Things have been worse. With so many alarming topics to talk about today, there are people who have chosen to believe we have somehow ended up in the worst of all possible worlds. We haven't, but if we're not careful, we might. Isn't that the way it always is? This is not a perfect world. If it were, everything would be different. But it isn't, and so it is what it is, and as always, we have a choice, to let our fears get the best of us, or to somehow master them, because our first thoughts are always exaggerated ones, ones if we rethought would reveal themselves for what they really are. I think the problem is, with so many options to talk about our thoughts, we have somehow diminished the need to think about our thoughts, and all we do is react. Reaction is good. It's how we know what we feel. But this is not a world where feeling alone defines reality. Humans are uniquely capable of setting aside feelings (it can be difficult, I know), and giving our reactions a proper consideration. Somehow, I think we've forgotten that. We've forgotten that we have the ability to analyze things. By that, I don't mean to compartmentalize, fit into a predetermined set of conclusions. We've unfortunately allowed ourselves to fall into the mindset where phrases like "survival of the fittest" and "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it," meaningful and yet unproductive concepts that when put to the test don't mean what they seem to, define how we think. "Survival of the fittest" is intended to explain why nature works the way it does. And yet humans don't fit that model, and any attempt to explain otherwise ignores what we would otherwise understand, if we gave it half the thought it deserves: The phrase, in human context, would read, "Survival of advantage."
Everyone has advantages, which is to say skills. The problem is that some skills are easier to identify, and easier for others to understand, easier to exploit in whatever model the person in question is attempting to enter. Skills alone don't determine worth. Skills are rarely even the qualification we use to make decisions. More often than not, we make decisions based on social conclusions. "Survival of social skills," maybe.
History is a funny thing. It's easy to see parallels in history, and it takes a clever person to see them, admittedly, but no two situations are ever exactly alike, and it takes an even more clever person to see that. "Those who don't see the distinctions history makes are doomed to continue making mistakes," perhaps. But that seems too clumsy, so it's probably easier to default to the original statement, no matter how flawed. How about, "Those who make mistakes make history." Well, that's just obvious. Because history is really a history of mistakes, no matter how much we like to claim otherwise. Still, it's not very inspiring, is it? "Those who strive for success make history." Good, but not enough of a moral. "Those who understand they're fallible will make the best history." Too pat. "Those who don't learn history are doomed for limited perspectives." I kinda like that one.
These are tiny examples. This is what considering things beyond the most basic level looks like. Most of the time, you'll hear people argue for trying to see it from a variety of perspectives, but in doing so you run the risk of losing perspective. At a certain point, judgment comes into the equation. You have to decide where you stand. What people so often forget is that you don't have to choose between extremes. You really can fall somewhere in the middle. Somehow, this became a thought crime. In school, the students who are merely average don't count for anything, and somehow this mindset is taken to generalize that you must be at an extreme to matter. This is absurd.
Yet this is a polarized world, at the moment. That's exactly how people are thinking. Each side is so convinced they're right, they're not even willing to give the other side any credit. That's lazy and clumsy thinking. It's about picking sides, and nothing else. Hey, picking sides like that leads to worse things, not better. Is that what we really want? I hope not. I like to believe people really aren't that bad. But they can be misled.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're feeling as if we've somehow entered a doomsday scenario, remember that you have a choice. You can choose to look beyond the rhetoric, on whatever alarming topic you've chosen to fixate, and look for a better way. Because there's always a better one, and things really have been worse. We have a chance to make things better. But it starts by acknowledging our complicity in making things look worse, at least at the moment. In this uniquely hypersocial environment, in this unique moment in history, we can do better. We just have to try.
11 comments:
We need to turn our worries into actions - positive ones. We've got to begin by taking care of our own modest share in this crazy planet. The world will always be troubled. But that's no excuse for sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves.
I think the way forward is to have a generation of parents uniformly capable of raising good citizens, which hasn't really been a priority in decades. Self-centered people tend to pass off those attitudes to their kids. We've made that the bedrock of our social status since the '60s, and it shows.
Change like that can only begin with ourselves.
Which, with all due respect, is all too easy a thing to say. That's why we're social creatures, because we have the ability to influence each other. A lot of people try the bullying approach, which is always terrible. We have to hold each other to higher standards.
Okay, but to say we should mold an entire generation of parents is a lot easier said than done, too. I'm not denying that our culture needs fixing. I simply believe that cultural change begins with ourselves and the people immediately around us. Often, effective leaders lead by example.
Except we have a whole two-decade span (the 50s-60s) in which radical change did happen rapidly that proves otherwise. The moment we stop believing we can effect change is the moment we quit believing it's possible, regardless of what we tell ourselves. It's not about leaders. The abolitionist movement of the early 19th century proved it wasn't about rhetoric. It took a desperate measure, in the middle of a civil war, for emancipation to happen, and even then, social inequality persisted to the point that a hundred years later, rhetoric was once again the main currency in the call for change, and fifty years later we see exactly how far that's gone. We've always been motivated, as a country, by what starts in our communities. That's how the Revolution happened, and that's how the counterculture that still dominates us happened. It can spin wildly out of control, or it can lead to the positive change all thinking persons recognize as the call of history. The choice is ours.
The problem with leaders is that they most often reflect the mood in which they rise. This election season has beyond a shadow of a doubt proven that. The more thinking individuals believe their thoughts don't matter, the more society suffers. The more we let individuals who don't think but rather merely reflect the fears around them dominate the public discourse, the less control we have over our future.
What I'm saying is, it's not enough to hope for something better, or hope your example is good enough. Change happens because people vocally recognize that something isn't working, and they look toward the examples of those who are striving to make things better. Living an insular life does wonders for peace of mind, but it also creates a world where that life is far more necessary than it needs to be. At our very best, we humans can do wonders. At our worst, we're merely human.
I admire your ambition and your passion. I really do. It's not that I don't believe in change. I've seen it happen. I just don't think that saying we fix the world by molding a generation of parents is realistic or, to be honest, even desirable.
To me, building consensus is overrated. There is more than one way to make the world work. Believing that only one side or one voice has all the answers is problematic. Even believing that we all have to agree in order to progress is problematic. We have a lot to learn from each other. Indeed, those who would mold have a lot to learn from those they would seek to shape.
One of the basic problems is that we put almost too much emphasis on the person at the top (the presidential election season) and not enough on the rest of the politicians (representatives, senators) who make up the backbone of the process of leadership. This is repeated throughout every form of leadership. Too often we don't think through what we allow to develop around us, trusting people who are qualified to handle responsibility based on their ability to mollify us rather than identify things that need to be addressed.
That's what I'm talking about. It's simply not good enough to feel good. You can feel very good under very terrible circumstances, given the right conditions. For example, every soldier who fought in the Confederacy, regardless of their personal views on slavery. We fixate on the conditions of blindly following leadership (Stanley Milgram's famous experiments, for example), but that's simply not good enough. It's truly amazing what we're capable of convincing ourselves to believe as rational thinking.
Every time anyone's argued that the Civil War was about states' rights, or anything other than the issue of slavery (I've experienced this in the classroom, the very notion that the roots of the war were anything but clear-cut having to be defended, and seemingly not as a mere academic exercise), you have the concept explained all over again. Every time you believe the fiction that all you need to know about WWII was that the Allied Powers defeated Nazism and the evils of Hitler (support for this very thing was rampant in the country, and contributed to the overall continued belief in the Monroe Doctrine that allowed pacifists to believe America didn't need to enter the war), you're supporting this dangerously simplistic view of the world.
We live in complicated times, but they've always been complicated. It's not good enough to let the complications sort of handle themselves. That way always leads to something worse, until intervention finally happens. The level of intervention is always determined by how bad we let things get. That's what we're talking about here.
I realize I'm talking like a revolutionary, like I'm trying to start a movement. I'm not at all qualified for something like that. I'm merely advocating the ability to rise above the kind of thinking that so easily contributes to the more unnecessary levels of complication we allow to spring up around us, on a daily, ongoing basis.
Okay, now I'm going to push back in the opposite direction...
Why not you? I guess my broader point in all of this is that most "movements" start smaller than most people realize. Saving the world starts with Step One. Someone needs to sort out what Step One is and take it. So, why not you?
Fine. I suppose I can say I'll work on that.
Huzzah!
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