Greater society seems to be growing ever more polarized. Maybe I am observing this wrong, but it seems like the "Middle Way" of dialogue, understanding and compromise is slowly giving way to more and more shrill voices passionately defending their perspectives from opposite ends of the spectrum.
It's across all arenas, sometimes political, sometime religious, sometimes financial... and even undefined. If you don't have "strong opinion," you pretty much get bulldozed out of the way.
Signs of spring!
Yesterday, I was talking to a "friendly acquaintance" who's a regular visitor to our gallery... he just likes to come by several times a week and philosophize — at length — about current events, politics.
He's a very passionate fellow, and philosophically and politically occupies a space pretty far "to the right."
Cognitive Blindness
As we were talking and he was making his points — many of which involved massive criticisms of the political LEFT — I increasingly became aware of one of the pitfalls of holding tightly to a point of view, particularly when it might be considered controversial and inflammatory by many:
You tend to be at risk of growing blind to potential flaws in your perspective... perhaps because you spend so much time "being on the defensive" that you forget to reflect on that perspective and how you arrived at it. So you don't ever pause to examine it and even engage in some self-critique and a rational look at whether what you hold to be truth is keeping up with the ever-changing conditions in the surrounding environment.
Apricot blossoms...
Sometimes — to use a less than perfect metaphor — you are "yelling at your kid for not taking out the trash when they actually HAVE taken out the trash, and you'd KNOW that if you'd taken the time to look in the trash can."
Or railing on about the evils of some controversial legislation that has long since been repealed.
One of the problems/challenges for people who tend to be "firebrands" and "catalysts" is simply the tendency to forget to "check themselves."
And when they don't, they tend to become "yet another shrill and annoying voice," rather than the compelling agent of change they perhaps were hoping to be. But because of their myopic approach, they will continue to "shoot the messenger" even when that messenger is merely trying to point out that the (figurative) "war has already been won."
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Created at 190311 13:28 PST
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