But this
blog entry is not about Trump. It is about the coercive, relativistic,
and utterly destructive path American culture and politics is barreling
down. I mean, we all know it's bad, and perhaps feels hopeless to many.
To me, it's like that final battle in Mormon.
Both sides are blood thirsty and indignant, neither looking to improve
themselves or remove the motes from their eyes. Neither side able to see
the divinity/humanity of their enemies because of those blinding and often
painful motes. They are fueled by hatred, indignation, and/or a desire to
punish and gain power over their ideological enemies. More than the desire to live, thrive, or
succeed, they desire to be right. To be
the righteous party, the victor, or the supreme authority on what is labeled ‘good’
or ‘of value.’ The reason I felt the need to write and process some of my thoughts/feelings on this is because I’m all too familiar with this uninspiring battle for ideological power and authority. What is heartbreaking is it seems like these kinds of battles are always the same. Like...always....without exception. It doesn’t matter if it’s perpetuated in the name of religion, equality, good parenting, or any other cause, belief, or movement. All of human history reiterates it, and we just keep repeating it. The moment we want to coerce others into certain beliefs or behaviors, we feed a positive feedback loop of degradation that becomes very difficult to stop. Coercion begets anger, anger begets hate, hate begets dehumanization, dehumanization begets violence, violence begets coercion, coercion begets anger, anger begets hate....etc. etc. etc.
Like most
who have or do look for moral justice, satisfaction, or equality, all of me
aches for a superpower that could or would stop this cycle of degradation in its
tracks. I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with God that
started something like this:
"Yeah,
I know agency is a thing...but You could take care of this reeeeeeal fast if
You just ___________ (Fill in blank with some kind of way God could take out a
divisive figure or coerce people into treating one another better)."
But no
matter how hard I try to bargain or describe to Him just how easy it would be,
I get the same call to repentance: "You know that’s not how I work. Calm
down, eyes up, and figure out how to love them. And I mean all of them."
Regardless
of how many times I've gotten this response, every time it settles in my mind
something visceral inside me screams and reels like a wounded velociraptor and
I think something like: "All of them?? Why all of them?? What good
would it do to love Trump or Putin or the countless other coercive, abusive,
demeaning, sexist, racist, terrible monsters out there?"
God:
"....."
Me:
"Monsters are not human are they - which mean's I'm dehumanizing them. $%#&. Ok,
fine. I'll work on it."
And so I
have. But if I'm honest, I'm still utterly terrible at it. I'm constantly
adding terms to the affection, dignity, and respect I give others. Often,
it happens unconsciously, more often, it happens as a means of protecting
myself from some kind of pain, fear, or discomfort. But the hardest is when I
sense or perceive harm is coming to others. My momma bear comes out in full
swing, ready to maul and maim those I deem accountable and swiftly bring about
the “justice” they have coming to them. I want to make them hurt in the way
they have hurt others. I want to make them understand the consequences of
their actions and suffer so they never do it again. In other words, like any good social justice warrior, I bully the bullies with my indignance and their insecurities until they feel ashamed or embarrassed for their actions, or perhaps even their existence. But that’s messed up. Really messed up. Bullying does nothing but contribute to that cycle of coercion, anger, hate, dehumanization, and violence.
Once I sober
up from my imbibement of arrogant moral superiority, I can usually see that. But
what about before that? What can I do to
not fall into that trap in the first place?
What can I do to ensure I don’t perpetuate the very cycle I’m trying to
rail against? What conscious action can I take to ensure my subconscious
reactions to injustice or pain are not derailing me from my values?
I’m still
working on answers to most of those questions.
But amidst my frequent opportunities for failure and learning, I have
found a few tools that help me grapple with my own desire to ‘fix’ the world
and all of its injustices. While I’m sure there are countless ways to grapple
with injustice and conflict in a way that avoids coercive bullying or righteous
indignation, the following have worked best for me.
1. Get curious
2. Get uncomfortable
3. Embrace complexity
1. Get
Curious
This may
not be the best place to start, but it’s the easiest place to start for me. My mental
default is to explore so it doesn’t take a lot of energy or discipline for me
to practice approaching conflicts or dissonance with that same sense of
curiosity. I think this does two things for me.
One, it tempers my reactivity and two, it helps me be more cognitively
aware of my own ignorance. For me, the humility
that comes from realizing how much I have to learn and how much I just don’t
know is huge. Whether it’s a constraint of language, experience, or intelligence
(emotional or otherwise), just being aware of my limits keeps me open to
learning something new. It’s also what leads me to utilize the next tool.
2. Get
Uncomfortable
We are social
creatures who crave ideological security. We like to know what to expect from
our world and we love to predict or preach about how that world would (or
should) work in any given situation. What’s interesting to me is that I have
found this to be true regardless of faith, culture, political leanings, gender,
race, or nationality. We all like to believe in a world we can predict and
navigate, and we all want (or at least like) people to agree with or affirm our
predictions.
And while
I personally do believe there are eternal principles of truth that, once
understood, can make our worlds much more predictable, I also believe my
understanding of those principles are rudimentary at best. When exploring someone
else’s beliefs about how the world works and what principles they believe to be
true, it can be deeply uncomfortable to make space for a principle that doesn’t
comfortably fit with my own experience or understanding. But I think this is
why it’s so important for me to do just that.
Wrestling
with and spending time with the incongruity of those ideals is exactly what I need to refine my perceptions
of their properties and relationship to one another. The more I do this, the
richer my understanding becomes. But on
the flipside, the application of simple principles also seems to become less
binary and prescribed the more I explore those relationships. And as anyone
from a big family can tell you, swimming in a sea of multifaceted relationships
can be rewarding, but also overwhelming. When the storms of ideological threat
and conflict arise, it’s hard not to cling to quick fixes. The more complicated
the problem, the more often I catch myself oversimplifying and dismissing principles
and relationships that complicate my “brilliant” solutions and plans. But
solutions that don’t address the full complexity of an issue are not solutions,
they are temporary band-aids at best, and ideological placations at worst. Thus
I know I must…
3. Embrace
Complexity
Sometimes
this feels like trying to hug an elephant. Sometimes it feels like trying to
hug a porcupine. Some complex systems are so big, so involved, and so obscured it’s
impossible to fully wrap my head around (ie.
modern healthcare) and some are so far reaching, destructive, repulsive, and
ubiquitous it’s outright painful to even consider (ie. sex trafficking). More frequently though, and maybe more
importantly, complex systems are made up of complex individuals. I feel pretty
certain that this need to explore, make space for, and embrace that complexity
is even more necessary on an individual level than an organizational one.
I could
be completely wrong, but something in me is sure that the most effective way to
understand big, complex issues is by embracing the complexity of individuals
and our relationships with them. But the more committed I am to that, the
harder it always seems to get. Humans can be power-hungry,
selfish, abusive, emotionally vampiric, etc. etc. The closer you are to someone, the more clearly you can
see those tendencies. But similarly, the closer you are, the more clearly you can see their beauty and divinity. That's what makes us so complex and that's what makes organizations so complex. We have both infinite potential and infinite flaws. So, regardless of why it’s difficult to embrace at times, or the fact that I will
continue to come up short, I can promise you I will keep trying to listen, trying to understand, trying to grow, and trying to love a little bit better. It may be hard to remember at times, but to me, that's a battle (and maybe the only battle) worth fighting.
