I chatted with a conservative friend the other day. He exclaimed, “Why can’t people get along with each other when they believe different things, like you and I do.”
Then he proceeded to talk about the bunker he wanted to build.
That bothered me.
Yeah. I get that there are rising tensions from extremists in our country. He’s scared. I’m scared. We’re all scared.
But getting along involves communicating with people. It involves building bridges, not building bunkers.
Early in my Christian teaching, someone drew a picture of Jesus as the bridge between God and humanity. That image stuck with me.
Just imagine if Jesus were scared of the Romans and instead of trying to be there for the Jew people of the time, he instead locked himself up in a bunker with his Apostles. There would be no Christianity today. No savior.
He’s right. People should learn to get along with each other. But that really involves reaching a hand across the aisle and talking with people to better understand them…as individuals.
Not as liberals or conservatives, blacks or whites, straight or gay, Christian or Muslim or whatever.
It’s accepting our differences and reaching a hand out to say hi.
I know I’m crap at doing that. Especially in the political world. It’s far easier to just stop talking to them. I’m 100% guilty.
Perhaps a better a solution is for us to figure out things conservatives and liberals CAN talk about. At least until, some politician turns that into an issue.
What do you think?
See, this is why I’m a sports fan.
I’m not joking. Dead serious.
Sports is something a community or group can identify with that bridges economic, religious, and political boundaries. You start by agreeing that WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT CALL, REF?!?! ARE YOU @#$*ING KIDDING ME. Then you agree that the refs were DEFINITELY paid off by Opposing Team’s owners/fans/boosters/mascot. THEN, you agree that we’d be in the lead if the other team would just have some of those penalties called on them. And then you agree that Opposing Team’s fans are all criminal cretins. And then you introduce yourselves to each other, agree to see each other next game, or talk about setting up a game watch party with booze and chips.
Again, I’m dead serious.
It doesn’t have to be sports, either. It could be Firefly fandom. It could be LOTR fandom. The point is, you identify with a group that is NOT political, religious, and so on in nature. Because once you identify with a group, that becomes your tribe, and your ability to be reasonable about it ends. It’s called confirmation bias, it’s very real.
People think that reason separates us from the animals. But reason didn’t evolve in such a way that we look at the evidence and draw conclusions from it. We’d like to think that’s how we work, but it’s not. I spent time in graduate school with mathematicians whose brains were actually trained, after many years and endless mistakes, to work that way, and they’re the most insufferable people you’ll ever have to deal with. My wife was one of them, before she dropped out.
No, reason evolved as a means to build tribal bonds. Human reasoning starts with the conclusion, and then builds a framework out of all the evidence that supports it, conveniently ignoring the evidence in opposition. Which is why your fellow Texas alumni can say, with a straight face, that OU sucks, even though OU has pretty well dominated Texas in football over the past decade.
So here’s the thing: By identifying with something completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, like a sport or a TV show or a tabletop roleplaying game, you redirect this irrational impulse towards something safe. AND, especially with, say, college sports, you then put yourself into a group of highly-educated and politically, religiously and culturally diverse people.
I can discuss political, religious and other matters with fellow Longhorn sports fans in a safe space, because we all agree that the important thing is that Sooners are a bunch of inbred criminals, and there is something just WRONG with Aggies.
This justifies the existence of sports fandom and sci-fi fandom and being Gunn Runners and all that stuff that seems like it should have less money and time spent on it than it does.