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Betsy Gaines Quammen's avatar

So good. This country is getting meaner. It's important not to turn mean with it. Your compassion and empathy inspire me to do better, but I'm sad with what's happening.

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Tara K. Shepersky's avatar

I struggle with this too. My way of understanding the world can't be the only one, or the only right one—this in itself is a value I try to live by. Yet it is indeed confusing and infuriating (and, often, frightening) to see SO many folks summing up their views or sympathies with actions like wearing Confederate flags all over their bodies, or outspokenly supporting obvious (to me) fascism. I can't make out how these might contain valid or right anything. And is it fair to assume that just because these folks espouse an evil ideology *I* can see through, they must be stupid or deceived?

I circle back to Marcus Aurelius' point of view on this quite a lot. He was of the opinion that it was best to open every day by thinking: today I will encounter stupidity and disrespect and injustice, etc, entirely because of "the offender's ignorance of what is good or evil."

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing maybe that word I used above, "contain," is the right word—the ideologies we're discussing are evil, but a person is not their ideology. Maybe they DON'T fully comprehend the repercussions of the symbols they feel affinities for, or the political slogans that feel comfortable to them. Maybe they do, and they feel it's a mixed bag: some bad for some ultimate good. Possibly they and I are just never going to agree on what makes a better world.

I came across the viewpoint lately (on Scene on Radio, Season 4, about American democracy) that the very idea of wanting to change the world "for the better" is anathema to some folks. I'm still feeling a bit sideswiped by this. To these folks, the world organizes itself in natural ways (e.g. patriarchy), and I am wrong to want to change those ways by education or legislation. By extension, I guess to them all this talk that feels critically important to me is actually pointless. Things are the way they are. Social justice is not only wrong, because it's against the natural order, it's also long-winded and complicated and stupid.

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