Why We Should Try to Agree
We’re only a few paces into the year long lap of 2018, and Americans have already assumed the role of Usain Bolt in the race to divisiveness and polarization. Yet amid the mayhem of government shutdowns and endless debate over what constitutes “Fake News”, I and my comrade, Ean, launched this blog in an effort to encourage a more “perfect union” through productive exchange.
In our inaugural post, Ean explained that one of the aims of our writing was to make our exchanges in areas of disagreement less contentious and more productive by communicating our positions “within the context of our shared values”. The idea is that there’s a whole lot of values that decent and honest people divided by a handful of controversial topics agree on. Therefore, if we could just slow down the discussion a little, and take some time to identify those values that we share and then demonstrate how we see our positions as being the logical extension of those shared values, then we would have a better shot at reaching consensus or at least making it easier for those on one side of an issue to empathize with someone on the other side. (Check out the original article, its said much better there)
However, one obvious question that will surely arise in response to such efforts is, “Why bother taking all this time to improve our dialogue in the first place? What’s wrong with everyone huddling into their respective echo chambers and just taking a ’Screw you!’ approach to everyone else?”. One need only to casually browse a history book to find the answer to such questions. There will be revealed that one of the most apparent truths from the story of mankind and its lineage of kingdoms, both small and great, is that human beings are hard-wired to be the mortal enemies of tyranny and injustice. Any place where groups of humans are systemically oppressed or their essential needs neglected is a ticking time bomb. It may take several years, hundreds of them even, but eventually, if all the warning signs go unheeded, that bomb will explode. So in other words, the laws of human nature preclude the survival and wellbeing of our country while we play a divisive “winner take all” game of politics, where your needs or my needs, or even the needs of some other party, are overlooked.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to build policies and social mores that are fair by all of our nation’s citizens to prevent our civilization, like many before and beside it, from imploding into bloody conflict or complete self-annihilation. Our duty is an extremely tricky and often frustrating one. In fact, it requires a lifetime commitment to an unending iterative and deliberative process where contributions from everyone involved is required. Each of us grasps a piece of a complex puzzle that is our social reality. When we have the full picture, our just duty in governance comes into focus. But when each of us withdraws with the piece we have to our own corner, we there attempt to fill-in-the-blanks and build that picture based on assumptions that seem consistent with the single piece that we can comprehend. Inevitably, that picture will be false and distorted; an image that seduces us to further divisiveness, hate, injustice, and cruelty.
In 2018, the warning signs abound. The clock is ticking and the fuse is rapidly consumed by a blaze. But together, with your piece and my piece combined, we can discover what it takes to turn the corner. To this end we write.
