Battling out of Blindness

Ever since Trump's election, I've been trying to wrap my head around why politicians and media (both liberal and conservative) are incessantly trying to make all arguments binary (you're either for this, or you're for that). Trump himself, of course, supports and perpetuates this binary choice because otherwise, he would be subject to the capricious support of constituents with varying priorities and desires. But as long as they are picking a team, not debating the merits of a policy, there's no need to listen, let alone respond, to his various constituents. He knows nobody questions the General when we are at war, and thus, a war he tweets on about with the overzealous help of his media frenemies. 

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.