Boycotts and Blocks Lead to Isolation and Idoicy…I mean Idiocy
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You can consume without conforming and partake without promoting
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle
Stop boycotting everything. Stop blocking everyone that doesn’t agree with you.
Just stop it!
These days, I can’t go see Beauty and the Beast because if I do, I support a gay agenda. But if I don’t, it’s because I hate gay people, strong women and beasts.
I can’t eat at Chick-Fil-A because gays again. I can’t drink at Starbucks because they don’t support the military enough.
I can’t follow you on twitter if you’re an atheist because God gets p*ssed if thoughts contrary to his happen across my eyes. I can’t follow a Catholic because they worship Mary and Jesus hates when people like his mom.
I can’t laugh when Trump makes a joke because he hates women. I can’t say, “Good job,” when Obama pardons someone because he’s a Muslim.
When we actively boycott and block we shut off ourselves and others from different perspectives and disallow open dialogue.
We each have the freedom to participate in whatever makes us comfortable, what we enjoy and what we prefer. We are also free to avoid things that are offensive, inaccurate, or outside of our tastes. Active boycotting and blocking moves beyond this and becomes less about our own personal consumption and more about the existence of an opposing stream of thought.
Actively boycotting or blocking something refuses completely the idea that something can be in opposition to you. In reality, cutting off communication almost always results in a negative for the one cutting and the one being cut.
Primarily, a boycott is the failure to continue to argue. How better do you promote your worldview than to continue to engage and argue? Argument, without abuse is the means to the end of creating action, change and progress. Argument stirs thought, forces us to exercise our logic skills, reveals gaps, tests theories, opens perspectives, understands people.
Aside from arguing, openness to the other promotes refreshing new insights into your own beliefs. We can have some bad excuses behind our thoughts which cause other people to reduce us down to the least common denominator. Through other experiences, we can see our perspectives either flourish or flounder, we can better answer the rebuttals and we can fine tune a dense tangible viewpoint rather than a shallow one.
Secondarily, a boycott is the guarantee that you will no longer be a resource for aid and assistance in another person’s life. When I look to group of people who are presenting an idea, there is always a seed somewhere inside that idea that was planted out of a basic human desire for a supposed good. Even if a person is absolutely out of their mind greedy, selfish and stubborn, if they are marching for equal pay, there is within them something written on there heart that informs them of justice. Can we see that? Can we see that those people around us, who differ from us, may possibly me incorrect in their assessment or response, but they come from a place of right?
Very few people are anarchists. Even better, very few people are incapable of learning and evolving. All people can receive light. Some may reject. Some may shine light on you, enlightening you. But the moment we begin to block and boycott, we ignore their plight and/or ignore their right to educated.
One of the acts of mercy in the church is to inform the ignorant. This isn’t an arrogant command either. It’s a humbling one that says, as we have been given light, give light. Isolation refuses engagement. Isolation doesn’t allow me to understand you, and it doesn’t allow me to help you.
Isolation doesn’t hope to end division by coming to unity and maturity. It hopes to end division by eliminating the other person.
Why can’t I hear someone out?
Why can’t I experience someone’s perspective?
Why can’t I challenge myself?
Why can’t I enjoy the things we do have in common?
Why can’t I dance?!
I slipped this one in because, darn it, Beauty and the Beast has a few good numbers, and when Be Our Guest Comes on, I like to throw caution to the wind, forget the world and sing with the little candle man.
I’m not trying to see who is sexist or racist or stealing the Beasts food, which somehow is justified simply because he happens to be a grumpy dude.
