SEPTEMBER 2, 2021 – Out of respect for people’s privacy, I’ll refer to the lead characters of this post as “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D.” They are members of one big unhappy family that used to be happy. I am very well acquainted with each of them. The unhappiness that has descended upon them is political. Without divulging who among them is in which doghouse, I’ll disclose that the chasm between the two camps is unbridgeable.
What I find particularly distressing about this family schism is what it portends for our nation: this intra-clan conflict—not uncommon among many other families—is writ large upon our inter-tribal relations.
The familial turbulence in this instance is nothing new. It has defined the family’s inter-personal relationships for more than five years, but yesterday morning it reached new lows. One of the aforementioned characters informed me of communications that struck me as out-of-line, at least by the measure of civil discourse. The targets took serious issue with the “in-coming missiles” of opinion, expressed in the form of ad hominem arguments and mantras parroting the lead propaganda outlet of our times.
My point here, however, is not to parry with people whose worldviews deny or ignore critical facts. Discourse has become pointless if it’s even possible. Nowadays, everyone wields a sword of opinion, sometimes with a hilt made of facts and sometimes not, but in either case, everyone also holds a shield that is impervious to the force of an opponent’s sword—however sharpened by facts or dulled by falsehoods.
This does not bode well for the future.
Nor does resistance to the “magic wand” for fixing one of our nation’s biggest crises of the past 100 years—and given the casualty rate, the qualified superlative is no exaggeration.
In primitive times, contests over food, water, territory, or power—political or theological—were handled very simply: by clubs, knives, and spears. Eventually, everything got more complicated—matters in dispute and the methods of resolving disputes. Fast forward to 2021, and we now face multifarious problems of unprecedented complexity. Remarkably, we’ve developed a “magic wand” to eradicate one of them, and yet tens of millions of people resist.
All of which leads me to worry that if a critical number of people eschew a “magic wand” to resolve a complicated crisis, and texts from the closest kin are to be blocked because of offensive political attacks, how are we to survive? How can a pluralistic society of 330 million facing big-time issues of imponderable complexity forge effective responses to our many crises?
I fear a breakdown, not just in relationships—that’s already occurred with a vengeance. What worries me is that we’ve failed at self-governance, failed at problem-solving, failed at analytical thinking, failed at the process by which large groups of people learn to agree to disagree, let alone live together in relative peace and productive harmony. In short, I worry that we’ve lost the art of living civilized.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
