I’ve noticed some changes lately. Changes in some of the people I know, specifically. Some of them have begun acting differently. And the changes are so stark that I can’t help but be rattled.
It’s easy to consider these changes and write them off as signs of these troubling times. The political divide that has grown wider and wider in recent years, particularly the past three, might account for a great deal of it; the stress and anxiety of isolation brought on by the corona lockdown has surely intensified things, right?
Before I say much more, I should clarify which particular folks I’m talking about. There might be a passive assumption that I’m speaking of Trump voters, lockdown protestors, and others populating the far right. I don’t mean them. They really haven’t changed at all; the intensity of their behaviors has been amped up, but they’re just being who they’ve always been - they find the world more frightening than most; they have a harder time trusting; they have less natural empathy, and tend not to think things through as most others do.
No, I’m talking about my friends on the left – my progressive liberal friends. They’re the ones who have changed.
Before corona, before Trump, even before the Great Divide, the differences between our social tribes was clear and emphatic: where the far right embraced fear, the far left sought opportunity; where the right was sparse with trust, the left reached out; where one side aggressively Othered outsiders, the other refused to Other. And where the far right sought simplicity and easy answers, the far left committed to digging deep to understand the problems and challenges of our time.
But as our divide grows ever wider, I’m not seeing those clear and emphatic distinctions anymore.
Where I once looked at my friends on the left and saw empathy, I now see intolerance and aggressive Othering; I see them dehumanize those they don’t approve of with all the dismissive, mean-spirited bluster I’m used to seeing from the far right; where I once saw a willingness to seek middle ground, or at least pedantically listen, I now see slammed doors and folded arms; where I once saw the light of understanding, I now see hostility on a par with the far right’s worst.
And perhaps most concerning – where I once sought out my leftish friends for reasoned exploration of why things have become so dysfunctional, I am now bereft; the new answer to Why has been reduced to exactly the answer the right has thrown down for so many years: It’s Their Fault!
In a nutshell, I look at my friends on the left, then I look at my friends on the right, and I increasingly see the same people. Those on the left behave more and more like the ones on the right.
This is troubling on so many levels. For a start, there’s a palpable lack of self-awareness among my friends on the left – they don’t seem to be able to see these changes in themselves. And this low self-awareness is yet another mirror image of those they so increasingly despise. Moreover, when called out, they so easily and dismissively justify their new disdain; they don’t process it, they don’t pause to consider it, they don’t make their way through the myriad complexities and possible causes – they just fire off some scorn and shut down. Mirror image, once again.
Finally, I’m troubled because it is so isolating. I love the things that are important to me. I want them to stay important. That will be harder and harder, as I find myself drifting farther from both groups. We need each other to maintain our vision, our focus, and our conviction.
And yet I can’t just give in to this. I can’t, for the sake of community, surrender to this disturbing metamorphosis. If the convictions and principles that have driven my tribe for so very long are to prevail, or have any value in the first place, they have to be stronger than this terrible tidal force; they must hold sway in the face of a rapidly escalating, merciless dynamic that is high-gain-looping its way through every word of our shared discourse. And they only way to keep them in the conversation is to endlessly repeat them.
That has to be the mission. We have to get back to the values – and with the values, the behaviors – that once defined us, and set our rage and scorn aside in favor of empathy and trust and a renewed pursuit of understanding. We need to let go of our scorn and dismissiveness and remember that the people we disapprove of most are, nonetheless, still people. And we must take great care to crank up our self-awareness, even beyond previous levels, lest we become as they.
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