It’s Almost Time. The Day is Near: One Action of Our Pen, One Word to Someone We Speak with, One Instance of Caring Can Have More Affect Than We Realize

Where do we find comfort, or answers when it feels time itself might stop? When the idea of a specific future event makes us shake with dread and anxiety one minute, anticipation and hope the next?

 

Humans, in the past, and many in the present, look to the natural world, especially the weather for answers pertaining to the human, social world. If it’s raining this moment, we might think it a prediction or metaphor for the next moment. On September 26, the southeast U. S suffered the devastating destruction of Helene, and less than 2 weeks later, Milton. Yet, in the northeast just a few days ago, many witnessed the northern lights, then a supermoon. And the fall colors; the forests, hills and mountains are so painted in beauty. What is the answer in nature?

 

We might look to the news like we look to the weather. We look at polls, which show Harris with barely a 1-point lead. We look for events and new information that might turn the tide. On Friday of last week, Jack Smith was able to get Judge Chutkin to allow new details to be unsealed regarding DT’s actions to interfere in the 2020 election. One document gave insight into his thinking on Jan. 6, when he incited his followers in the Capitol to “fight like hell”. He then returned to the White House, sat down by the tv, asked a staffer to bring him a diet coke, and did nothing for hours but watch his speech and listen as the rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence.” Any other year, any other campaign, this revelation would turn the tide and mean the end of his political career. Any other year, any other campaign, Jan. 6 would’ve meant the end of his freedom.

 

Or at an appearance for Univision, the largest Spanish news network in the US, he called the attempted coup at the Capitol “a day of love.” Really? Love? The participants were aghast. One told DT “I had voted for you in the past” and was formerly registered as a Republican, but your “action and maybe inaction” regarding the coronavirus and January 6 was “a little disturbing.” “What happened during January 6, and the fact that you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol…” And “during the coronavirus your administration misled the public. Many lives could have been saved if you had better informed us. “ He asked DT “why should I want to support you” when so many members of his former administration, even his former Vice President, don’t support him.

 

DT replied with a swath of lies. He said, “You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election.” He said no one was killed on Jan. 6 except for one of his supporters. He failed to mention the police officer who died from injuries sustained from the attack, or the four others who committed suicide, and the140 who were injured.

 

As described by Julia Conley in an article in Common Dreams, “Univision‘s camera panned over a section of the audience as Trump replied to [the questioner], showing one woman visibly shocked as the former president claimed ‘no one was killed’ in the riot…” We can witness DT’s lies for ourselves on X. Any other year, any other campaign, this performance would mean the end of his political career….

 

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Let Care, Reliable Facts, and Compassion Be Our Guide, Not Just Fear and Anger: History Can Help Us Understand that an Opposing Viewpoint Can Be a Lesson to Be Understood, Not an Evil to be Destroyed

Do you ever listen to Travel With Rick Steves on NPR? I love the program. It usually focuses on places to visit in different areas of the world. But this time, the focus was on how 3 countries in Europe were dealing with autocracy. Steves interviewed tour guides from each country. They talked about the reality of life in a dictatorship; and how countries that were once dictatorships and now democracies are learning what it is to live with freedom⎼ to live with the power to make political decisions that could greatly change their lives. The program was reassuring and provided clarity to my thoughts and emotions regarding the election.

 

A few countries in Europe had democratically elected leaders who were trying to end democracy. One from the more distant past was Hitler. Another, more recently, is Victor Orban, in Hungary. Both were elected on a platform to stop political instability or stop a perceived immigration crisis. They elected leaders who claimed, “Only I can fix it.”

 

We in the US have lived in a democracy since 1776. People all over the world envy the political power we citizens have. Yet not so long ago many of us were saying, “why should I vote?” Or “there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between the two parties.” Today, the differences between parties are dramatic.

 

Steves’ program gave me a broader perspective on our own country and the threats we now face from DT and his Christian, white nationalist and/or fascist agenda. It taught me how a country can recover from a dictator or would-be dictator and the hate he can incite. I realized all sorts of changes are possible; change can take away our freedom or increase it. It can undermine our concern for other people or strengthen it.

 

The fear of a loss of our rights, or anger against the threat from a would-be DT dictatorship, is not the only reason to vote, or to do whatever we can to get out the vote.

 

Tomasz Klimek took us to Poland which is now a democratic country. But they had to fight Communism to get their freedom and only succeeded fairly recently. It’s a country that, even since achieving democracy, saw voters swing both right and left in their choices. But the swings were not extreme, more slightly one way or slightly another. Because they had to fight for freedom recently, people vote in large numbers.

 

They don’t tend to treat opponents as enemies, as the GOP in the US are now doing.

 

Klimek said autocrats focus on one enemy, like immigrants, to demonize. But modern Poland united to help the Ukrainian people. They united out of concern for a neighbor.

 

Andrea Makkay, from Hungry, talked about how people elected a leader who then took away many of their freedoms. They had had a history of turmoil, from Mongol invaders to Soviet Communist dictatorship, and so didn’t, and still don’t, know what it is to live democratically. They don’t feel their power or think they can make a change. They are only learning the hard way….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project. Thank you.

A Political Sparring Match: He Lied So Smoothly the Smoothness Remained in the Air Longer than the Obviousness of the Lie

Last night, I felt like I was witnessing a boxing match, not a debate. But instead of using fists covered in gloves, they were using words, smirks, and smiles. Sometimes, it felt like I wasn’t watching but participating, or that I wish I was participating, or wish that my words could be up there. My anxiety was certainly right there. Because it felt so personal. It felt like my life was up there, the life of my neighbors and all those I loved, maybe the whole world was up there.

 

But first, the setting. Hurricane Helene, fueled by the increased ability of air warmed by climate change to hold more water, just a week ago brought devastating rains, winds, and floods, making it one of the worst and deadliest storms to hit the US in history.

 

In the Middle East and Ukraine, the wars continue. I, like so many millions, have been appalled, frightened by the violent destruction there. The violence disturbs me terribly. Not only the initial horrifying attacks by Putin in Ukraine and Hamas in Israel, but what has followed. But my feeling of horror is now focused on Netanyahu ordering Israeli forces to spread the war from Gaza to Lebanon to root out threats to Israel. But by doing so, thousands of innocents are being killed, homes and infrastructure totally decimated.

 

And I don’t know but wonder, as some news sources do, whether Netanyahu is purposefully prolonging the war to serve not his people but his own personal motivations. For example, to avoid possible prosecution, and to stay in power by satisfying his religious conservative base, (like his friend, DT?) and frustrate President  Biden’s continuing efforts to negotiate peace and free hostages.

 

And, in the U. S., of course, there’s this extremely contentious election, where one candidate has been indicted or convicted of several criminal charges, with new evidence of wrongdoing and court filings being revealed even today. And in retribution, threatens to imprison his political rivals if he gets elected to office.

 

So, this is background. Some commentators remarked on the relatively tame or civil proceedings. J. D. Vance on one side, slickly, sickly throwing words and lies like punches, trying to knock out the more neighborly Tim Walz. But Walz would not go down, physically or morally. In fact, he seemed to feed on the attacks, getting stronger and stronger as the night wore on, trying to counter lies with facts. At times, he seemed so filled with ideas he couldn’t get them out fast enough. Or he seemed shocked by Vance’s ability to lie so smoothly the smoothness remained in the air longer than the obviousness of the lie.  And so Walz sometimes stumbled. But he always rose up again. And by the end, he dealt a blow that woke up the world, I hope.

 

And I feared some people would forget that lies, no matter how often repeated, are still lies; that threats, no matter how smoothly repeated, are still dangerous.

 

The last topic of the debate was the 2020 election and DT’s refusal to admit he had lost and peacefully turn over his office to the rightful and obvious winner, President Biden….

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Once We Break the Bonds Committing Us to Truth, All the Beasts of the Human Mind Can Be Released: The Shot that Rang Out from the Golf Course

I was unnerved, so very disturbed by the shot that rang out yesterday (9/15) from a Florida golf course.

 

And it wasn’t only because the shooter seems to have intended to aim at, and kill a fellow human being, and a presidential candidate, but was thankfully thwarted by a Secret Service agent. That intention is despicable enough. But the whole context was shocking, the timing, the election. Just when a shift in people’s perception of DT was being reported, from the polls, and the debate⎼ just when so many more people had been coming to recognize the craziness he spreads to all of us, the threat, and then this happened.

 

And now, this newest example of intended gun violence is sharing the media news cycle with how DT would lie, say or do almost anything to get his way, no matter who he might hurt. How he used racist lies about Haitian immigrants to rile up his base, to shock and destabilize our nation and spread anger, hate, and the sense of continuous threat. And the result of his comments? Bomb threats and other violence are being aimed at those he maligned and hurt, and the city they live in. He and his VP were just beginning to be held accountable in many media sources when the Secret Service agent’s shot rang out.

 

But the mere attempt to kill a political leader in this country is shocking.

 

DT has continuously, from 2016 to today, viewed our nation through a dark lens, describing us as a crime-ridden, failed, “third world” country. He talks about not being able to go out for a loaf of bread without being raped, mugged, or shot at. Most of us go out every week without getting mugged or raped or shot at. Despite FBI statistics showing a historic 26.4 reduction in murders and similar reductions in rape, robberies, and crime overall in 2024, we might still fear violence due to the anger, hate, and sense of grievance DT stirs up. He helps create the division and violence he describes and attributes to others.

 

For example, his violent rhetoric has helped turn compromise into a dirty word, helped  turn people who have different viewpoints into enemies. He undermines political cooperation by turning discussion from a way to share viewpoints and create a greater understanding, to a way to destroy opposition. He thus undermines democracy itself.

 

In a specious manner, he makes claims that the violence he incited was caused by those who have revealed his role in said violence. For example, he said President Biden was trying to overthrow the United States by saying DT was a threat to democracy. Meanwhile, on Jan. 6 it was DT who actually tried to overthrow the constitution and the will of the American people (and then continued to lie about it ever since). His statements misrepresent the facts and the blame is his own.

 

His constant lying undermines not only the specific facts he distorts, but a general sense of truth, or reality. Once we break any commitment to truth, all the dark, imagined, feared beasts lying dormant in our minds can be released….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Just Listen to What He Says. Listen: Many Report on the Drip of Normalcy and Neglect the Flood of Offensive Nonsense

If we doubt that much of the corporate media is helping DT with the way they cover him, just listen to what he actually says. We just need to listen, carefully, if we can stand it.

 

Even I, when I read the text of his statements, find myself normalizing him. I read or listen and look for a drop of normalcy, or for how his followers would hear him. I subconsciously do the work he wouldn’t do and look for meaning or critical thinking amidst all the gibberish, and then dismiss the gibberish. But right there on the page, right there on the screen where he stands, his words are often nonsense, and offensive, frightening nonsense.

 

The major reason he’s still in this race, and not being laughed off the stage, is because so many of those who support him are locked behind a wall of disinformation or bias and fictionalize him, and those who report on him are either afraid of him and told to normalize him by corporate higher-ups, or are inured to his weirdness and self-absorption. Many see the drip of normalcy and neglect the flood of incoherent, belligerent, and offensive inanity. We must not allow ourselves to get so used to him to the point that he uses us.

 

The recent debate provided a good example of his belligerent inanity. I almost felt sorry for him a couple of times because he was so out of his depth, so lost and out of control. He had no facts to show he cared about issues and people, and often pushed beyond the debate agreements of 2 minute comments to aggressively ramble on with conspiratorial lies.

 

And the simplistic, malignant nature of these lies almost surprised me. I didn’t expect him to so blatantly repeat on national tv the weird crazies he repeats on smaller stages. For example, his old debunked refrain about millions coming across the border to steal and rape, even repeating racist disinformation about Haitians stealing pets to eat them. He ignored the fact that most Haitians in the city were here legally, and immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes then other U. S. residents, certainly less likely than DT himself.

 

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” said Trump. The police and other city officials have repeatedly said there were no such reports, but DT claimed it was true because he saw it somewhere on tv.

 

Of course, when asked directly at the debate if he wanted the Ukrainians to win the war to defeat Russian invaders, or if he would veto a national abortion ban, he showed his true values and that, maybe his ramblings serve a purpose all his own, and refused to answer the actual question asked.

 

Recently, at a Fox “News” town hall, he was asked about the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia that led to four deaths and multiple injuries. DT avoided the question to talk about the support he received from Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán, the same autocrat he mentioned at the debate as a foreign ruler who respects him.

 

“’It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons…’ Trump said. ‘And we’re going to make it better, you know, Viktor Orban made a statement, he said, ‘bring Trump back and we won’t have any problems.’ He was very strong about that.’” Never a comment about gun safety, or a sliver of compassion for the victims and their families….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Don’t Miss the Meditation Bell of Crickets: When the Nerves of Life are Fully Sensitized, and the Song of Life is Played so Beautifully

Every year, the sound of crickets acts as a reminder. They’re almost like a meditation bell for me. They bring me here, to this moment. When I was teaching, and it was a late August evening, I’d go out on the deck of my rural home and just listen. I’d feel the summer ending⎼ the time of warm weather and flowers, the time of my youth when summer meant vacation; the time of my adult and teaching years when it meant relaxation and renewal⎼ this time was getting short. It was passing so quickly.

 

It can feel like we didn’t make the most of it, so we need to make the most of it now.  Maybe every day, every moment, we can have this sense. This moment is our only time, maybe our last time, to just relax⎼ to hear the song of crickets⎼ to hear the song of life played so clearly and beautifully. We don’t want to let distractions steal too much of the day from us.

 

So, maybe we can sit quietly with ourselves or our children, and listen not only to the crickets, but birds, and other voices. We can hear the earth breathing in the wind, the rain, and in the expanding and contracting of our lungs, or in the hum of cicadas or traffic.

 

Henry David Thoreau famously said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.…. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

 

This was quoted by the main character, a teacher, in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which my high school English and drama students embraced one year. Questioned. Sucked out the marrow of meaning. Chanted Carpe Diem.

 

This is distinctly different, even opposite to FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out, which can cause us such anxiety. It involves, yes, a type of seeing, understanding, and experiencing, basically on social media platforms. But it arises from constantly comparing our self with others; comparing what I am, know, have and have experienced, with what I imagine others feel, value, think of me. And then our sense of self-worth becomes dependent on that comparison, so we always come up short, lacking. There’s a sort of commodification of one’s life here, an adding up of one’s experiences as one would add up money in a bank.

 

With Thoreau, who lived from 1817-1862, there was no such comparison involved, and a notable reduction in anxiety. He lived about 140 years before social media was introduced. And if he was alive today, I can’t imagine him spending much time on a cell phone. He favored ponds, lakes, and forests as his soul places. Each moment of life was to be lived for itself, for quality and depth, with no separating of oneself from the reality of ourselves, of others, or from the woods to make comparisons with others.

 

The crickets also remind us of all that might pass if we don’t notice it and act⎼ and not just of summer. Each noticed ending is the now of a beginning.

 

This fall is particularly poignant, frightening, and intense. Our minds, our nerves are fully sensitized and awake….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Worried About Your Finances and Your Future? He’s Just So Incoherent, So Racist, and So Weird

This question can give me nightmares: how can people follow him? Economic matters, high costs, have been of such concern for so many of us. But which Presidential candidate might best help reduce these burdens? And which candidate would protect our vote, our power and rights so we could influence government policies to serve our needs? Wouldn’t that take someone who cares about the quality of regular people’s lives?

 

DT said the following on 7/26/24: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore…. [For in] four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…” In other words, vote for me now, and you’ll never be able to vote again?

 

He said of V.P. Kamala Harris “She was Indian all the way, and then she became black.” And “She is a DEI hire.” As if a woman, or someone black just isn’t talented enough to earn on her own merit any important position, for example as a prosecutor, Senator, Vice President or President?

 

He even told his own nephew, whose son has a physical disability, “these people (with disabilities), all the expenses…they should just die.” And a few years later he literally told his nephew he should just let HIS OWN SON die because of his physical disabilities. Would this person care at all about the majority of us except to get our votes?

 

Commentator Brian Tyler Cohen added⎼ DT threw his own VP candidate under the bus by saying: You’re not voting for a VP candidate—you’re voting for me. This reminds me of how he treated his former VP, when he stood by watching the Jan. 6 insurrectionist mob chant “hang Mike Pence”? Only I am important. And maybe DT’s right to dismiss his new VP choice, who said in 2021, the nation is run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies,” who have no stake in America and are miserable at their own lives. America must go to war against the idea that women don’t have to have children. And: people without children are “psychotic,” “deranged.”

 

Over the last 5 years, many people have had to face awful choices due to high prices for purchasing a home, food, or other goods. But: Will a person who cares only for himself improve the economic situation for most of us if he ever became President again? Or: Would we be better off now if he had lost his influence once he had lost the 2020 election?

 

DT boasts about his great economy. From the distance of 4 years, the past might seem better than the present. We might forget the harmful chaos of the DT administration. And who really benefitted, especially in the long run, from his economic policies? Did his economy help cause the pain many of us now feel?

 

The only big economic legislation he helped pass was the 2017 tax act, which heavily favored the rich. “As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.[2]” Most of us had a temporary tax cut; corporations (and thus rich executives) had a permanent one, from 35% to 21%. As a result, government income was greatly reduced, and a heavily increasing debt was created.

 

In testimony to The Senate Committee on Budget and Policy Priorities, Samantha Jacoby, a tax and legal analyst, said:

Cutting corporate taxes costs significant revenue, and evidence is sorely lacking that the benefits have trickled down. Executives, disproportionately wealthy corporate shareholders, and highly paid employees have reaped virtually all the economic gains from the corporate rate cuts, research suggests.

With less money going from the rich to the government, the rest of us pay more, for schooling, to maintain infrastructure, to finance health and science organizations, for the military, etc. By 2019, DT was leading the nation into a total downfall that had begun even before the pandemic….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Biden v DT: What is the REAL Debate? Only Action by All or Enough of Us Can Save Us

Even before a word was uttered, it was difficult to believe what we saw. So much hype. So many emotions. So many watching. So much on the line.

 

When he first emerged, I couldn’t quite read DT. He seemed a bit unsteady but determined. President Biden looked stiff, like he was fighting something internally.  With the first question, he hesitated, couldn’t get his words out clearly. With his stumbling, it seemed, at first, that I was witnessing the destruction of our future.

 

At the end, a commentator on MSNBC, as well as former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, called it “kind of a Defcon 1 moment.” The fate of democracy, this election, had reached a threat level of DEFCON 1. Some called for Biden to step aside.

 

Meanwhile, columnist Scott Dworkin said Biden won the debate by a landslide and DT should’ve stayed home. He had good reasons to say so, but a landslide? No, or at least not at first look.

 

While Biden was giving his first, halting, almost indecipherable response, looking like he had a cold or the flu, DT seemed to be smirking. Like he had caught the opponent he had long dreamed of. Like he had his enemy in a trap and was salivating at the thought of attack. And attack he did. That was all he did all night. Attack. He showed he was good at attacking. But we all knew that.

 

He showed that he was just familiar enough with truth to know how to fashion the most outrageous lies. He knew he was a criminal, so he called President Biden a criminal. He knew he was an incompetent President, so he accused Biden of being one. He knew he disparaged soldiers and the military as “suckers and losers”; he knew he had said of Senator John McCain, a captured war hero, “He’s not a war hero…I like people who weren’t captured.” So, at the debate he denied calling soldiers “suckers and losers,” and attacked Biden’s use of the military.

 

In contrast with Biden, who shows empathy and concern for others, DT cares almost nothing about anyone but himself. So, in the debate he said he had a gigantic heart. Come on. He knew he struggled with mental acuity, so he claimed he had passed competency tests. Look at me, the genius. The genius who avoided more questions than he answered. A genius who had sacrificed millions to COVID through his malignant incompetence and lies.

 

A genius who used lines modeled on or borrowed from Hitler. A genius who pushed tax cuts to the rich, calling them a tax cut for all. But it resulted in a tremendous increase in the debt, and a tremendous shift of wealth and power to the rich, leaving the rest of us to pick up the bills. A genius at deception, at lies, yes.

 

In fact, the section of the debate on the economy was, according to Dworkin and others, one of Biden’s best moments. “There was no inflation when I became president,” Joe Biden said. “You know why? The economy was flat on its back. He decimated the economy. Absolutely decimated the economy. That is why there was no inflation at the time. There were no jobs.” Biden mentioned DT’s new tax plan for the rich which would, according to most economists, cripple our economy and raise the de facto tax burden for 99% of us up to $8300, while reducing the burden on the superrich….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

A Convicted Felon, Finally: When the Language of Democracy is Used to Destroy Democracy, Or the Language of Legal Matters is Used to Destroy the Rule of Law

It’s been almost 2 weeks, and I’m still amazed to know DT was convicted, and so quickly and definitively by the jury. I heard the news just as I was worrying about the possible effects of a not guilty verdict. What a relief!

 

Yet, it was disturbing to hear GOP politicians continue to or even increase their desperate attempts to defend him from his conviction. Who knows what chaos and instability they might yet create? They echo DT’s baseless claim of a justice system “rigged” against him and the GOP, despite the blatant example of Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict being announced less than 2 weeks after DT was convicted. They do this despite the fact DT was given such special treatment, and treated so gingerly, and fairly, with breaks and delays that no one else would ever be given.

 

During the trial and afterwards, the GOP who tried to protect him did not spend much time presenting evidence of his innocence or pressuring him to testify in his own defense. Instead, they focused on attacking, seeking vengeance against anyone who tried to hold him responsible. Many GOP either lied about or attacked the justice system itself, the judge, his family, witnesses for the prosecution; and now they’re going after the jurors. One pro-DT forum accused Judge Merchan of treason and suggested that he should be hanged.

 

DT’s followers just revealed a blind obedience to their leader and a craving for power, calling for politically motivated investigations of Democrats. They cover their own weaponization of government (for example, using the power to investigate supposed wrongdoing by House committees) by accusing others of weaponization. For over a year they searched to find, or to create, something illegal to accuse President Biden of doing; and they found nothing. They recently went after Attorney General Merrick Garland, and for two years, they pursued Dr. Fauci, and they looked foolish in the face of witness testimony.

 

These GOP do this not only for retribution, but to undermine the rule of law itself. They want to hide the facts of this obviously fair jury trial behind clouds of distortions or lies. Maybe they hope to make this fair trial seem as suspect as their own investigations.

 

I should be inured by such acts by now, after 8 years of hearing DT and his followers spout ridiculous and malicious claims. On the street, they can get away with lying or saying almost anything that pops into their heads. In the courtroom, to say anything they must first meet a burden of proof.

 

Each of us who cares about having the vote⎼ or having the freedom and right to speak our minds⎼ the right to control our own healthcare, our own bodies⎼ the right to clean air and water and a livable planet⎼ the right to have free public education, not enforced religious indoctrination⎼ the right to have a jury of our peers and to be presumed innocent unless proven otherwise, instead of being presumed guilty unless we support a DT dictatorship⎼ each of us needs to do all we can to speak up and get out the vote in November if we want to stop the DT/GOP from taking all of this and more from us.

 

No matter how compassionate we are or try to be, it can be difficult to even look at him….

 

*To read the whole article, please use this link to The Good Men Project.

Healing Divisions, Both in Ourselves and With Others: The Brittle Weakness Exposed by Not Compromising

There’s the old, oft-repeated story, that if frogs are placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated, they will not realize the danger of eventually being boiled alive until it’s too late. However, says psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant, frogs will leap out as soon as they sense the heat. But we human beings are feeling the increasingly hotter world temperatures caused by climate change but are not leaping out and are not doing all we can to turn the heat off.

 

Maybe frogs are more intelligent than humans. Or maybe we are just too good at imagining reality as being other than it is?  At creating “alternate facts” and diversions? Or are too many of us just afraid of change? Or too traumatized?

 

How do we loosen the boundaries in ourselves? How do we let go of rigid ideas of who we are or must be or of what is real? And how do we help others do the same?

 

One of the biggest obstacles to changing anyone else’s mind, or our own, is realizing not only it can be done but it’s happening all the time. For example, before 2012, the country was opposed to gay marriage. In 2013, the majority supported it. In 2015, the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same sex marriage.

 

Another science journalist, David McRaney, in his book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, argues we evolved to work to consensus, to helpful adaptation. But it can happen in punctuated spurts, times of great argument and division and no clear change, then a sudden burst of change. Hopefully, we’re near such an evolutionary adaptation now.

 

And lately, I’ve found in myself this same resistance to facing people with rigidly held opposing ideas. It seems impossible to reach or even talk with those who disagree with me about climate change, or the “Big Lie,” for example. With the global earth and ocean temperatures rapidly reaching such high levels, the increasing number of dangerous weather events, wildfires, droughts, and floods all make climate change seem so obvious. And I saw the 1/6 attempted coup and the big lie enacted live on national tv. It just feels like what seems so clear to me should not be so hard for others to see.

 

But part of that difficulty comes from the fact that for all of us, our beliefs and even rationally constructed understandings of the world are the ground our lives stand on⎼ or appear to stand on. To question those views can feel like we’re washing away the ground under our feet; it can feel like abandoning our sense of ourselves.

 

In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,  Grant points out we often prefer the “comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.” We resist rethinking, or talking with those with different views, not only because of the time and energy required, but because it would mean questioning ourselves. Such questioning might add more unpredictability to an already unpredictable, often threatening world. We need to recognize that what we believe is not who we are. We’re a universe infinitely larger than our worst opinions. It takes courage, not only to face those with diametrically opposing beliefs, but to unlearn what we believe, or think is true.

 

Especially now, it’s become difficult to change our minds. It can even be dangerous. Politically, acts mislabeled as flip-flopping are considered by many cowardice, or a sin….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.