As I type here in this new year of 2024, I feel an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, emotional and physical reaction that I am choosing to associate with another ‘new’ year! I am most generally known by my friends to be a hard-core optimist. Yet I am feeling in to this new calendar year in a way that is not typical for me, and I am trying to dig deeper into what is for me a uniquely pessimistic outlook.
Intuitively, my reason for pessimism is that many of the outcomes I desire to have manifest are likely to have at best 50/50 popular support. In the past, as is also the case today, I mostly assumed my moderately progressive opinion to be similar to that of the main street constituency that I have always identified with. However, at this writing, I am not at all certain that that optimism resonates with my assumptions. My loss of confidence becomes uncomfortably clear as I peer into the futures of my children and grandchildren.
Today, there seems to be an extraordinary number of issues in the zeitgeist of the coming new year that are powerfully and specifically disagreeable. Politically, economically, environmentally, philosophically, spiritually, astrologically, and intuitively, they manifest as being more non-negotiable, argumentative and polarizing than they have ever been in the past. Yet, they offer little common ground for calm and reasoned discussion!
I enjoy a good debate, but I dislike unreasoned arguments. I can easily accept, and even appreciate, differences in reasoned opinion. However, because opinions, by definition, are not facts they also leave room for compromise. When debates devolve in to non-negotiable opinions there can be no resolution because the facts of the debate have not, or cannot be agreed upon. The intractability of people’s opinions has never seemed so divisive.
It feels to me, as we’ve turned around the calendar again, that civility, open-mindedness, tolerance, and reason, will be critical to assess the impact of the upcoming November’s election. As we assess the results, and ramifications, and the civility of the 2024 elections, I want to remain optimistic. I recognize my responsibility is to act with respect and deference to all whom I encounter regardless of their politics or opinions. It could be called divine neutrality.
As a parent I recently asked a friend with whom I was having a political discussion with how he thought the position he was advocating would affect our children? The ensuing 15 minutes became a disarming discussion with a completely different emotionality than our previous conversation had begun to assume. Or perhaps I might have just as effectively said “I never considered this discussion from your point of view, maybe we can identify some common ground to exist between us”?
Polarization, requiring that there be both winners and losers suggests that in the end there may be neither, but there certainly won’t be both! My thoughts now will be to adopt divinely neutrality as often as possible in every political discussion! To just allow and accept what anyone else thinks or feels, without anger or defense. I resolve that in this year of 2024 I will not engage in conversations which diminishes the greater good of any of the participants or subjects of the conversation!
I wish you peace and wellness, and respectful discourse! Mickey