We all love to get a pat on the back, to feel understood and
corroborated. It feels good to be right, to win, to have compatriots in the
fight, whatever that fight might be. I love a good confirmation as much as the
next guy. Who doesn’t? As a result, though, we’ve become a nation filled with
citizens who, every single day, wall themselves into our own little fortress,
brick on brick of nods and yeses till we’ve built such a formidable barricade
that no new idea could ever get through, happy in our self-congratulatory
bliss.
And it’s killing us as a nation. We fight like old married
people where words volley back and forth but have simply quit listening to one another years ago. We don’t listen anymore. We don’t care about understanding one another anymore. We believe we’re right
and they’re wrong and that wall is there to protect us from the nonsense and
horrific bad taste and immorality of “the other guys” on the other side.
It’s disgusting,
frankly, that we have stooped to such disrespect. And no, I don’t mean mouthy
teenager disrespect. I’m talking about the lady next door who badmouths
teenagers for walking across her lawn but rakes all her leaves onto my lawn
because they came from my tree. I’m talking about the uncle who thinks black
people are the cause of all our problems but has never actually known a black
man. I’m talking about the atheist who hates Christians because the only ones he’s
ever heard about are from Westboro Baptist Church. I’m talking about guy I went
to high school with who posts anti-Muslim sentiments every day because the
Boston bomber was Muslim. This kind of deaf world reeks with disrespect.
I teach college writing, and I tell my students that their
arguments are weak, flimsy puffs of wasted air if they haven’t investigated all
facets of an issue. I had a student research euthanasia, for example, and all
his sources were from Catholic-affiliated publications. He even quoted the
Pope. This would be fine, of course, if he had also read several non-religious
publications and then made his
argument, but he purposely found only those sources that supported his opinion.
He felt he’d found excellent reasons against euthanasia, cited all his sources,
and made some good points. I listened to him and his ideas. But he hadn’t
listened to anyone else’s.
The abortion issue depicts the extreme of this closed ear
syndrome we’ve taken on. Just the terms used to label the “sides” of the
issue—pro-life and pro-choice—make it clear. Has anyone who has a stake in this
issue ever taken the time to realize that “pro-life” advocates are not
(necessarily) “anti-choice” or that “pro-choice” advocates are not “anti-life”?
If the terms were simply “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion” it would make us a
little less divided, but even then we insist that this issue is two sided,
there is no middle ground, and we must fight, fight, fight.
Last year in Texas we all witnessed the epitome of this deafness
when the Texas court tried to tighten laws for abortion clinics. Such a hoopla!
But if you watched even five minutes of the day’s proceedings, you witnessed
lots and lots of talking but not a single person listening. No one listened to anyone else. At all. Lots of loud,
angry, words on both sides fell on nothing but deaf ears. Watch any MSNBC or FOXNews program where they invite someone from the "other side" and listen to how little actual listening is going on.
If we could learn to listen, open our ears and minds and
practice some empathy, realize we can be too biased, and stop painting
issues—and people—as them and us, right and wrong, then we may move toward a
kinder, gentler society, one that strives to care for one another rather than strives
to tear one another apart.
But we’re afraid. It’s hard to be open to new perspectives
and admit we’re biased. It’s distasteful to watch MSNBC when we’re used to the
700 Club, and when we do, we have our dukes up, feathers ruffled, ready to
defend ourselves and our rightness. If we always need to be right, we can
simply never listen to anyone who thinks differently, who has differing
opinions, and stay tightly tucked in our thick brick walls.
After all, we’re not all extremists like Al Qaeda or the Ku
Klux Klan, so we feel we’re good people as long as we don’t get silly. We don’t
fly planes into towers. We don’t lynch people. We’re good people with good
hearts. We just want what’s right. What we don’t realize is that the “other
guys” are mostly good people who want what’s right as well. We’re on the same
side.
On election day of 2012, as the results were coming in, I
was watching CBS news for the election coverage, and one of the reporters asked
both Mitt Romney and President Obama the same question, how they felt about the
divisiveness in our nation. Frankly, I don’t remember Romney’s answer (apparently
it was unimpressive). But our President’s answer was poignant: he said that we
really weren’t as divided as we might think, that we all cared about having
good schools and safe streets and a peaceful world. We just had different ideas
about how to accomplish these things, and that’s okay. It helps us make better
decisions.
Our country is built on the idea that no one ideology is automatically
right, that everyone needs a say, and that we as a people determine the rules.
But this can’t work if no one is listening, if we live our lives ear-muffed and
walled in. We can only make good
decisions if we listen to one another, if we consider all the possibilities
with genuine interest before deciding a course of action—and even then admit we
might be wrong. Only then will our nation be the United States of America.
