It’s not the politics.
This isn’t the worst I’ve seen it. I have seen much nastier. It was a junior high fight between two formidable opponents whose vocabulary and battle skills were far too immature to make it anything less than entertaining. But this current culture we are witnessing is drawing ever near that scene from my middle school days.
It’s not because we are lacking in knowledge and/or information. We’ve got the real, the fake and the polished arguments rising from both sides. Add in a little bit of social media, phones that carry more
technology than intelligence and you have a recipe for… well… for this current culture.
The mistake at this point would be to blame politics, religion or any other system of human making for this tragic mess we’ve produced.
I am not old by any means, but time and some seasoning have caused me to reevaluate many things, including my “battles”. I believe this battle is worth entering, but I refuse to stoop to the levels of irrationality I witness permeating this current national mayhem.
The core of this issue is not the issues. It’s the participants. You can no more blame the system than you can blame a car for crashing into a tree. It is the operator not the machine that is at fault. The most recent group of operators seem to have left their common decency and common sense in the toilet at home and what they have retrieved out of that toilet better describes their current core values.
What’s the problem? The selfishness of the human heart, unadulterated, pure and simple.
A wise man who knew and used great words once penned this as a guide for social interaction, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.” Even harder words were shared, “Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” The author of these ideals lived in a time much worse than the one we find ourselves in today. The brutality was much more inhumane than our tongue wagging and fault finding war of disagreements spouted today. He not only believed these words but lived them in that society.
Look out for the interests of others? Be humble and think of others as better than yourself? Are you nuts, Bill? Yep, just crazy enough to believe that if these simple thoughts would begin to infect our selfish control centers known as “hearts”, no dictator, politician, huckster, media source, religion, salesperson or devil could stand up very long to that type of overwhelming power.
I know you may think I’m talking about utopia, but I assure you I am not. I have no expectations that this type of servanthood model will be lived in all sectors of our world, and specifically our own nation. But I am just foolish enough to think that if I keep reminding myself and others, maybe one or two more will join the fight for the wellbeing (not perceived or politicized wellbeing) of our fellow men and women, not their downfall.
It’s just a thought, or might I say, a prayer.
