Our Future Rests On This Simple Mindset. Do You See It Too?
The road ahead looks winding and dark. It doesn’t have to be.
We’ve lost our ability to keep an open mind. We don’t acknowledge each other but instead look and talk past each other. With a little dialogue and consideration, we can move the country in a new direction by doing what’s necessary to demonstrate social understanding.
The first step is to listen to someone else. Show up knowing and believing that connection with someone else who needs an ear can make a difference and vise versa.
Anyone that’s given such a gift will see the attributes and competencies that make you who you are. To listen is an act that compels respect.
But who’s doing the listening these days? Are you? I hate to say it, but probably not. Instead, you, like many of us, lean into your tribe’s rage and counter-arguments tune you out. You’re not alone.
You see this in our fractured politics. Not only is the body politic between the two major parties cracked, but Republicans have fissures between Conservatives and Moderates.
Meanwhile, Democrat’s progressives can’t seem to come together with their Moderates either.
The fact is both sides must find a way to relate in real terms and let go of the adjectives that label swaths of people by class, race, gender, sexual orientation, creed, illness, and more.
See, stereotyping doesn’t work. It oppresses. Your life is markedly different as every life is full of unique experiences. Knowing that you must remember the private pains someone suffers are in details we never see.
The Trigger Culture Has No Solution For Swaths
The road to common ground must begin by understanding that no trigger warning can keep at bay the devil in a memory.
To say this video, book, reading, etc. has incestuous themes will not assuage someone with a detailed recollection. Triggers manifest exacting images of a prior experience that create emotional surges. The outside world cannot address all of them as if it’s an issue for institutions to fully address. That’s and impossible task. There is no way to address all of them.
Triggers don’t just impact those affected by PTSD, eating disorders, sexual abuse, war, etc. All of society has a low tolerance for anything that disagrees with one’s constitution.
We aren’t in a space where you say tomato, and I’ll say toe-mah-toe, and then we’ll walk away agreeing to disagree. We are a society on edge. We’ve stopped talking.
And yet, how can we have real discussions, challenging discussions, heated and emotional discussions when we’re all triggered by our social, political, and cultural stances. We can’t.
We cannot afford to allow triggers to hinder social progress. We need a long game to resolve economic issues, social justice, healthcare, education reform, gun legislation, and poverty.
Furthermore, we could use one for mental illness, vaccines, taxes, minimum wage, women’s rights, and others too. What’s wrong with that?
Stopping Triggers Isn’t Easy
It’s hard work to engage with trauma. That said, whatever sets you off, those feelings belong to you, not anyone else. And for communities to function fully, everyone must own and manage themselves.
Emmanuel Acho, a former linebacker in the NFL from 2012–2015 and author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, was interviewed by Dan Patrick on the Dan Patrick Podcast (11/5/2020). During the interview, Acho talks openly about how triggers drive a close minded society. He says:
“There are so many visceral reactions based on terms in our current society that really turn people off. But until we open up our minds of understanding and open our hearts to understand, we won’t really see the unity we need.”
The bottom line on triggers is to warn is okay, but we cannot shelter these people from what’s true.
Shelters weaken while exposure empowers and strengthens one’s resolve. Exposure only presents weakness because pain can be de debilitating.
Yet, with time, pain wanes from seeing wide-eyed and clear-eyed. We must work to realize what’s true and what’s right about our pasts, be held personally accountability for our feelings, empathize with ourselves and show ourselves forgiveness.
All of this helps let go but only if you believe you can. And you can.
Open minds build mental toughness, require support from loved ones and the community.
Open minds may require medications, or more medications for that matter: whatever gives you time to stabilize so you can understand and process what triggers you in clear terms and plain language.
And understand it’s important to be open to the idea that you have much to offer. You need to return to the fold to deliver. Don’t let the anxiety from something that happened in the past withhold what you can give in the future.
The Media Needs to Balance Their Arguments
As widespread as the media is, it’s no backbone to promote possibility.
Too many outlets like MSNBC, FOX News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Facebook, Twitter, and even Tik Tok do nothing but reinforce our secular ideologies with sensationalized headlines, tweets, posts, message boards, and videos.
Whatever your viral vice is, it’s all in the palm of your hand, ringing and pinging with “breaking news,” tweets, and texts. And with the information buffet that the media is, the construct is the enemy of an open mind.
What it all stands for is actually nothing. It all represents just another day. Another noisy day filled with carnival barkers standing for whatever it is they’re standing for, pandering to whomever it is they’re pandering to.
They want to box you in and frame issues for you. No matter the outlet, the arguments are either very narrow or nuts, like you-should-quit-Twitter kind of nuts. Are they open minded? Hell no. And why? It’s all about making money.
If Rachel Maddow started asking her interviewees challenging questions, she’d lose her audience. They cannot afford to have on serious conservative voices who don’t agree with them. If they did, MSNBC would be in creditor’s court.
I give credit to CNN. During this election season, Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican, sat in on their primetime political panels. Sure, he was, and is, knocked around for his ideas, but Santorum serves the purpose.
He’s a contrasting voice relative to David Axelrod, Gloria Borger, and Van Jones. You don’t have to agree.
Here’s the thing: Santorum made for a richer, more productive panel and we need more of that from the other media stations. CNN said we’ll present the arguments, and we’ll let you, dear viewer, decide, so keep an open mind.
You Choose Your Own Influences
The secret to societal stress, in my estimation, is by mastering the art of looking past our differences. Acho, in his interview with Dan Patrick, points to how we can wear many facades, and it comes down to how we choose what influences us and what we let influence us. He says:
“…I played in the locker room for the [greater] better part of my life. And people say, ’Well Emmanuel, in the locker room, people look past race, Dan, they look past religion, because we’re all fighting towards a common goal. But in America, the reason we have so many divides is that we’re not all fighting toward the common goal. We don’t all realize oppression exists, racism may exist, systemic racism exists, so, Dan, if you’re not fighting toward a common goal, then you end up fighting each other…. In the locker room, you can overlook your differences, but in the world, we struggle to.”
Open minds can help see another person as, well, a person. Listen to what ails them, and you can see their problem and why it’s stressful.
In The Journal of Social and Political Society, Thomas Pettigrew underwent an extensive study of Trump supporters. One of Pettigrew’s more interesting findings is Trump supporters feel relatively deprived.
Unlike absolute deprivation, Trump adherents feel deprived compared to what they expected to possess at this point in their lives and relative to what they erroneously perceive other “less deserving” groups have acquired.
Although you may not read about it in your newspaper, Facebook, and Twitter streams, or see it on YouTube and Tik Tok videos, many Americans, not just Trump supporters, feel this relative deprivation in some way, shape, or form.
The question is, can we talk about it openly, honestly, without angst, rage, bullets, and fisticuffs?
Trump supporter or not, the sadness of relative deprivation is we don’t understand what it means because we don’t live with another person’s affliction.
We don’t know what it’s like for someone who struggles with the trappings of unemployment and how that impacts one’s life trajectory, not just career.
Truth be told, life is hard and everyone has their own set of problems and circumstances — good and bad. It’s hard to row another man’s boat when you have to row your own. And when you need help and understanding, that’s frustrating.
The Open Road Ahead
Here’s are the questions:
Are we open minded enough to consider what doesn’t happen to me can happen to you?
Didn’t the George Floyd incident teach us bad people are out there? Didn’t the eight minute and forty six second video prove it’s possible an ardent, right-wing police officer may not be impacting your community, but may be doing just that in the next town over and that’s a problem. What about a hard-core Progressive officer?
Didn’t Sandy Hook teach us innocent children are at risk? Are you open-minded enough to understand that open minds can spur actions to stop prowling motivations?
Also, can we listen to others who struggle with generational issues like the mom who has to deal with her mother who won’t take her pills while at the same time trying to get out of the house to take her son to karate class?
Can we talk about what it’s like to find out insurance won’t cover medications?
And can we talk about all these issues without anger, hostility, or teeing up defenses? Open minds do just that.
Fear Can Be Our Downfall
Fear is a terrible thing. That alone can ruin us.
Look at gun owners. They fear the government is coming for their guns. They fear that the boundaries granted to them by the second amendment will no longer apply once the government confiscates their weapons.
The second amendment draws a clear line between what the government can and cannot do for the gun owner. It’s a line gun owners don’t want anymore, which is funny really. In school, we learn The Constitution limits government, so the country doesn’t go the way of Belarus, Hungary, or Poland.
But when it comes to taking guns, advocates say The Constitution’s boundaries will dissolve. This presents a fundamental problem our Founders thought they had covered over 240 years ago — if one of the Constitution’s restraints disappear, what other one’s can do so too?
This line of thinking makes sense. It’s logical.
However, when you hear others say, “we’re fighting for our democracy,” they’re saying we’re fighting for civil society. But reclaiming civility, which is already a frail concept, takes agreement. And agreement takes an open mind.
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