. I was hoping to inspire them to start to look at the world as a place where progress is often possible, with better ideas and better approaches.
Then, even more recently, I was talking to my father-in-law about my disgust with the two-party system and how I wish it were different and he asked me about how it would work. I said, “I don’t know how it would work.” We never really got anywhere from there.
I wish I could have answered him with some intelligent ideas.
Now, my family can’t be the only family that’s asking questions about the way things are. We can’t be the only ones that wonder why there can’t be a better way.
John Adams once wrote that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”
George Washington, in his farewell address at the end of his final term as President, described two-party politics as “a frightful despotism”.
If polarized, two-party politics was NOT what the founding fathers had in mind, how did we end up here? And, what can we do to change the situation?
It occurred to me today that what we see going on around us, in a lot of ways, is a refinement process.
I’ve noticed many of the people, who I have for many years been associating with, who have, in the current circumstances of our world, changed in the way that they are dealing with things. Normally, positive and happy people turning vengeful and negative and dark over the last few months. I can’t even tell you how many people I’ve recently been snoozing or blocking on social media because all they seem to have to say these days is poisonous drivel.
It makes me wonder whether or not the vast majority of people are, most of the time, just pretending to be something they’re not. Most of the time, circumstances in America are fairly pleasant, and these ‘friends’ of mine are able to keep up the facade, as long as their level of discomfort is relatively low. But, when the heat is on, people fall away from the civil agreement –that we are all going to behave ourselves– pretty damn quickly.
Now that I’ve come to think of it, I don’t think you ever really get to see the true quality of a person if you don’t ever see that person under stress. I’ve noticed that people tend to be responding to the difficulties that we’ve been facing in either positive or negative ways. I have counted myself surprised on more than one occasion recently to have encountered people, who I normally would have considered pretty positive people, who are turning sour in the midst of our current hardships.
* * *
They say that you can’t ever really know how pure gold is until you melt it down; the temperature at which gold becomes liquid is about 1900 degrees Fahrenheit. So, my gold wedding ring isn’t going to melt on the hottest of days under normal circumstances while I’m wearing it around town. However, if you heat it up enough, it will melt.
When metal is subjected to extreme heat and is melted, what rises to the top of the molten metal is skimmed off the top as impurities, leaving a more refined metal product. Through this process, supposedly, gold is able to be purified to the point where it is 99.5% pure gold.
But, it doesn’t sound like much fun for the gold.
* * *
So, this hasn’t been anybody’s idea of a picture-perfect year thus far. You could even go so far as to describe this year as ‘extreme’, like ‘melting gold at 1900 degrees extreme’. Maybe, that’s what’s going on with the people around me that I see who seem to be losing their normal grip on reality. Something different rises to the top when they are put to the test.
And I’m in the same boat.
For me, my reaction to the circumstances we’re in right now has been a little different, although I have most certainly been tempted to jump on the negativity train just recently.
For me, I’ve started questioning things.
Psychologically, the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ comes to mind (check out Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory for more information). As soon as we are made to notice that our beliefs and opinions are out of whack with reality, we are motivated to do whatever is necessary to bring these back into alignment. People are not meant to live in a life where their beliefs don’t match up with reality. They will often go to great extremes to bring these into a balance.
So, how do people go about relieving the pressure of cognitive dissonance? Well, the three major approaches, according to the theory, are 1) change our behaviors to bring them into alignment with reality, 2) justify our behaviors so that the mismatch between them and reality is more tolerable, or 3) ignore or deny what we are being told about reality.
The situation is quite horrible, when you come to think about it: we’ve been running around, operating under a false sense of security, that has been shattered. So, what do we do with the idea that we are living in a world that can be significantly disrupted by a global viral infection event? To become comfortable with our circumstances once again, we need to change, justify, or ignore.
Changing our behaviors to bring them into alignment with reality, as an approach to relieving our cognitive dissonance, would include things like following the advice of medical experts, doing what is recommended to stay safe out in public, etc..
Of course, we can also justify our behaviors. I’ve heard plenty of justifications from plenty of people from a variety of different groups. Each of them has their own justification for explaining the difference between what they say and do and what reality looks like.
But, I think the most dangerous way to go about dealing with this particular situation is the third approach –> denial.
If I have to block one more person on social media who has posted something about the COVID hoax, I am going to LOSE MY MIND!!!!
* * *
I guess, when it’s all said and done, everybody is just trying to do the best they can with what’s happening. I just think some people are doing a better job of adapting to the situation than others. When the heat gets turned up, and we all reach our melting point, what impurities have bubbled to the surface in your life?
It occurred to me today that everyone has a voice, and I don’t like it.
I don’t know how it used to work. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention much. But, I have noticed how it is working now, and it is not a good thing, IMO.
Before I go off on the way things are (and what I dislike), maybe we should look back for a bit.
The advent of the printing press is said to have assisted in the dissemination of information. Previous to this, books were of significant value, since each individual copy of a book represented the work of the individual who had to copy the original book, by hand, for someone else to have a copy. The only books that were ever copied were those that contained information of the utmost importance.
As a matter of fact, Johannes Gutenberg, who introduced the printing press to Europe, rarely printed books. The only book he ever reproduced repeatedly was the Bible.
Herein, there is a system of control. Things that ought not be printed certainly aren’t going to be printed because the work involved in doing so is significant, to the point where the effort to be wasted is valued more than the drivel to be printed.
And society seemed to work well like that for a while. It got to be a little easier for those who wanted to print something to have it printed for others to read, as time went by. The advent of the internet has allowed for a boon in self-publishing, where people can take upon themselves the work of writing and publishing a book, without having to have a publishing company agreeing to do that work.
But, throughout the time that has passed between Gutenberg and now, the amount of effort necessary to have your thoughts printed has gone down, and the tools for making something publicly available have fallen into the hands of the common people.
Any Tom, Dick, or Sally can publish information these days –> it’s called… THE INTERNET! And, because it isn’t as hard as it used to be, we’ve opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of the written word.
I shudder to think how many books it would take to contain the daily posts of every Facebook user? How many books to record all of the tweets from Twitter?
Additionally, these social media posts are ideal for your average American because they are A) short, especially designed for people who can read but don’t like to do so, B) posted by people who we either know, or we feel like we know, or we blindly trust because the social media platform tells us to, and C) the posts tend to correspond automatically with what we already believe to be true, so we aren’t ever moved by intelligent argument or witty repartee to accept a viewpoint other than our own.
I guess I’m an elitist. I don’t know when it happened that I became an elitist. I’m not even sure that I’m upset about being an elitist. I think that there are people who are better equipped to create and publish material for public consumption than others.
In other words, I have certain people who I believe should have a voice, and others that shouldn’t. When people from the latter group speak, I are more likely to ignore them. When people from the former group speak, their words have weight and consequence.
Do we really want EVERYONE to have a voice? The obvious answer is, “Yes, of course we do. This is America.” But, let’s take that out as far as it will go.
***The guy on Twitter who is trying to insert himself into a conversation but can’t spell any of the big words (more than three letters) in his comment –> he gets to have a voice.
***That woman on Facebook whose heart is filled with hate, who never has a nice thing to say to anyone, who you would mute if you didn’t have to remain in contact –> she gets a voice.
***The people in positions of power over us who use that power to do stupid things or hurtful things and we are all currently powerless to stop them –> they get their voices.
***The people who spread lies on purpose to see which gullible individuals will be caught up in the lies –> they get their voices.
I’m not sure how you would ever get the cat back in the bag on this one, since we are now at the point where everyone who can type can express themselves and those expressions often get the same audience. I don’t think that’s right; it shouldn’t be the case that everyone gets the same audience. People without the credentials shouldn’t be able to spread their viewpoints as widely as those who are proven to have legitimate opinions.
This goes back to the publishing process that existed prior to the internet and social media. People who had illegitimate things to say thirty years ago were going to have a hard time finding a way to widely sew those seeds since publishing companies weren’t likely to sell those printed words back then.
I guess, philosophically speaking, multiple viewpoints are often a good thing. The power that the internet and social media could have in bringing together multiple viewpoints for a discussion of different ideas could usher in societal breakthroughs, but I don’t see that happening now. What I see is that this powerful tool is more often being used for ill than for good.
The other issue here is an audience issue –> when people use the internet and social media to disseminate their opinions and ideas, it becomes the responsibility of the audience to intelligently consider the sources of those opinions and ideas, rather than just allowing themselves to be spoon-fed. But, your average lazy American probably isn’t going to do that work, and the people who publish lies on the internet know this.
It occurred to me today that, at some point, we started to become adversarial.
I live in Michigan, which means that I have plenty of friends who are Michigan fans. They ‘bleed maize and blue’ and they chant “Hail to the Victors” and they have ‘Go Blue’ bumper stickers on their vehicles.
I am a Notre Dame fan. I grew up a Notre Dame fan. My father graduated from the University of Notre Dame. I graduated from the University of Notre Dame. My wife and I are season ticket holders at Notre Dame Stadium.
Most of the time, it isn’t really a problem living in Michigan and being a Notre Dame fan. Most of the time, unless, I end up in one of ‘those situations’.
Chances are, you’ve been in one of ‘those situations’ as well. The situation where you come face-to-face with someone who is going to make an issue out of your membership in the ‘other’ group.
Here in Southwestern Michigan, the confrontation usually goes something like this:
“How can you be a Notre Dame fan? You live in Michigan.”
“Yes, I do live in Michigan, but Notre Dame is a half-hour drive from here, and the University of Michigan is a two-and-a-half hour drive from here.”
“So, you like Notre Dame because they’re closer?!?!”
“Among other reasons.”
“Oh yeah?!?! What other reasons?”
“Well, I graduated from Notre Dame.”
Etc., etc., etc..
What happens in this conversation, a conversation that I’ve had, literally, dozens of times, is interesting to notice.
The first thing to notice is the reasoning that we offer to explain our membership in a group. Sometimes, the reasoning is obvious: I’m in the male group because I have a penis, or I’m in the white group because I possess very little melanin. These are group membership reasons that make sense and have, historically, required little discourse.
But, when we belong to a group whose membership requirements are looser, then we must explain ourselves and the logic behind our group memberships. For some, the fact that I live in Michigan and root for Notre Dame doesn’t make sense, so I end up having to explain myself.
The other interesting thing to notice, when we are talking about us & them, is the ‘entrenchment’ that seems to happen. We prepare ourselves to occupy our position –to defend our hill– in the event that we end up getting into a ‘scuffle’. Why do we do this? I think it’s because we are preparing to defend our pride.
When we invest a part of our identity in one of these social constructs (our favorite team, our political affiliation, our race, our gender, our religion, etc.), defending that association becomes a part of defending who we are. When our associations are less significantly integrated with our self-concept, defending these when they are attacked or questioned becomes less important.
Additionally, people who tend to be proud people are more likely to be goaded into adversarial banter. Humble people find it easier, in general, to avoid the bait of the trap.
Who’s better? Michigan or Notre Dame? While Notre Dame has more football national championships, more Heisman Trophy winners, more consensus All-Americans, more College Football Hall of Fame members, and more NFL draft picks, Michigan has a greater winning percentage and more all-time wins. Is one clearly better than the other?
No.
Who’s better? Men or women? Democrats or Republicans? Football fans or soccer fans? The Bears or The Packers? Is one clearly better than the other?
No.
* * *
Attempts have been made to explain the adversarial nature of the human experience, so I won’t dare to wander down any of those roads. Why we tend to be this way isn’t as important, I don’t think, as figuring out how to change it so that we don’t tear each other apart. Let’s look around and see what our adversarial lens is doing to the world around us.
–> If you’ve ever paid much attention to sports, the vast majority of sporting events involve this adversarial mentality at their core, and then we become adversarial, by proxy, as fans of certain teams.
–> I noticed the other day that political campaign teams are now being called ‘victory committees’. And, of course, you know what the opposite of victory is: defeat. When our political system is built on the idea that we are going to engage in an activity (voting) which will necessarily create winners and losers, how can we be sure that we aren’t just watching some strange variation of a sporting event.
Oh, I know. It’s different because this sport is the one where the participants RUN THE COUNTRY.
–> Race relations in the United States have been a big problem for as long as the country has been a country. We can’t seem to get past the fact that we are all a little bit different, while at the time being mostly the same (especially in the ways that are most important). The idea that people treat each other so poorly based on differences that are so superficial is so often beyond my comprehension.
–> Men and women have a lot to learn from each other, but this becomes difficult to do when men entrench themselves in the ‘male’ foxhole and the women entrench themselves in the ‘female’ foxhole.
–> The socioeconomic system in America disadvantages a lot of people in our society. We could be doing more for our fellow humans to help them to overcome these disadvantages. Rather, we identify ‘the poor’ in their group and ‘us’ in a different group; then, it is much easier for us to justify treating our fellow humans differently, despite the fact that the differences amount to very little.
You get the idea. We have a lot of problems in our society that have their roots in the ‘us vs. them’ mentality. And, through these examples, it should be easier for us to see that the major issue is this: we think that the differences between ‘us’ & ‘them’ are significant. And, because we tend to stick to ourselves and they tend to stick to themselves, it might be the case that there are people who live their entire lives never learning that the differences, no matter who we are and who they are, aren’t that substantial.
And, the way to get past this belief that we have, that we hang on to, is to reach out and establish relations with members of those ‘other’ groups.
–>If you are a Republican who believes that Democrats are evil devil worshippers, I dare you to establish a relationship with a Democrat. You will discover how wrong you are.
–>If you are a white person who believes that black people are ignorant criminals, I dare you to establish a relationship with a black person. You will discover how wrong you are.
–>If you are a woman who believes that men are sex-crazed neanderthals, I dare you to establish a relationship with a man. You will discover how wrong you are.
* * *
Abraham Lincoln, in 1838, gave a speech where he said, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author…” In this speech, Lincoln was describing that only America would be able to take down America. I think the ‘us vs. them’ mentality in America is a cancer that will be a factor in the equation that brings us down. We must stop this in-fighting, Americans fighting Americans, so we can start fighting the war of repairing the American way of life.
It occurred to me today that judgement is right and judgement is also wrong.
I believe that homosexuality is wrong.
I believe that abortion is wrong.
I believe that racism is wrong.
I believe that extremism is wrong.
I believe that pride and egotism and superiority are wrong.
I also believe that sitting in judgement over other people is wrong.
–>Which isn’t the same thing as saying that judgement is wrong.
Making a decision to grab a parachute before jumping out of a plane –> we would call that good judgement.
Making a decision to not get in the car with the friend, who’s had too much to drink, behind the wheel –> we would call that good judgement.
Making a decision to not buy the Rolex from the guy on the street who’s selling them for $40 –> we would call that good judgement.
* * *
The fact of the matter is that everyone realizes that there is such a thing as good judgement.
And, while we’re on the subject, would you care to guess the most often quoted Bible verse? I’ll give you two hints: 1) it’s not John 3:16, and 2) it’s more often quoted by the World than it’s quoted by the Church.
Give up?!?!
Matthew 7:1
The reason is this: the world is tired of being judged by their fellow humans. And, if there is anyone anywhere who should know better, it’s the Church.
At least a church that had been reading their Bibles would know better.
So, while I do think that our society is traipsing down a dark spiral and while I do think that most of America’s current problems are the result of the country having walked away from God, I can’t tell you how many disagreements I have with many of my fellow Christians about the proper amount of judgement that we should be showering down on the world.
I think that amount should be zero. And here’s why:
Jesus was attractive to sinners. He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes and the socially unclean members of the Jewish society –> they flocked to Him (which disgusted the Pharisees). They did this because He loved them in a way that no one else was willing to love them.
And then, when Jesus eventually did have something to say about the way they were living their lives (which He sometimes did – John 8), they understood that He was doing it in love.
Unfortunately, most of the time, churches judge people without loving them. In fact, the church’s judgement crisis is more of a condemnation of the church that it could ever be a condemnation of the sins of the world.
And, the fact of the matter is this, I’ve messed this up enough times that I should know better. I’ve missed my opportunities to establish relationships with people so that I could lovingly help them to learn some of the lessons that I’ve learned, and instead, I’ve judged them and sent them running in the other direction.
I’m part of the problem.
And, let’s get back to that verse, Matthew 7:1, except let’s look at the whole context.
Jesus was warning His followers that they needed to avoid hypocrisy. The first few verses of Chapter 7 are a warning that people need to avoid judging others if they’d like to avoid harsh judgment by God, especially in situations where they haven’t even dealt with their own issues.
Wouldn’t you want to avoid the harsh and righteous judgement of God, who has been watching this whole time, not just your actions and your words, but the thoughts floating through your head?
Jesus seems pretty clear: if our intention is to run around passing judgement on the world, not out of a loving desire to help them toward the right, but rather, because it makes us feel morally superior, that moral superiority and smug arrogance is going to melt like butter in front of The One True God one day when you try to explain why it is that you thought you were the one who ought to be letting people know how poorly they were living.
I can tell you this. In those situations in my life where I passed judgement on people and damaged the Cause of Christ, I am going to be held responsible one day. I still don’t know what I’m going to say on that day.
My judgments are simply that, my judgments. Even if they are based on scripture (or I believe they are), they are just the judgments of one petty human on their fellow human. They are of no value at all. I should do what I’d do with any other trash and just throw them away.
It Occurred To Me Today 