Our Snake Pit of Views
We don’t stop loving a family member who falls ill with a life-threatening disease. No, we show our love even more in their time of need, even though we may loathe the disease which has beset them. Such is how I feel about our country at the present time. Even as I love it, I must recognize that it is sick with a culture of ignorance, delusion, cruelty, and violence.
Rather than being a populace
guided by shared values and principles, we’ve become a writhing snake pit of
views with widely varying degrees of connection to reality. Are vaccines good
or bad? We can’t agree. Are our elections fair or not? We can’t agree. Should
gun control laws be strengthened or thrown out altogether? Should we have
separation of church and state? We can’t agree. Should we have meaningful
checks and balances amongst our three branches of government, or does the executive
branch wield overarching power? Should people in positions of power be chosen
for their subject matter expertise or for their ideological purity? Again, we
can’t agree. And on and on and on.
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| A pit of rattlesnakes in Sweetwater, Texas |
A spokesman for a right-wing
movement was shot dead the other day, and, as with so much else, we can’t agree
on what it means. Was he an American hero or a hate-filled provocateur? Was he
killed by “forces of evil” or because of the evil nature of his own words? Was his killing
the opening salvo of a violent civil war begun by forces of darkness on the Left,
or was his death merely the latest act of violence committed by terrorists of
all stripes, albeit mostly from the Right? We can’t agree on any of these because
we are divided. And we are divided because we are sick. We are sick with a
culture of ignorance, delusion, cruelty, and violence.
What can we do? How do we
cure this sickness? Perhaps the first thing we must do is agree that we are
sick. Might that be something on which we can all agree! The difficult part,
though, is deciding on a cure. “You’re the sick one,” this one says. “No,
you’re the sick one,” that one says. “You’re the one fomenting division,” says
this one. “No, you’re the one. It’s you!”
But what if we rise up from
the snake pit of writhing views (or at least wriggle free and get some fresh
air for a bit) and say to ourselves: “Yes, we’re sick. We have a big problem in
our country. WE are sick.” Sadly, we might then find ourselves in the classic predicament
in which the healthiest one in a dysfunctional family often finds himself or
herself. We might be told that we’re the problem, or that our opinion of the
snake pit is essentially just another view.
And what if our aloofness
really IS just another view? What if our perception is merely a self-serving
one in which OUR view regarding the snake pit of views is the correct one and everyone
else is “down there” writhing away! How can we be sure?
Yes, if we loosen our
attachment to our own point of view being the correct one, then the snake pit
of views might begin to look like a Gordian knot from which we are inextricable.
In fact, that might be a sign we’re making progress. And if enough of us make
progress in this way, perhaps the tangled knot will begin to loosen and the cure
for our sickness might commence.
Colin Powell once said: "Never
let your ego get so close to your position that when your position falls, your
ego goes with it." That is good advice for these troubled times. So often,
it seems, we let certain views dictate our tribal membership. We then let our
tribal membership dictate the nature of other views. We become the tribe, and
the tribe becomes us. And the warring of tribes then commences.
Ah, but some might be saying
to themselves: “Don’t gaslight me! My views are based on science and logic. You’re
equating them with those based on myth and fairy tale!” No, I’m not equating
them. But, unless we want to fight for the tribe of science and logic in the
war against myth and fairy tale, we must be ready to have conversations with each
other. It is a statistical truism that within-group variability is often
greater than between-group variability. We may well find we have more in common
with someone from “another tribe” than we at first thought. Let’s seek out opportunities
to understand each other, learn from each other, and grow with each other. The
future of our nation might depend on it.
Peace
P.S. For further perspective on this post, the interested reader might consider one of the teachings of the Buddha. With respect to the pondering of metaphysical questions, the Buddha warned of “a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views.” The socio-political questions presented earlier are not of a metaphysical ilk, at least not directly, but the spirit of non-attachment to views is much the same.
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Find a running list of all posts in this series by clicking here
Images
Photo of a pit of
vipers at the "World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup" in Sweetwater,
Texas courtesy of the Library of Congress via:
https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.27247/
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