Healing the Divide

I’m not alone in thinking about the horrific divide in our nation. The chasm seems so great that we cannot imagine reaching across – or that if we try we would tumble into the abyss.

I have several thoughts I’d like to share that may be a way back to one another. Let’s start with the premise that we need one another. Stretch with me. Even if you have to say ‘I need the Trump supporter who manufactures washing machines’ or ‘I need the liberal who produces my favorite TV show.’ Let’s start here.

Now let’s take what we know from science: different people are wired differently. We can see that in things as simple as cilantro tasting like soap to some and like heavenly elixir to others. Science has also shown us that there are differing ways brains are wired and differing motivations. Conservatives tend to be motivated more by fear and liberals more by compassion. Here’s a great link to an NPR segment from Hidden Brain entitled Red Brain/Blue Brain:

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/03/654127241/nature-nurture-and-your-politics

Then I think about the great American historian, Joseph Ellis, who wrote the ground-breaking work, Founding Brothers. His research is stellar and his premise (and I’m boiling it down with impunity) is that the reason our political revolution was a success is  because, though the political arguments then were nearly identical to the political arguments today, it is the  relationships between our fore brothers  that made for a third way. They respected one another and though they disagreed profoundly were able to create a third way making use of the strengths of each.

As a liberal or progressive raised as a military brat I have a bird’s eye view to both sides. What I have discovered is that neither side is absolutely right nor is either side absolutely wrong. I was a pacifist at an early age. No war. No way. No how.
Then I was exposed to the Nazi history of the holocaust and to KKK lynchings in the South.
Like Bonhoeffer, my absolutes were challenged. Not by another absolute but by the idea that maybe absolutes are chilling and unwieldy in themselves.

So where does that leave us? I have lots of thoughts about this. First, we have to stop fear-mongering and call out those who do. Our president is the worst in this category. He whips conservative fears into a frenzy then offers solutions that cannot be met. Then we have to listen to the concerns born of fear and find reasonable ways of responding to real concerns. Next, let those of us motivated by compassion acknowledge that some fears are reasonable. Then let the same compassion work to find ways forward that are respectful of the fears: reasonable vetting, for one.

The elephant in the room that must be addressed is truth. Or more important: lying. We must accept factual information backed by science, research, observation, and data. Lying and the rise of ‘alternative facts’ is the slimy slope that both demeans and abuses our conservative neighbors. I’m not sure how to address this but I am sure I will write about it again. We must be able as a nation, a world, and family members to distinguish between fact and opinion.

Finally, and most important, we have to start seeing and treating one another as important team-mates. When we propose policies let us be informed by one another and stop seeking absolutes. The foundation of this nation is based on finding a third way. Period. So, my friends, this is an invitation to complex thinking, to nuanced thinking, and to the possibility that we are all wrong sometimes.