Something needs to change.
Quite a few things, actually.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that these are the darkest days our nation has ever seen. I believe we were in rougher waters during the Civil War (1861-1865), World War I (1914-1918), and World War II (1939-1945). 1968 was no picnic, either.
However, today’s challenges are still daunting. And, we have some new factors that the world has never seen before. The Internet was supposed to bring the world together by making us all more connected. Instead, it has crashed fiery ideologues and their opposing ideologies together, while sucking an ill-prepared populace into their wake.
We were not ready.
Let’s be honest. As a people, we have not been taught how to critically explore foreign ideas. We have not been taught how to civilly communicate with someone from a radically different port in the political sea.
Instead, we have been conditioned to think of “different” as “the others.” Even as “the enemy.” The worst of motives and intentions have been ascribed to “the other side.” I’m sure you’ve heard it.
“They want to destroy America!”
“They want to destroy the planet!”
“They hate us!”
“They’re just plain evil!”
Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. Our self-righteous indignation blinds us to our own shortfalls in ideology and policy. We all live in glass houses, throwing stones blindly because of the beams in our eyes.
Something needs to change.
Let’s put down the rocks. Let’s sit together, look each other in the eye, and ask our siblings from foreign ports to describe the beams that obscure our own vision, with the intent to finally remove them. Having first sought to understand, we can then seek to be understood, and perhaps talk to our new friend about what might be a mote in their eye as well.
Clearly there is no one perfect solution that will solve all of our challenges in life. I believe that is by design. If there was no struggle, there would be no growth. But that doesn’t mean we need to struggle against each other. On the contrary, by working together, we can solve more problems faster, and elevate each other in the process.
We do that by turning “enemies” into allies.
We do that by changing our approach to problem solving.
We do that by changing our perception.
We do that by changing our hearts.
And that is something that needs to change.
