Why should we talk?

The only way to defeat hate is with love; it’s not a new concept but rather something that we needed to be reminded of. We are more than the sum of our parts, we are the exponential of them. So many people are stepping up and choosing to speak out, using their fame and power to send the message. It has only been possible for them to do so because so many average people decided to stand together and say that they will no longer tolerate the mistreatment of any of us! We are in fact the UNITED States of America.

I believe that people just want to be listened to and understood. From there we're able to communicate with each other in a way that is respectful. That's what people want, especially when it comes to politics. People are far smarter than they give themselves credit for. So, to speak down to each other or dumb down concepts just serves to insult them, which closes them off to new ideas. Arrogance stops conversations. I define smart as educated, either by school or life, both are acceptable means of learning and should not be valued less than the other. Intelligence is the ability to learn, assimilate, relay, and build information and the speed at which one does so. Just because someone is intelligent does not mean that they are smart, they must have put forth the effort to learn for their intelligence to have any relevance in a conversation. That requires humility, a quality that is elusive and seen as a weakness by those that don’t want to learn, who seek to rule with authority that they have not earned.

How we choose to talk to each other matters, words matter, tone matters, and compassion should be the root of the conversation, as it allows us to listen with the goal of understanding. I am not alone in these thoughts, Amanda Gorman addressed similar concept in “The Hill We Climb” which she delivered at the Inaugural address for President Biden, “So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.”  The divides between us must be healed if our country is to survive, let alone thrive. We are not all that dissimilar to one another though we have been told that we are for quite some time. Those divides have been used against us; it’s time for that to stop.

Here’s the thing, we can either choose to think about the problems that we’re seeing, or we can choose to act. Nothing of value was ever gained by simply thinking about it. Instead, we need to talk about the issues with people who might not agree with us, because we are a society, we must therefore work together to find solutions that work for all of us, or help someone understand why their solutions don’t work for the whole group. We’ve tried to be isolationists in the past, and it never works out for the people of our country, and this time it only serves to further enrich the elite Epstein Class, and financially cripple the rest of us in the form of tariffs and inflation. Many years ago I asked some questions in a class, “Should those that want to shut out everything that they disagree with be allowed to have an impact on the forward movement of most people? Is it ethical to shut them out? How would you even go about shutting them out? Always having to drag the dissenting minority along in to the future is going to build resentment in those that are ready to run into the future.” These days I would say that yes, we have an obligation to have a conversation with them, and then drag them along for the wild ride of life in the future.