Break the Silence

Every week. Different and more complex than the one before. The conversation about the ruptures in society is on. I celebrate that we are now having difficult discussions. Ones that are uncomfortable. Stressful. Hard. 

The News Media is Destroying Itself. i.e., "By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who’d made politically “problematic” editorial or social media decisions."

Blogs like The Not So United States where the author posits that the United States is "Divided politically, socially, and economically, it currently appears we are a fractured country with no hope of being repaired. I say that not to paint a pessimistic view of the future but rather accept the harsh reality in which we currently find ourselves."

Or Sam Harris' Podcast 

episode: Can we pull back from the brink? It's a long one. And here is a transcript. I related to his discussion that: 

All we have between us and the total breakdown of civilization is a series of successful conversations. If we can’t reason with one another, there is no path forward, other than violence. Conversation or violence.

He goes on: 

This isn’t just politics and human suffering on display. It’s philosophy. It’s ideas about truth—about what it means to say that something is “true.” What we’re witnessing in our streets and online and in the impossible conversations we’re attempting to have in our private lives is a breakdown in epistemology. How does anyone figure out what’s going on in the world? What is real? If we can’t agree about what is real, or likely to be real, we will never agree about how we should live together. And the problem is, we’re stuck with one other.

I thought his framing was strong but, as his one sided-conversation went on, it seemed to lack intellectual humility, particularly with the use of selective data, pulled from data sets that are no doubt flawed. He wasn't asking a lot of questions. He wasn't inviting openness. And that seems to be the bar for relevance.

He may well be right about many of the facts of police brutality but as my friend commented: One thing I’ve learned from marriage is that sometimes you can be right at the wrong time.

I wonder if we are more divided than ever before or if the divisions have a louder and more prominent voice than ever before?

 It also might feel more divided to those who are used to being part of what felt like consensus. If you haven’t had the experience of routinely staying silent or biting your tongue for fear of professional repercussions, it might be challenging to understand. 

Ultimately, I find these personal reflections say more about the author than the world around them. And that's great. That’s progress. Breaking the silence.

In many of the accounts above, there is this notion that 'truth is truth'. This might be obvious to you, but I'll say it nonetheless: as I've gone on in life, the more I appreciate that there is no such thing. Seeking truth is the best you can do. Even programmers and computer scientists acknowledge that 'truthy is the source of a lot of bugs'. Indeed. 

Chuck Klosterman in But What If We're Wrong? Thinking about the present as if it were the past writes about notions of truth in historical context brilliantly.

He quips:

Subjective facts are well-considered opinions held by multiple people at the same time. 

and

Here’s the thing with paradigm shifts: they tend to be less dramatic than cultural memory suggests. 

and

It’s impossible to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow.

and

We now have immediate access to all possible facts. Which is almost the same as having none at all.

and

Klosterman’s Razor: the philosophical belief that the best hypothesis is the one that reflexively accepts its potential wrongness to begin with.

and

We spend our lives learning many things, only to discover (again and again) that most of what we’ve learned is either wrong or irrelevant. A big part of our mind can handle this; a smaller, deeper part cannot. And it’s that smaller part that matters more, because that part of our mind is who we really are (whether we like it or not).

and

History is a creative process (or as Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “a set of lies agreed upon”). The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too.

Timeless wisdom. Let's think about the present as if it were the past!