Enough Perhaps of Fun and Games

When we are armed by laughter, we tend, too often, to treat others as objects.

The more we poke rather vicious fun at the extreme activities of the other Party, we contribute to the contempt which people have for both parties and increase the extent to which we see each other as objects, as identities, as Republicans or Democrats, rather than people.  

Humor can be the salve that tempers the hurts of life.  It may be, as some have alleged, the preferred language of God.  I find it is one of the few things of life that I can’t seem to get enough of.  Still, there is danger in our excess. 

I personally think the cartoon wars and meme knocks are being won by Democrats.  You may think by Republicans. Both have made me laugh.

But now is a time to discuss with civility and humility.  We are neither at the spring from which the river flows, nor a paddle or two from the waterfall.  These are, as Loren Eisley once said of our civilization the long adolescence of our understanding, a time for learning. I keep asking for the conversations that bring us together, not the humor that drives us apart—time spent getting to know each other better as a person, not as simply “the other,” a member of that “group,” that identity.

David Brooks in today NYT closes his column with this passage.

People are amazingly quick to drop stereotypes when they meet an actual individual. You may distrust lawyers but Mary, who is a lawyer, seems quite nice….

In conversation people are not objects, but ongoing narrators of their own lives, navigating between their multiple identities, steering through certainties and doubts, and refining their categories through contact with others.

I tried to find the quote I remember from Eisley. I could not find it, but discovered this. It is the same idea.

“Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face.”

We are at the beginning of our adult life as a species.  Forget the clannish jibs of childhood and cliques of adolescence.

We need to gather what few insights we and our ancestors have found along the path and carry them forward together on this, the only journey we will ever know.   As we travel let us use the precious time we each have left, to speak to each other about how we might lesson the load that others carry, ease the suffering that so many bare and feel more simply and with greater reverence the wonder of life.