Debate

Can you express yourself in a debate without blaming the other party? I recently read an article where an opinion was expressed about the “lack of intelligent debate” in our country today?   Why is this?  Can we not have a difference of opinion, yet still come to some kind of working conclusion that doesn’t leave us divided and alienated?

Increasingly, I see the public discourse moving toward division, segregation and alienation.  People are frustrated, lost and secularized.  This is the kind of environment that breeds tyrants and monsters of historical proportions.  We mustn’t avoid what is happening.  We need to speak-up to what is alive in all of us.  We must listen with open hearts and minds to what is being said.  Only from a space of sharing and listening can we DE-escalate from this point of no return.

And at all cost, we must avoid the directing of these powerful, latent feelings on to the shoulders of a “strong man” or “ideal” outside of ourselves.  Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote – ”

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly”

We must step back from the dangerous edge of despair and propaganda.  With 7 billion people in the world today, we must embrace the path of brother and sisterhood – finding the warm embrace of our communal purpose as human beings, while acknowledging and respecting our individual rights to have security, peace, and freedom.

And it all starts with us making up our minds to “be in community” with other.  Our individual determination to openly share what burdens us and to receive the healing ointment of kindness from other.  We are in this together. Like it or not.

But we must start…now.