The day after the midterm elections ...
This blog post
will be appearing on the day after the midterm elections. As I write a few hours before results are in,
we are still reeling from the recent violence caused by racial and religious
hatred and, in the case of the pipe-bombs, by an apparent inability to deal
with anger stemming from intolerance. More hatred, clothed slightly
differently.
But by the time
this is posted, we will have had an election, one that may make a huge change
in how our country is to manage its affairs or may further empower those who
have been in charge for the last two years. I will not hide that my hope has
been for the change.
However, whatever
the outcome in the control of various seats of power, I will continue to hold
out another hope, one that is longer in scope than a single election and
broader than any single electoral victory or defeat. It is that we – all of us
– will commit to teach, learn, and continue to build the practices we need that
will sustain us as a community, one community.
And one of the most basic of
these practices is listening.
We are having
difficulty listening to one another right now. Just a few words are said and we
“know” that person is for or against the thing we “know” is right or wrong. We
quickly blast out with a comeback, as if we are living in a sitcom. Without
subtlety or nuance, without putting ourselves in the other’s shoes, we “know”
the most important things about them and we know how to tell them off.
Of course, we don’t
“know” and the more we insist we do, the less well we listen. And as we stop
listening to others, the habit of introspection, of listening to what we
ourselves are thinking and then questioning it, also deteriorates.
We believe
things that make no sense because we saw them on Facebook or on TV, and
everyone else saw them and repeats them. We don’t stop to actually listen, so
we don’t actually think, so we allow ourselves to be convinced by sound bites,
ads, glib memes in every format. And the
bonds of our community are weakened by public discourse that lacks dignity and
integrity.
I believe there
is one thing that we really do know: we are only going to sustain what is good and
change what is not good if we work together. That is a simple idea, easy to say
and hard to do. And we cannot even start on it if we continue to shout at each
other so loudly that we cannot hear.
Elaine Learnard
Member, Conscience Bay Quaker Meeting
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