NOVEMBER 8, FRIDAY

PERSONAL RESPONSE 6: A CHANGING WORLD

At some point it has occurred to me that with all this pointing at one tribe or the other for letting us down that we all are caught in a world that is changing so rapidly that we are unprepared for what is coming next. Working class Swannanoa residents blame the liberals for their loss of jobs when it is changes in technology that have turned everything upside down. The major factory in Swannanoa was the Beacon Blanket Company, reputed to be the largest blanket factory in the world. It was first located in the northeast, but move to Swannanoa because non union wages were lower here. It let Swannanoa because non union wages for making blanket were lower somewhere else. The reason for it leaving had nothing to do with the Federal government or one political party or the other. It happened because technological change in manufacturing and transportation and a globalizing of the world economy happened beyond anyone’s control. This change benefitted enormous numbers of people here and abroad including Swannanoans every time they shopped at Walmart. But it also dislocated a great number of people both here and abroad, in Swannanoa with factories closing in the Swannanoa valley. Fighting among ourselves and casting blame won’t solve the problem, only better jobs in the Swannanoa valley will, but the jobs will have to be in the new computerized economy not the old industrial economy.

MISINFORMATION

Another article I read claims that the reason MAGA people voted as they did was because they were misinformed. According to this article the fake news on Social Media is more present and powerful than the traditional news sources like the New York Times. I wouldn’t know because I don’t get any news from social media and get it all from legacy sites like the New York Times. So I probably am unaware of the power of misinformation on the social media. But even if this is true my feeling is that the reason people probably get their news on social media is because they are looking for news which enhances what they already believe. If they wanted objective reporting they would read the New York Times. If they feel unlistened to and oppressed by elite institutions they will distrust the New York Times and pay attention to whatever in social media amplifies their views. I guess what I am saying is if people are lied to by the social media, they read these lies probably because they want to lied to. They are not being fooled by social media any more than they are being conned by Donald Trump. They welcome being conned by both, because the con is what they truly believe and delight in.

GOING IT ALONE

In the end I am stuck with my own cultural upbringing, education and experience. This is what I have to go by. I may share cultural values with people who were brought up in similar situations as I was and who have had similar experience. But in the end I have to make my own idiosyncratic and probably nutty way. I guess I could look for a tribe on the Internet with similar values to mine and band together with them. But I am beginning to realize that tribalism, whatever holds the tribe together and gives people identity, is a part of the problem. My tribe excludes non tribalism’s. When it becomes my tribe versus another tribe then I become defensive and want my tribe to win. I am back to the sports analogy where winning is everything. But from my perspective winning is at the heart of the problem, is the problem itself.

I am left with something that seems almost sappy, almost cliche, and wildly unrealistic in a world where winning is everything. I am left with “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It is feeling empathy and acceptance for all of my fellow humans, if I could just do it, regardless of their tribe and to see the world from the point of view of their culture and upbringing and try my best to figure out or listen for solutions to problems. This is both unrealistic and creates vulnerability. Once he began preaching “love your neighbor as yourself” Jesus lived only three years before being nailed to a cross. Gandhi believed in listening and accepting and was shot for his beliefs, so was Martin Luther King.

But winning just doesn’t seem to lead to a solution, it just leads to blindness as Gandhi preached, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” This seems to describe where we are right now. So all this discussion about why the Democrats lost and MAGA won and how we can win the next election time seems pointless. Because it appears that we will be at each other’s throats, 50/50, far into the future without resolution.

But of course in a rapidly changing world, even if we listen to each other, charting a future in which we can live well together will be very difficult. It seems to me that in a world where we are turned upside down again and again by rapid change, technological and social, that every solution will be short lived before we are forced to shift again becasue of new problems which demand new solutions. Even with the best of will on all sides rapid change will be very hard to negotiate. But right now we are not even trying to listen to each other and not trying to negotiate new solutions.

So my quixotic solution now, for myself, which is so nutty that it wouldn’t satisfy anyone but seems to me to be the only way out so I’m stuck with it, is the primary suggestion by Jesus, which got him killed: love your neighbor as yourself. I’m almost ashamed to even suggest it, it is so dopey.