Choosing to Be a Nation
How can we work with all due perspectives?
For quite some time I considered myself a responsible member of society for sticking to relatively moderate news sources. I would always check multiple sources before coming to a conclusion on an issue. I’d pay attention to the writing style of every article I read to account for author’s bias and make sure I was getting just the facts out of them. While all of these are good steps for sure, I found I continually ran into the same problem.
I had no idea what the hell radicals were talking about.
Right or Left, it didn’t matter. Every time I went to debate, somebody would inform me of some narrative I had never heard of before, I’d have no way to respond because it seemed plausible, but not provable, and then in my confusion I would be accused of living in a bubble.
“A bubble?” I thought, “How could I be living in a bubble when I’m working so hard to get the facts?”
The thought consumed me. Finally I decided I had to take action. I have been going through great literal and figurative pains to hear all sides of current events for the past week and a half or so. Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, I listened to hours of them all. It sucked, but I never got mad. I didn’t sit there and scream at my TV or radio. I did something I was surprised I was able to do. I listened. And in the end I came away with a really valuable perspective. I’ve realized our nation is just one big improv game.
Let me explain. First off it may help you to know that I’m an improviser. That’s part of my perspective. Just like in an improv game, we’ve set up rules of our country through declaring them publicly. These are what make up our constitution.
Outside of those rules we allow to govern us, our nation doesn’t exist. The only thing allowing our nation to function is the improv idea of “Yes anding” each other. Someone says, “I am the government! I have authority!” while we all say, “Yes, and you must protect us!” There is nothing other than that willingness to participate holding our country together. Our laws only function if we decide they do. We must all, individually, opt into being a nation together for us to be a nation at all. It is that willingness to opt in that has deteriorated, and therefore, I assert, is the cause of our current unrest. That’s what I’m here to discuss.
After hours of listening to radical media, a theme seemed to consistently reoccur in both.
“It’s the other side’s fault! They live in a bubble!”
The weird part was realizing they were both right. The left is a bubble. The right is a bubble. Even I, the “responsible moderate”, lived in a bubble. The bubble itself is annoying, but what I found most fascinating is that these hosts could so easily damn the other side for living in a bubble and then turn around and reinforce their own.
Suddenly it became clear why radicals were so insistent that easily verifiable lies were true. They were never being exposed to the facts in the first place. Now that may sound like a jab at them, but most of us never actually get the facts. Even with all my efforts to get nothing but facts, I was still getting only partial truths at best, so I’m not pretending to be immune to misinformation. This was due to my reliance on secondary sources.
Now I’m not trying to knock secondary sources, that’s ultimately what I hope my page to be after all. They are convenient tools for getting the important aspects of a story out to a busy public. No, you aren’t a bad person if you engage largely with secondary sources. The reason this has become a problem is because those that produce secondary sources now perpetuate their respective bubbles as opposed to actually giving you the most helpful analysis of the facts.
So I’m starting With All Due Perspective to push back against that. My plan is a simple one. I’m going to continue to listen to as many different bubbles as I can find, as well as actively engage with more primary sources, and report back what I’m hearing in regular articles on my profile. I also set up an email account (withalldueperspective@gmail.com) where readers can email me their thoughts or responses to current events or something I’ve said. I’ll do my best to choose the responses that I feel represent a nice cross section of bubbles and publish them on my page, unaltered, in full, along with my response to you. All you have to do is put PLEASE RESPOND (yes, in all caps) in the subject of your email.
I will also be putting up articles written by you if you email them to me with MY ARTICLE (Also all caps) somewhere in the subject of your email. I will be doing my best to choose articles that represent many different political bubbles, but still help forward the idea of “Yes anding” each other.
Also if you are interested in being a regular writer for WADP, just email me a few samples of your work along with whatever you want to submit for publication with MY APPLICATION somewhere in the subject line.
My hope is that as we build a community here, ripe with positive conversation, we can provide a model to the rest of our country that if we take each other into account, and treat each other with respect, we can start to heal as a nation. I’ll be posting articles more rooted in current events soon. Love them or hate them, I ask simply that you engage with them. Send me your thoughts, be a part of the dialogue. I hope to hear from you soon.
