[I recently found this almost decade-old letter snoozing in my computer. I don’t know if it was ever sent, how, or to whom. There’s a female first name on the file, but I can’t recall the actual intended recipient, so I’ve substituted “Leslie” here, to avoid accidental discovery. Otherwise, no changes.]
Leslie—
I guess it’s a bit odd writing this to you, but you’re someone I respect with a different (political) outlook from mine, and that’s important to what I’m thinking about. (We did kick the “gun control” idea around a bit a year or two back.)
I see the state of violence in the country and worldwide as excruciating, accelerating and horrifying. I don’t think there’s much you or I (perhaps anyone) can do worldwide, but I wonder if there isn’t a different tack that could be taken nationally, expanding from a local level.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that we have fallen into a spiral of blame. The left blames the NRA, guns, racism, talk radio. The right blames immigrants, the government, godlessness, the mainstream media. The feeling seems to be that if we can annihilate the mindset of our “enemies” (or the enemies themselves), the violence would end or at least be markedly reduced.
It should be obvious (but isn’t) that this way of looking at things is far too simplistic. There’s no one outfit or outlook that can be blamed for the now almost universal explosion of violence.
Social media have a lot to do with it, simply because they’ve introduced a whole different level of immediate scrutiny to the world. What happens down the road, five states away or across the ocean can no longer be swept under the rug or kept on hold for a week, a month, a year. We know within minutes what’s happened on the other side of the earth and we react – that’s inevitable, that’s human nature.
In a funny sense, it’s almost a retreat to tribalism, in that “we” feel ourselves invaded by “them” a hundred or a thousand miles away as surely as would a tribal village assaulted by its next-door neighbors.
So how to deal with this, how to broker some sense of rational or at least sympathetic reality? There’s no cure-all, but within our country, maybe there’s a way to find a middle ground where we stop accusing each other and try to identify and deal with the common underlying elements of insecurity and distrust, bring the warring parties together to the point where, if they can’t actually agree, they can at least accept and work toward a positive outlook.
This, in theory, is what diplomacy is about, but I don’t think it’s been tried often on the local level, or if it has, it hasn’t been very successful. Can it work if we drop the “blame” items – stop screaming about the NRA, the guns, the immigrants, the over-reaching government – and try to identify what it is that’s fueling the violence, the sense of being under siege?
I know programs like this have been tried and in some cases worked well when dealing with inner-city gangs. The difference is that the gangs hold the same philosophy but are divided by different loyalties. I’m talking about bringing different philosophies together. Is it possible? Has it been done? If so, where and how?
This viewpoint lies at the basis of much Buddhist thought, which is where, I think, my own outlook has come lately. I’m not naive enough to think that Buddhist mellowness would go over well in a rural American setting. But is there an equivalent that might?
My wife Linda and I moved up to Sullivan County in 2000 from Philadelphia. As white city-ites, we were about as liberal as anyone gets (still are, at base). Landing here, in a place I dearly love in just about any and every way, we find ourselves knee-deep in undeviating Republicans.
Two things: first, I’ve found most people here to be accepting of the person as opposed to the political viewpoint. Those who know us fairly well understand that we look at the world differently, so we just don’t discuss the areas of friction that would set us at each other’s throats.
Second, I’ve found that my own hardened views have softened. Hunting makes a whole lot more sense to me; the absence of stupid regulations allows life to flow more freely; an ex-Catholic who will never again feel comfortable in any church now sees the energy, application and cohesion that the churches bring as the social centers of well-being.
So maybe I’m in a place (internal and external) where I can look at the world in a moderating way. I find, to my amazement, that up here I can get along with and be liked by almost anyone. I don’t say that as self-glorification, but with mystification that has slowly run over into acceptance. I’m reaching out to you as someone I think may look at the world a bit like I’m beginning to but who would have a far wider range of interaction with people across the board. The questions I was asking above – which boil down to “how can we bring our country’s warring, beleaguered social communities together with a sense of common need to deal with its eruption of violence” – are ones that I’m sure you’ve thought about a great deal. So … what can we (I, you) do, practically, effectively?
Any ideas?
–Derek Davis
lickhaven 