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I've been appalled by the incivility,
no, make that the hate and shameful ignorance of many news and blog comments and, to a lessor extent, the social network postings I've
been reading and have not wanted to add to the noise level. But I can
remain silent no more.
The first rule of warfare is "Make your
base secure." If you have an ideological battle on your hands, then you
cannot win if you are off-base and insecure, blinded by hate. You must
be calm, centered and secure and not just in the knowledge that you are
correct. You must want to be correct but must stay open to all things
presented by your opponent. When it comes to theories and ideologies -
and most of the things I've read people believe to be truer than true
are just that, theories and ideologies - and you may quote me, Monte
Farber: "When you're sure you're right, you're surely wrong."
You
may very well be right, but to assume that you are right and everyone
who disagrees with you is wrong (not to mention a dangerous criminal) is
the kiss of death to scientific reason. As the great British
naturalist, Sir Thomas Huxley said, "I'm too much a skeptic not to
believe that anything is possible." Be secure that you are doing the
best you can in presenting your truth, honor your opponent's viewpoint,
and then and only then can something powerful and important happen.
Without the honoring of your opponent you can cannot win.
Another
profound Chinese thinker of antiquity, the great General Sun Tsu said
"If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the
result of one hundred battles." And here is where so many of the
well-meaning bloggers and commenters dishonor themselves and their
causes. There seems to be an iron curtain of stupidity that has fallen
and seems to be preventing those on both sides of it from believing the
possibility that their opponent is sincere in their beliefs and
patriotic in their motives. We certainly seem to be a house divided and
you know what Abraham Lincoln pointed out about the possibility of a
house divided standing - it cannot.
Mark Twain said "The nation
is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which
from which." So, is the deplorable state of incivility and bias which
poisons almost all the writing about government, not to mention
government, itself, something that has always existed? Perhaps, but that
does not mean it has to continue the way it did before the Internet and
modern education. Are we doomed to use the most modern technologies
simply to promulgate the same hate and prejudices and ignor-ance of the
past? Are we simply consumer fools whose gadgets control us and simply
feed us music and movies and someone else's reality and merely keep us
from having to hand wash our clothes and dishes?
Ignorance is a
great word because it points out that the knowledge and the truth is
there but it is being ignored. This is what has dampened the fire of my
desire to use my skill as a writer to add my voice to the online debate;
the debate has become debased. Whether it's blogs, social networking
sights, Twitter and it's imitators, you name it, name calling has
replaced the power of ideas. Posturing like roosters about to fight has
replaced the presentation of facts and conclusions reasonably drawn from
them.
And so many of these "useful idiots," as Stalin called
those whose idiocy served his purposes, are obsessed with predicting the
future, my area of expertise, predicting the demise of this party or
that party in the coming elections, the ascendancy of this political idea
over that idea, the fall of this or that politician. We are not a house
divided, we are not even a shack divided. We are an outhouse of a
nation that is quickly becoming full of what outhouses get full of. We
need a pump-out.
I am a child of the sixties who has now entered
his own personal sixties and I know now what I knew then: Love is the
answer. As the great Sri Chinmoy, whom I had the privilege of seeing
speak in 1966, said "When the power of love replaces the love of power,
man will have a new name: God (I'd say God/dess). I still believe in
Karma, the Golden Rule. I believe in Love your neighbor. Love your
enemy. I'm not saying you have to meet or hang out with them or even
forgive them, though that gives you incredible power to deal with them.
I'm saying give them what you want them to give you, respect for your
opinions and a fair hearing. If that was going on in the bloggosphere
right now, we'd be getting somewhere as a nation instead of spinning our
wheels in the mud that's being slung. And if you disagree with what I'm
saying, I don't have a problem with that and I respect you for doing
so. It's a free country as of this writing.
That is a great fear
of mine from reading the news compulsively each evening as I do. I fear
that people are so intimidated by the opinions of others that they
would support suppressing the opinions of those they disagree with! That
is so outrageously non-spiritual and un-American that it infuriates me,
but I would never want those expressing such hateful stupidity to not
have the ability to expose their ignorance by speaking and writing it.
That would be un-American. Yes, this is still the land of the free.
The
problem is that for too many people, free means you don't pay. As a
business person I know that someone always pays for anything that is
made, sold and bought. There's no such thing as a free lunch, the price
is built into the drinks being served. And we will pay none the less for
not being civil to each other as we create the new America that must be
created.
As our nation's greatest thinker, Thomas Jefferson
said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." It is a good thing,
no, a great thing that so many people are getting involved in the
political discourse, demonstrating their vigilance. The trouble is that,
like all beginners, they can sometimes be dogmatic, unsubtle, and often
work against their own best interests by their unbridled zeal and
unheld tongues. But I do not doubt the sincerity of anyone who claims
that their desires and decisions are based on their patriotism, even
those in the Texas School Book Debate who supposedly want to remove
Thomas Jefferson from the schoolbooks, which would be a sin against
everything American if ever there was one.
And that is the point
bloggers and writers and journalists and pundits and commentators and
commenters on all of the previous. America thrives when free and fair
discourse thrives. We are all Americans and we have to start acting like
it. I do so look forward to the day when instead of reading nasty
things about people who are most likely sincere in their desire to do
what is right, I read statements that hew to Evelyn Beatrice Hall's
heart stirring words, often attributed to Voltaire, "I may not agree
with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say
it." |
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