Our Future in Progress

The other day I took advantage of an opportunity to view a live stream of my republican US representative giving his constituents an update and answering questions submitted in advance. Despite getting grief in the comments about not doing a live town hall, I thought the format allowed for a wider audience and did not require driving any distance to participate. While not all questions were answered in the time allotted, the ability for any of us to comment got our voices out there and allowed for some debate between commentors.

I was curious as to how commenting would go during this live stream as it got to be painful during the president’s first term of doom. Back then many of us found ourselves eventually going over the edge and avoiding comments on social media altogether out of sheer survival. What I am noticing about these exchanges this second go round is A) the personal attacks have not been as vile and bother me less, and B) we have had time to process what we learned during the first term. We also have plenty of reading material now from various professionals giving us needed insight on what the heck happened. Thus, people are in a better position to understand and respond.

With the background knowledge we acquired and a pretty good look at the current happenings I think we have a good sense of the situation. Now might be a good time to think ahead to where we are going and where we want to go. It is difficult for a lot of people to think about where the current road is taking us but many of us would agree it is not a good place. There are some scary possibilities not only in regard to where those holding the power want us to go but also possible actions we as citizens may end up taking either in support or opposition. There are thoughts in my mind that make my abdomen tighten and the words do not want to be given voice. Is it the same for you? We will leave worst case scenario for now, though, and simply acknowledge the thoughts and emotions.

My goal as a participant within this US social structure is to make moral decisions recognizing that every single one of us is a human being with inherent dignity and the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even if others seem not to be working from that same understanding. It is what it is. It will always be this way because human beings have different histories, families of origin, knowledge, personal experiences and ways the brain processes information. We are products of nature AND nurture. Humans are complex and so are our understandings of how relationships work.

Today, let us focus on a couple of choices that achieve the desired outcome with the least amount of harm to self and others. In fact, we are already doing it. People are tuning in to their congressional representatives and senators on a level I have not seen in my 54 years. That does not mean it did not happen, say in the 70’s, but I was totally unaware and as one of my children like to say, “If I don’t remember it, it didn’t happen.” Fair point. You may have heard that constituents are also calling in droves (where does that word even come from??). The pressure is clearly on; however, it is a little hard to know what effect it is having, other than to make certain party members defensive. It is worth keeping up because if the members have been promised huge campaign contributions for playing nice it will not matter much if their chances of being re-elected are nil. It also highlights the importance and seriousness of current events. So, we continue to engage with our elected officials.

Then there are the supporters of the administration who have the same power of the vote as we do. Misinformation is a huge roadblock and we know it. The advent of cable TV changed the focus of traditional media from providing good journalism to making the bottom line work.  Now with the world wide web the likelihood of getting false or misleading information is pretty much 100%. We all like to think that we are smarter than the average bear and can pick out lies like a lie-detector, but people who wish to deceive will figure out how to mess with your head. It is the nature of deception. Intelligence has little to do with it.

Being skilled in research, using multiple resources to verify facts and understanding media bias can help determine reliability of information. Repetition of factual information gets the ideas to stick. If I remember correctly, it takes hearing something 7 times before it is stored in memory. Replacing what is in stored memory with a different message takes a lot more repetitions. This means factual information will have to be repeated 7 times 2?3?...a lot in order to replace bad information. Hopefully, repetition of facts with supporting evidence is difficult to ignore forever. In contrast, I can ignore being called a stupid idiot largely because I did not grow up with that message so it has no power over me. Incidentally, such comments tended to come from male commentors. Is that only because I am female or do they say the same things to other males? Either way, it is a power move. Does that mean we should call people with differing opinions stupid idiots? Tempting. However, attempting to cause psychological harm is not consistent with moral thinking. Killjoy, I know. It is a must to continue communicating reliable and accurate information.

Have you caught yourself falling for the distraction technique by social media commentors? I have many times. I remind myself to try to keep the debate on topic next time. At first I thought calling the evasive commentor on the distraction was a good idea but now I’m thinking that might put them too much on the defensive. Potential threat to the self physically, psychologically or socially will put a person in sympathetic nervous system mode and blood flow to the brain is rerouted to other parts of the body so we are ready to fight or flee. “I” statements can avoid this from happening better than starting a sentence with “You.” For example, “I notice that your response is just a personal insult. I take that to mean you do not have any documented information to support your claim.”  I admit. I was pretty proud of that one! The individual did not reply again. No idea if they saw it, made a decision to not respond, had nothing to offer or could not find any supporting evidence. At this point, it does not matter. Staying focused on the topic can keep the conversation from going in an undesirable direction.

Will these options bring about the desired outcome? We hope so for everyone’s sake. At some point will we need to ask ourselves and each other some hard questions? Maybe. That will take courage. It is empowering to remember that no matter what, we always have control over our own choices. We also have inherent dignity no matter our identity markers. Being inherent, no human has the power to take your dignity away. They might attack it, but you get to keep it! May we all find ourselves in a state of joy and peace when we reach our destination. The future is now in progress.