No tags yet.
This summer allowed for more free time in my life than I knew what to do with. Less going meant more peace to think about things. So this summer I did just that; I thought. And questioned. Mostly, undocumented. Although I cease to have a great quantity of journal entries in remembrance of each thought that has possessed me, the moments which caused them linger. Moments in the past two months that I simply spent time listening to people have proved to hold more value than anything I read, watch, or talk about. Listening to people complain. Listening to people contest. Listening to people purely express their views about what's going on in this country. Instead of being the controlling participant in conversations, I remained passive. Instead of talking, I blatantly listened. I listened to family, friends, and people in the checkout line in Hanaford as they rambled about unfourtunate events and the 3 million problems in relation to US public policy.
See, it took me until this point in my life to really understand the value of going silent in a conversation. You learn a whole lot about the individual talking, based on the words they say (and the way that they express those words). You learn a whole lot about the other people who are listening, based on their reactions to the speaker. But over all else, you learn a whole lot about yourself. In relation to politics, it's rather simple to understand the underlying reasons behind the engagements that people have within conversations. When one disagrees, their face twists in anguish and they purse their lips to keep from belting a; "YOU'RE WRONG!" And the opposite, when one agrees, their lips upturn as their head pulses up and down in total agreement, eye contact with the speaker never wavering. Naturally, people react in an emotional way. Which makes absolute sense-politics are supposed to be emotional.
Before this summer, I was already aware of the fact that people disagree. A lot. But what I was oblivious to was the presence of polarizing statements in political conversations. By presence, I mean abundance. In every conversation I listened in on, at least one person used some type of logical fallacy to rip their opposition apart. To make themselves feel "right". To dignify their point of view. For example, at a dinner table conversation, the topic of teen political influencers was brought up. I was essentially the only person at that table who did not classify myself as a conservative-although, everyone assumed that I did. A statement that stuck with me more than others was "I'm so happy that we have people like Ben Shapiro on the internet. God forbid my kids started thinking that these crazy liberals are rational!" To this day, my questions in response to this statement continue to multiply.
I won't lie though. My first was; "why are conservatives so ignorant?" A polarizing question. But I wanted to know, and I still want to know why people have such fear of the other side. Is it really because they think their opposition could cause damage, or is there more to it? Aren't we all being a little irrational here?
I do know that most of us don't fully acknowledge the words we use, and the way that we use them. Maybe if we took a little more time and care in picking them, an effect would be made. Or maybe if we actually listened points that contradict our own at all, an effect would be made.