Today, I'm thinking about this article.
It reminds me that politics, especially in the United States but I'm sure elsewhere to, has degraded into a kind of elementary school bullying match. A crowd of children surrounding one or two other kids shouting things that may or may not have anything to do with the original conflict. There's a lot of media coverage on cyberbullying and bullying among children/teens but there's little to no coverage about the bullying that adults do. Unless you're an adult screaming at your child at a sporting event, you probably can sit at your computer happily typing your angry retorts and no one will be the wiser.
I have heard from more than a few people that they don't like the idea of, "agreeing to disagree," about things. There are certainly times that it isn't appropriate but there are a fair number of topics where disagreement shouldn't mean that we stop respecting each other. I think that the level of polarization we experience now -- amped up by the way we consume media and the communities that we join -- is constantly telling us how stupid those people are. It also gives us a sense that there's a tougher crowd (or perhaps a smarter crowd or a crowd that is more correct or more picked on) of us which means that we must put up our dukes and defend this idea/this person/this thinking vehemently. We use social media to pass around notes that tell anecdotes and little stories proving our point; they get attributed to admirable historic figures and authors who never thought or said them because, well, it's the internet -- who really needs citation? We offend and please hand-in-hand and we celebrate getting our backs patted by our like-minded pals and de-friend/unfollow that obscure relative who has pointed out the inaccuracy of our anecdotal evidence.
The worst part of it is that this means we don't talk about anything of substance because we can't hear what anyone else is saying over the roaring of our own outrage. Personally, I engaged with a friend on a very different side of a particular topic than myself. I was trying to point out that the problem she was so worked up about is a symptom of greater and further reaching problems and that it can't be the thing that we pounce on to fix. I didn't say it wasn't a problem or that it didn't need to be addressed, just that it wasn't the problem but rather a part of the problem. Instead of understanding or hearing I was literally called a name and given a treatise about seven topics I never brought up.
We both make points and instead of hearing what the other person is saying we hear the drone of our enemy and we have a laundry list programmed of what's wrong with that argument we're sure we're hearing even if that's not what we're hearing at all. We carry around entitlement and rage over topics we don't understand because we don't like to acknowledge that our standpoint is human and imperfect and perhaps even wrong. If we yell loud enough, that makes us right, doesn't it?
Or maybe we should try to understand each other a bit more. Maybe we could give listening a shot. Maybe we could let go of our preconceptions and perhaps understand that our basic standpoint is a little biased. Maybe we could care a little more.
