Blog 814 – 11.4.2017

What Ever Happened To Civil Discourse?

As someone who grew up in the Bible Belt Of the United States, but who was also educated in public schools, and spent many hours acquiring what I consider a pretty good liberal arts education from TV, the military, and at various work places and universities, I have had the privilege to have actually observed the tolerant even civil exchange of opinions and ideas, and even strongly held personal beliefs. One does not see that as much of late. The erosion of public schools, and the favoring of parochial, private schools, and home schooling has narrowed our opinions therefore widening the gap between us. What I consider the changing of news coverage from mostly straight news to mostly editorial has further widened and exacerbated the lessening tolerance between. We have in many ways lost the common vision of what things mean like truth, justice, tolerance, and compassion. We are I fear as much if not more divided as a nation than we were before the Civil War. And on the same issues really: Business and profits versus fair value and equity, rich versus poor, rural versus urban, old white guy opinions versus almost everybody else’s.

Thinking our opinions, our thoughts, our beliefs are the only valid ones is an error of tremendous magnitude. We are better when we bend, when we compromise, when we grow beyond the little circle of things we first believed. We are less when we grow stiff necked, hard headed, hard hearted, and intractable. We become hard and brittle like the statues of a past that never really was that we fight so hard to protect – a civilization gone with the wind but still in hearts and minds alive today, a civilization of the privileged and the not, where people receive a lesser share from their labors if they are female or people of color, a civilization of patrons and peons, of masters and slaves. As a Bible writer once wrote – “Beloved, these things ought not to be.” And yet they are.

But rather than talk out our differences we have for the most part quit talking to one another choosing rather to type at and to filter all the information we receive through the “gate keepers” of our choosing be they Fox News or MSNBC or even narrower religious or news outlets or some social network where we can unfriend anyone at the click of a button that does not recite verbatim the “party line.” Indeed anything and everything else we label “fake news.” Where the talk is seldom if ever an encouraging word but more gossip, outings, gripes, condemnations, revenge, and complaints. Life is so much more than that. Are we intent on creating a world of grumpier old men and women who no longer talk to one another or anyone else face to face – just in texts, tweets or postings?

Turn off the smart phone, the computer, the TV, the radio, for awhile, share a meal with a friend, speak your mind, and allow them to speak theirs. Do it civilly and respectfully, you might even find a point or two of agreement, enough to build a bridge, enough to even tear down a wall. Heaven forbid we build more new ones or keep the old ones. What the world needs now as the old song says, “…is love sweet love.” And lots of bridges repaired and new ones build and that always begins with not just civil engineering but civil discourse.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

For building more bridges and tearing down walls,

David White