politics, power, justice

Sean van der Lee
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

We all know the type. The type that believes all America’s problems can be blamed on Obama, and Clinton, not the Bush’s, or that all of Canada’s problems stem from Harper, not Chretien, Martin, Trudeau. The reductionists that split the world into two tribes, and accord their tribe all the glory, and the other tribe, all the squalor.

Tools like twitter feed the phenomenon. The more extreme the response, the more impressions are generated. The banal is less interesting than the extreme, which is why people watch car crashes on youtube, not uneventful commutes. The press is forced to chase the clicks or perish, their lunch has been eaten by the internet. Journalists with integrity, non-partisan and capable of exercising judgment, feel like relics of a different time, and are increasingly rare.

But our world, with which we all seem so busy, is more complex then ever, and less amenable to easy categorization into black and white, good and bad. Below the surface, the same impulses, to eat, have children, to love, to acquire, to rest, impulses common to all life, still throb.

Was the Great Recession of 2008 George W. Bush’s fault? Certain of his policies, bearing the fingerprints of Senator and Representative, lobbyist and citizen, Democrat and Republican, Wall Street, Main Street, and the end of the road, fed into it. Was it Clinton’s fault? Certain of his policies, bearing the fingerprints of Senator and Representative, lobbyist and citizen, Democrat and Republican, Wall Street, Main Street, and the end of the road, fed into it, just as surely. The plates shift and the oceans spread.

People wanted the things necessary to life, and asked for them through this ever more complex mechanism, which gave them all that and many other things besides, some unintended, some good for some and bad for others, and vice versa.

So how can someone lay the blame for such a complex phenomenon at the feet of one man? Or the feet of one ‘tribe’, the ‘other’. You can’t, doing so does a disservice to the few glimpses of truth we are allowed. Are they, who see the world in black and white, surprised, when the shoe is on the other foot? Now Trump has the weapons that Obama had, which were the tools that Bush had — are you applying the same standard throughout? The war in Afghanistan continues.

Are you surprised to see one man treat another with savagery and brutality? To see ISIS burn a captive? To see American bombs fall on ISIS? Those who see the world in black and white will continue to be shocked. Brutality, as surely as kindness is a hallmark of the human race, and life itself. Watch the ant carry the body of the smaller ant which it has killed in a fight over territory. Read any of the innumerable chapters of human warfare, hunger, and misery. There should be no surprise.

There are forces that underlie our society, which we can scarcely see or understand, some of which we can not see or even imagine yet, moving like tectonic plates while we carry on our daily lives, one inch a year. Then, we look up, and, there is an ocean between Africa and South America. They are not your fault, nor the fault of the ‘other’, they simply are. They are bigger than us and our measly ‘understanding’.

Take a step back and look at your own role in the world, small though it may be, the things that you can control, in a word, thought. Don’t give in to the extreme, especially the new, technological tools that magnify the extreme, for as you work with those tools, those tools are working on you, chipping and grinding you away faster than ever before, until you are unrecognizable, even to yourself.

Find the humanity in your ‘enemy’ in the ‘other’, before you lose it in yourself.

Sean van der Lee

Written by

'Not to be driven this way and that, but always to behave with justice and see things as they are' - Marcus Aurelius. Lawyer. Albertan. Free. seanvanderlee.ca

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade