My last blog post received quite a few views (for me), and quite a few comments on facebook. I found myself dreading the comments. Like, “oh crap, who is going to be terrible in the comments now?”
Yet this is what I set myself up for, this is what I asked for in a way. I want my stuff to be read, I want people to be thinking about it. In our world, the best way to do that is to write stuff that gets a lot of comments. But if I’m deliberately avoiding facebook because I don’t want to see what people are saying now, even if it isn’t directed at me, that’s a problem.
I took this on for a variety of reasons. I wanted an online presence to establish who I am and what I’m about. Over the years I have felt that the real me doesn’t get communicated in short bursts, nor do I really get captured by the tools we have to capture who people are: resumes, social media profiles, business cards, etc. I wanted to have a place where people could see the different sides of me.
I also wanted to have a place where I could affect the way we talk about the world around us, even if it is just among my very small readership. I think most, if not all of us, today would agree that there is crazy stuff going on in the world around us. I wanted to have a place where I could assist, in my own small way, in us finding solutions to our seemingly insurmountable problems.
I also wanted a forum to start conversations. There is so much going on in our world, and a limited time to actually talk about it. For friends of mine to say “I read your blog, and here’s what I think about it…” gets us to the heart of the matter real fast when we have a limited amount of time to talk. It also gets me thinking in new ways about the subject. Invariably, every time I talk with someone about one of these topic I’ve written about it changes the way I see it.
Of course, if I’m going to be engaging in the discourse that exists around the problems of today, I’m going to have to deal with the vitriol that exists in our current political discourse. In fact, that is exactly what I want to be addressing with my writing.
But holy crap guys, sometimes witnessing that on my own feed is really hard. And I’m sure that one day I’ll write something that ends up getting that vitriol directed at me, and those few days will be hard as well. Honestly, I’m afraid of that day. That’s really what it is. I’m afraid of that day when it feels like the whole world has turned against me. I’m afraid that one day I’ll write something, and people will lobby my employer to get me fired over it. I’m afraid I’ll write something, and I’ll feel like people I love and care about are judging me over it. I’m afraid that I’ll lose friends. I’m afraid that my intentions, which are ultimately just to calm the dialogue around our divisive issues, will be lost.
There’s more to what I’m feeling than that, however. I think I’m also really coming to grips with exactly how much work there is to be done. How calloused we all are to each other’s points of view that we skip all of the lead up and cut straight to the arguing. Or we skip the arguing, and go straight to taking action against each other.
What we have in our culture today is a failure to diffuse negative feelings towards one another. We have a failure to help each other move past anger. A failure to address issues before they become causes, a failure to listen and take action before people become calloused. We have an inability to perceived injustice when it affects people we don’t identify with. Our initial response to people who don’t share our worldview is one of not trusting their intentions.
And now, violence feels much more common in our political discourse than it did say, 20 years ago. It certainly feels much easier for people to rationalize violent acts.
Yet I also know that this is just a period, and that this period will pass. Since our world has become interconnected, it has always suffered from periods of “unrest” – for lack of any better vocabulary. World War I and II were extreme examples. The 1960’s were another. We are in one now. How long it will last, I don’t know. When will it peak? I don’t know that either. But it will pass. What will the world look like when it’s done? I don’t know that either.
Sometimes I wonder how far I want to put myself out there. How much am I going to risk getting burned? Yet the time has come for me where I can no longer live with inaction. I cannot sit by and watch the world burn.
Yet my contribution is not… normal? I don’t yet see how going to protests or calling my representatives is actually going to further what I’m up to. I’m concerned with the dialogue, and I’m concerned with the lack of listening happening in our culture.
Behind every political position is at least one unaddressed concern. Immigration, in our country, is a great example. Someone can be against immigration because they are concerned about it’s impact on our economy overall, because they don’t want the people who are already here to lose their jobs, because they don’t want our culture to be diluted, because they don’t want immigrants who are going to take from us instead of contribute, because they don’t want criminals to come here… OR they could be biased against people that don’t look like them, or racist. Anyone who comes up with an immigration policy that demonstrates that it mitigates against those first five concerns, while meeting the goals of people who are in favor of immigration, is going to end up with the great majority of the US populace behind them.
But what doesn’t make it into the national conversation, is anyone actually attempting to alleviate the concerns of people who are anti-immigration. What we hear from the pro-immigration side is “Those people are racists!” Or, people who are against immigration are hopelessly biased or simply ignorant of the economic facts about immigration. Maybe we’ll see frustrated speculation wondering why people don’t understand what is such an obvious, to them, truth.
What I want is for people engaged in our national conversation to start listening to, and alleviating, the concerns of the different groups that make up our population. I haven’t the slightest idea how to achieve that. That, and reinforce and strengthen our democratic institutions (ie; make sure everyone gets a vote and every vote is counted equally). That also means refraining from purposely distributing false information, and giving up achieving legislative agendas through undemocratic means.
This is a big ask. I understand that. As a people we’re so used to doing things the way we have been, to suddenly actually “do democracy” in a democratic way would be a big change. But for me, this is what’s worth wading into the public discourse for. I would consider myself remiss if I did not take action on this issue. This is why I’ve been writing and podcasting recently. This is my overall goal.
Lol, and yes I have always taken on things that are too big. But I know what this is. I know, that if it is ever achieved, that it may not happen in my lifetime. There is no manual for this. It’s ultimately going to take millions of people taking up this cause in one way or another to have a noticeable effect. But what the heck else is worth doing?
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