Understanding the Present

Humility might help.

A calendar page from the year 2124

I really don’t know where to begin.  I’d give a lot to jump a hundred years into the future and read what historians will be saying about our time.  Are we living through an aberration or a turning point?  It is hard to understand why people are split like they are. Admittedly, there is some degree of ignorance in all of us.  We aren’t omniscient.  And once a person begins to doubt traditional sources of information, the dominoes start to fall. 

My reading of American political history says we have been badly split before.  Individual ambition attaches to conflict and enlarges the space.  You can ride divisions to electoral success.   And today new factors are at play.  The internet does pour gasoline on the blaze, but is that enough of an explanation? 

I tend to think the genius of our advertising elite is underestimated.  Both sides employ some of the best creative talent we have.  They manipulate our fears and create our narratives.  Our personal experience is a narrow range of observations.  Our capacity to organize that experience into understanding is limited. 

A worldview is built piece by interlocking piece into a fortress of thought.  Once constructed we absorb confirming information as comfort food for our brains. 

I never liked the term “brain washed.”  Contrary positions are built by “truth tellers.”  Of course, we are free to call them propogandists.  And they are intentional.  For many reasons, with many motives, they ply their trade. Some believe their “truth,” others find it marketable. 

I wonder what Lincoln meant by “you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”  It doesn’t sound promising.  Not good news for a democracy?  And not it turns out said by Lincoln. 

But it does contribute to our misunderstanding of the present.  It is a relatively stupid remark actually and puts down our “enemies “as the fools, or “fooled,” we want to believe they are. 

All of us, yes “all,” would be better off if we took a different view of the partisan divisions in this election.  Humility is not a sign of weakness.  In fact, it should be a driving force, behind our desire to learn more and to continue to reintegrate, to update, to reimagine our present “truth.” 

I reject the idea that I must go forward, now and after the election, fundamentally separated from each other.

Lincoln did say:  "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Substat gives you two choices to comment. You can write directly to me or leave comment for everyone to see. and comment on, that reads the blog. I try to answer both and am glad to carry on a conversation. Sometimes I am unintentionally obscure in what I write. I welcome a chance to rephrase or even revise what I was trying to say.

I’m glad when you think these short columns are worth sharing. I don’t want to “convince” anyone; I do want to jar a little and hopefully to start a new train of thought.

I know we all get too many items in our inboxes. I understand why anyone would like to cut back on the “flood.” Adding another is very questionable. Still these are free and I try to keep them short and I don’t blame anyone for giving them a very quick read.