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TIME TO BE PROACTIVE
In our February and April 2021 Newsletters, we talked about how we as Americans have been manipulated by social media, and how articles that make us angry and afraid get forwarded to others more frequently than less inflammatory material.
To continue to fight back against the forces of increasing polarization, we each can do more by sending articles and podcasts and tweets to other people that we find inspiring and thoughtful. We don’t just have to send articles that we agree with, but we can include authors who are thoughtful, respectful and interested in healthy debate and dialogue. As an example, I believe the writers at The Dispatch do a good job at this. I have also been encouraged by the New York Times and its coverage -- whether by podcasts or editorials -- covering a wide range of perspectives. In looking at modern polling, there's a majority of Americans who still identify as politically moderate. When you add up those who identify as moderate Republicans, moderate Democrats, and politically independent, you get to over sixty percent of the electorate, for instance. In an era where the far right and the far left are making a lot of noise, it is beholden on this voting block, who might also be referred to as the “silent majority ,” (as Richard Nixon referred to the large group of Americans not particularly engaged in politics), to get more involved and speak out. We need to get into the arena, even when we are exhausted and discouraged, and then we must speak up, get involved and engage with our neighbors.
In this regard, relating to the naysayers who think that just forwarding a few articles that I like to my friends is not going to change the world, I'm reminded of the story of the person walking down the beach where there were thousands of washed-up starfish. These starfish, stranded on land, were going to die, so this person was picking up one starfish at a time, and throwing them back into the water. A passerby asked, “What are you doing? You're wasting your time! There are thousands of starfish here that are going to die!” The person who was throwing the starfish back into the ocean picked up another starfish and threw it into the water saying, “It certainly will make a difference for that one!”
Its’s easy to be cynical and feel helpless and discouraged. But when we each vote and when we each act, it creates positive energy and movement that we all can build upon. All journeys begin with a single step forward. As psychologist Jonathan Haight discusses in his analogy of the elephant and the rider , the rider represents our rational brain, and the elephant represents our emotional brain. Or put another way, the rider is the left brain, and the elephant is our right brain. To create change, the two hemispheres of the brain need to work together.
If we are aware of our unconscious fears and biases, then we can work creatively to get to our destination. Understanding that the current environment of polarization makes us anxious and making anxiety our friend, (see and listen to our upcoming interview with Tracy Dennis Tiwary, PhD, and read her new book Future Tense- why anxiety is good for you (Even though it feels bad)) can give us the tools to tackle our reluctance to get more involved.
Social media and twenty-four-hour news are here to stay. Just like the invention of printing press created opportunities and challenges, so too did we need to adapt to television. Just consider how John Kennedy used television in the first televised debates versus Richard Nixon. In today’s world we need to learn how to use social media in positive ways. We can have a race to the bottom and join the vitriolic dialogue, or we can work to create and reinforce positive messaging and healthy civilized debate. The power rests with each of us, but we should be patient with ourselves, noting that we do have to embrace and deal with our anxiety and doubts. We can’t ignore our emotions, but rather we have to harness them as the rider, while also using our rational brains to get us to focus on taking concrete baby steps to improve our world.
Keeping with this theme of positive news and dialogue, regardless of where you come out politically on the issue of gay marriage, the House of Representatives just passed a short and simple bill that insures the legality of gay marriage regardless of future rulings by the Supreme Court. The Senate is likely to follow suit.
At a time where the country is discouraged by our institutions' inability to get anything done, we see that, where consensus among Americans runs high, bills can still get passed.
Given all the big-ticket issues facing us both domestically and abroad, both now and in the near future, we have a choice to make: We can sit back and let current leaders, extremists, and decept-icons make our decisions for us. Or we can instead choose to harness creative energies in more positive and productive ways than we have been in the last several years, realizing that we need such creative energy to build the proper consensus on what are truly the highest priority issues for us and how to best tackle them together.
CATCH UP ON RECENT PUCK EPISODES
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-45-sir-paul-collier/id1338978270?i=1000568250010
On this episode, Jim sits down with British Economist Sir Paul Collier to discuss the current state of Capitalism, and walk our listeners through historical reactions to economic crises around the world. He speaks about his working class upbringing, compares the 1840s and 1930s to today, and discusses using the lessons of the past to inform the present.