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A New Way of Thinking in the New Year
Recently I have been encouraged by the additional focus on the need to regulate social media. While I believe that part of the polarization we are experiencing today is exaggerated by social media algorithms, there are also important societal factors that we at the Puck will explore as our world continues to change around us.
In that regard, I recently saw Aaron Sorkin’s theatrical adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The play reminded me of the unconscious bias throughout all aspects of our society, that if made conscious would help us steer the puck in a more constructive direction.
If you’re unfamiliar with the general plot, I suggest you first head or pick up a copy from your local library. While yes, this book is read in middle and high schools, Harper Lee’s towering novel is one of the great stories about America, emblematic of what can so often be both good and evil about our nation. As many of you are no doubt aware, the climax of the piece centers around the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. The question of what Tom was doing at the Ewell house in the first place, a home he returned to many times to help Mayella with housework and chores, is a central one. Sorkin, with his talent for adaptation, zeroes in on the fact that Robinson stops by the house to help Mayella because he “felt sorry for her.”
Atticus Finch warns Tom Robinson that this explanation will be unacceptable to the all-white jury, as a black man feeling pity for a white woman would be emotionally just too much for them to accept.
In addition to the obvious racism in this story, there stands an additional layer: the paradigm of superiority. Superiority breeds hate, for it is predicated upon the belief that no, we are not all equal. Whether you call it part of our DNA, imbedded, or a learned attitude, we all compare ourselves to others, and desire to find ways in which we are “better” than someone else. Not all of these ways manifest in overt racism; others may be gossip, and others still can be benign, but it is within our control to try and overcome these internal biases as we strive to change the world we live in. Unfortunately, when not overcome, this bias often leads to very destructive cultural outcomes, in terms of how an “in group” victimizes an “out group”, justifying such behavior by coming to see those in the “out group” as being “less than.” In the 21^st Century, more enlightened entities have been working on how to put a stop to such things, mostly with a focus to changing behavior. However, it’s equa lly important for each of us to better understand the psychological reasons underpinning our often unconscious superior attitudes that lead to such bad behavior. The fact is that most of us have egos that need protecting.
While, in the 20^th Century, society finally accepted the validity of the therapeutic process in peoples’ lives, not much more has been done in this century to help us acknowledge that we all are broken in certain ways, and therefore all could use the therapeutic process to reveal our inner negativity and repair ourselves. While this has been productive individually, societally we still need to ramp up. Finally, in this century, Western religious entities have really dropped the ball with respect to working on making a more vibrant spiritual contribution to the repairing of the inner lives of people, instead becoming over-focused on their own institutions, or only focused on physical needs, or just “saving souls”, rather than being willing to work together, and working with societal institutions like medicine and education to help repair and grow damaged souls. Our religious best need to pick up this fumbled ball and start building a team for society’s benefit and for the wounded amongst us, which is all of us!
Today, in politics and in the areas of complex societal issues, such as the ones we are presently experiencing, we need to resist the tendency to assume that we are better than others. In sports, we often get excited when our team is winning and depressed when the opposing team is beating our team. But we’ve been acting as if any “other” group is like the “hated” opposing sports team. This particularly has become the case in politics. There is a balance between devotion to your beliefs and to your party’s success, while at the same time dealing with the fact that there are legitimate areas of disagreement among people of good faith.
It would help if we all could take a step back from our current over-adversarial stance and resist the tendency to see issues in a black-and-white manner thus shutting down honest, vigorous debate. Perhaps we all could recognize that there’s an underlying fear which builds up in each of us that we often find ourselves reacting to subconsciously, because we do feel a sense of danger when we sense we could “lose” or otherwise be annihilated. This can be especially true in a world of social and news media, recognizing that our media system is financially incentivized to make us angry. As I've written about in the past, we must create the ability to honestly witness ourselves. To see whether we are in fact legitimately angry, or being triggered to see the other as evil, when perhaps some of our agitation and anger stems from our inherent need to feel superior and safe.
Perhaps, if the elements in our society can step up, as I’ve articulated above, we can begin to remedy this situation…
CATCH UP ON RECENT PUCK EPISODES
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-40-christopher-leonard-author-journalist/id1338978270?i=1000551149158
This time last year, Jim sat down with author and journalist Christopher Leonard to discuss the economy and his recent book, The Lords of Easy Money How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy. Chris has spent his career writing about powerful institutions on behalf of the public and his new work examines how FED policy over the last fifteen years has shaped our current financial landscape. This is an episode worthy of a second listen.