Word Wars
An excerpt from Chapter 8, "Word Wars":
We need to learn as a people the real and great skill of governing ourselves with healthy debate and discussion. What we do instead is engage in yelling matches—or the Facebook meme, lawn sign or bumper sticker equivalent. These things solidify stances, both ours and our opponent's, without doing much to strengthen our argument—that would require thorough discussion and debate. It seems very important to many people these days to feel that their mind is a fortress, strong and impenetrable against any threat, including challenging or opposing thoughts.
I have come to view an attitude of moral self-righteousness as a real personal and societal problem. I do not believe that we need to be pure of the problems that we are criticizing in order to have a valid point to make. This is a hang-up we have all inherited from the Puritans. It seems to me that the people who are most in a position to discuss mistakes are those who have made those mistakes themselves. The people who have gotten their hands the most dirty in a field probably have a lot to say about it that is worth hearing, whether we agree with them or not. Even—especially—if the person or group we are facing is the closest representation of pure hate and evil imaginable, we have a responsibility to be thoughtful in our response. Having the courage of our convictions—even taking a strong stand which rocks the boat greatly—does not require us to disassociate from a deeply flawed humanity.
Generally I have found for myself that the more that I know what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes—as a teacher or student, parent or child, customer or worker, confused person or person in distress—the more information I have access to, and the more insight and wisdom I can bring to any interaction with that person. We do not have to stand at arm’s length. We can relate and empathize with those we are hoping to influence. I do not believe that anyone is really morally pure, anyway, so someone who takes that stance is probably engaging more in denial than in social change. (As Lao Tzu put it so well, “He who possesses virtue in abundance may be compared to an infant.”)
Under our model of dominance and subjugation, we swallow the dominant view of any group whole, and silence the subjugated one. I would go as far as to say, in fact, that silencing is the defining characteristic of subjugation. A characteristic of authoritarianism as well as chauvinism of all kinds is that members of the dominant group are the only ones allowed to assert themselves by making waves.. We operate as though there were only two choices in any conflict: to fight ugly and attack the other side, or to acquiesce completely and stop speaking our mind. What if we might have something important to say to anyone, including members of our own group who we consider to be on our side? No group is truly homogeneous in terms of ideas and perspectives. We have become too accustomed to oppositional politics, which translates into oppositional conversations and relationships. While it is often very important to stand with one side against another, it becomes a problem when we do this by rote, forgetting to think and speak as members of a larger group which is bound to contain a diversity of opinions.
Public discourse has become adversarial and oversimplified to the extent that there really is no discourse. We can see this illustrated in the fact that many people, especially around the time of an election, seem to believe that the general sleaziness of one candidate translates automatically into the sainthood or heroism of the other. We limit opinions about complex issues and politicians alike to a practically meaningless pro or con position, such as either defending or attacking the President as a figurehead regardless of his actions. In some circles there is the similar choice of being “for” or “against” having a government, or a school system, at all. We have forgotten not to throw the baby out with the bath water, and that the devil is in the details. The real question is what laws and policies each of us supports, and why. Oftentimes, in liberal circles included, we do not even mention the issues at all. We limit our speech to personal attacks on politicians and likewise remain quiet on important issues if we generally support the offending politician.
I believe that there is a deep connection between the government crackdown on school culture and our ever-diminishing mindset as a people. The habit of thinking in terms of one correct answer is both replicated in the classroom from the larger culture and propagated in the larger culture by the classroom. What we need—starting in, or at the very least including, the classroom—is more diverse types of conversations, more curiosity about where other people are coming from. We all need to be exposed to ideas which do not fit in neatly to our own, which pose some challenge to what we have already decided. Truth and meaning are not things that can be spoon fed to us or forced upon us. Any message worth repeating—any idea that is alive—will change and grow, acquiring new significance and meaning with each person who truly receives it and then passes it on.
We need to learn as a people the real and great skill of governing ourselves with healthy debate and discussion. What we do instead is engage in yelling matches—or the Facebook meme, lawn sign or bumper sticker equivalent. These things solidify stances, both ours and our opponent's, without doing much to strengthen our argument—that would require thorough discussion and debate. It seems very important to many people these days to feel that their mind is a fortress, strong and impenetrable against any threat, including challenging or opposing thoughts.
I have come to view an attitude of moral self-righteousness as a real personal and societal problem. I do not believe that we need to be pure of the problems that we are criticizing in order to have a valid point to make. This is a hang-up we have all inherited from the Puritans. It seems to me that the people who are most in a position to discuss mistakes are those who have made those mistakes themselves. The people who have gotten their hands the most dirty in a field probably have a lot to say about it that is worth hearing, whether we agree with them or not. Even—especially—if the person or group we are facing is the closest representation of pure hate and evil imaginable, we have a responsibility to be thoughtful in our response. Having the courage of our convictions—even taking a strong stand which rocks the boat greatly—does not require us to disassociate from a deeply flawed humanity.
Generally I have found for myself that the more that I know what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes—as a teacher or student, parent or child, customer or worker, confused person or person in distress—the more information I have access to, and the more insight and wisdom I can bring to any interaction with that person. We do not have to stand at arm’s length. We can relate and empathize with those we are hoping to influence. I do not believe that anyone is really morally pure, anyway, so someone who takes that stance is probably engaging more in denial than in social change. (As Lao Tzu put it so well, “He who possesses virtue in abundance may be compared to an infant.”)
Under our model of dominance and subjugation, we swallow the dominant view of any group whole, and silence the subjugated one. I would go as far as to say, in fact, that silencing is the defining characteristic of subjugation. A characteristic of authoritarianism as well as chauvinism of all kinds is that members of the dominant group are the only ones allowed to assert themselves by making waves.. We operate as though there were only two choices in any conflict: to fight ugly and attack the other side, or to acquiesce completely and stop speaking our mind. What if we might have something important to say to anyone, including members of our own group who we consider to be on our side? No group is truly homogeneous in terms of ideas and perspectives. We have become too accustomed to oppositional politics, which translates into oppositional conversations and relationships. While it is often very important to stand with one side against another, it becomes a problem when we do this by rote, forgetting to think and speak as members of a larger group which is bound to contain a diversity of opinions.
Public discourse has become adversarial and oversimplified to the extent that there really is no discourse. We can see this illustrated in the fact that many people, especially around the time of an election, seem to believe that the general sleaziness of one candidate translates automatically into the sainthood or heroism of the other. We limit opinions about complex issues and politicians alike to a practically meaningless pro or con position, such as either defending or attacking the President as a figurehead regardless of his actions. In some circles there is the similar choice of being “for” or “against” having a government, or a school system, at all. We have forgotten not to throw the baby out with the bath water, and that the devil is in the details. The real question is what laws and policies each of us supports, and why. Oftentimes, in liberal circles included, we do not even mention the issues at all. We limit our speech to personal attacks on politicians and likewise remain quiet on important issues if we generally support the offending politician.
I believe that there is a deep connection between the government crackdown on school culture and our ever-diminishing mindset as a people. The habit of thinking in terms of one correct answer is both replicated in the classroom from the larger culture and propagated in the larger culture by the classroom. What we need—starting in, or at the very least including, the classroom—is more diverse types of conversations, more curiosity about where other people are coming from. We all need to be exposed to ideas which do not fit in neatly to our own, which pose some challenge to what we have already decided. Truth and meaning are not things that can be spoon fed to us or forced upon us. Any message worth repeating—any idea that is alive—will change and grow, acquiring new significance and meaning with each person who truly receives it and then passes it on.
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