A Cry for Help
About the partisan divide
A very disturbing thing happened to me an hour ago, during our morning coffee, just me and my domestic partner of many years. It wasn’t exactly devastating, but it struck deep in my soul. It wasn’t to the core of my soul, but to a depth I wasn’t expecting.
She was talking to me about an issue that has created a deep partisan divide in our small coastal town. Our coast is getting rapidly eroded (geologically speaking) and sea level rise is making it worse. Every several years, several people’s residences — whether house or apartment building — fall into the sea. A bad storm hits, and a portion of the cliff or bluff slides away. In some cases, the residents have a limited number of hours to evacuate.
The partisan divide is over what to do about this problem. Even on each side of the divide, a variety of possible solutions get proposed. It’s like the story The Three Little Pigs. The wolf is coming for the pigs. One builds a house of straw, another of wood, another of bricks.
In our case, the sea is the wolf. Sadly, our choices are not quite so individual as those of each pig. As a town, we are effectively living in one house. In one form or another, our choices boil down to: (1) stay put, or (2) move.
What’s confounding is there are a range of possible solutions, but people reduce it to a binary choice — stay put or move. In a reasonable, rational world, everyone would sit down together, examine the choices, and pick the one that works best for the town as a whole. Instead, what’s happening is each side is creating a strawman out of each other’s range of options. So instead of picking the best option, we’re attacking each other’s strawmen.
With that said, I can tell you what had me so deeply disturbed this morning. It’s deeper than which side is right. It’s deeper than why do people have to fight each other this. It’s that:
1) people don’t want to understand why they have to fight— on this and a million other issues — in fact, on practically any issue
2) because they don’t understand why, they can’t see how not to take opposing sides — even though they see they are defeating themselves
3) they don’t see that the “why” afflicts practically every disagreement — that they will stumble over this why every time they disagree
4) when instead they have the option of addressing the why before they start arguing — rather than, as they blindly do, invite in so much grief and failure
Yet what disturbed me went deeper:
5) why am I trying to write about truth units — an understanding of the why — and letting it suck up so much of my life?
6) this is my way of trying to contribute — as my partner is trying to contribute — yet it makes me feel stupid and isolated
7) because she and so many others don’t see any point to what I’m doing — and that makes it not a contribution — so what am I doing?
If I’m making a mistake, I’d like to know that, so I can just quit, and move on to something else in life. This morning I feel kinda shaken.
There’s more to be said about the partisan divide in our small town, the root cause of it, how truth units might possibly address it, and what help might help me through it, but that’s for another day.
Thank you for reading.
