MAY 10, SUNDAY

PUZZLING MY WAY ALONG

My response to David Brooks, which I was going to write a week ago and keep putting off, seems clumsy and somehow unthought out. But I keep puzzling my way along as I try to figure out how to make my way through a world that is polarized almost to the point of being hilariously comic. Here is an email which I got today from Donald Trump, by mistake no doubt. It is both comic and painful.

Right after I boarded Air Force One, I knew I had to get in contact with you.

My inner circle asked me not to send this out so soon, but I had to ask YOU this as soon as possible! I value your opinion so much! IT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT TO HOLD OUR MAGA MAJORITY DURING THE MIDTERMS! Without your support, my agenda will be BLOCKED, your safety will be at risk—and the Trump victories we’ve fought for together could vanish.

You’ve always stood by my side, so I know you won’t let me down! Everything could change if I lose a supporter as devoted as you, so please say that you will back MAGA ASAP!

RESPOND TO TRUMP

But an idea crossed my mind this week that seems related to David Brook’s article. It is a simple idea. We are each dropped here to earth by chance with a combination of DNA through our parents, nurturing into the culture into which we are brought up, with an inherited social status and identity. Finally, our own chance experiences in life, determine what is real to us. Through the combination of all of these things we feel our way the best way we can through whatever circumstances we are dropped into. Whether your are an Indian village girl destined an arranged marriage to a boy living in another village or you are born on Park Avenue into enormous wealth most of what guides you is either unconscious or beyond your control. If currently we are dropped into a MAGA family, and and grow up as a MAGA tribe member, often with a rural experience, we feel our way along in a MAGA way, if our enculturation and experience is as a liberal tribe member we feel our way along in a liberal way. Our identity, who we feel we are, is almost beyond our control although it is possible for us to be dislocated and change direction by experience.

What this realization means to me is that if we grow up conservative within a MAGA perspective we are not stupid, blind or ignorant, we are simply feeling our way through life as we find it. The same is true if we are brought up liberal and open to change. Being liberal doesn’t make us smart or knowledgable or morally superior, we are just making our way through life where we find ourselves. We are each doing the best we can and trying to live life as fully as we can. Who we are, our identity, comes to us by chance genetics, chance upbringing and chance experience.

Because of this, instead of demonizing those who are born into a different way of life it would make more sense to try and understand each other and to feel empathy for the different worlds we each live within and to become aware of why we are different and to realize that we simply are different from each other with what is real to each of us being beyond our choice or control.

Realizing this won’t resolve our differences but it will help us to accept that fact that we each are doing the best we can to make our way through life in a way that makes us feel fully alive. And it could be that by listening to each other there are some things we agree on and some things that the other person feels strongly that are life enhancing that we are missing out on.