There is only one lens to look at the state of the world today, as we stand here in 2016.
It is the timeless lens, one that has metastasized to a global level, yet remains as local as ever: it is the lens of Oppressor vs The Oppressed. Occupier vs The Occupied. You can put any large geopolitical or social conflict we are currently reeling from — Israel/Palestine, Syria, Black Lives Matter, Women’s rights, LGBT rights, Muslim rights, and it will pass through this lens.
Sometimes there are criminals and charlatans who seize on this real and perceived narrative and become cancer, like Trump, like NRA, like ISIS, Brexit, or the snipers who shot the Dallas policemen today. Some of these cancers only reinforce that the original lens of oppressor vs the oppressed is the right one to process the world through, the only sane one to separate the real issues of social justice and equality from the hijacked issues. This is what I am filtering my worldview through, and while it doesn’t prevent me from being overwhelmed from the amount of bad news and hatred coming through, it helps me be focused on the larger issues.
The original quote behind the famous Matin Luther King line is worth quoting here by 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker:
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
The larger issue is always the issue of justice. We may not ever reach there, but that is the issue. That keeps me sane, and makes me the social human that gets animated by injustice and the struggle against it.
