The Heroism of Getting Along

Okay, I’ll put it right here. My heroes are the get-along people.

Outside of literary fiction, you won’t find them much in stories. But in real life, they are the ones who don’t scream and shout, (these days mostly online) or “unfriend” or cut off family as they imagine this is what taking a stand sounds like.

To me, such a stand, while some find it glamorous and most think heroic, often amounts to spite and vilification. A rather lazy thing.

Real heroes don’t forget that people are complex. They love real diversity, as in folks who don’t think or act as they do. They love them because variety is what the creator intended.
{And as an aside, maybe especially those who don't think there is a creator might admit they'd be bored stiff without the magnificent assortment that is our species.}

Real heroes don’t dream of kudos from the tribe. They’re okay with not having a tribe.

We’re about to re-enter that fractious zone called national elections, and what incivility we’ve fostered is about to get wilder. I hope I can remind myself of the above, and try to be that kind of hero.

But I may have to take some breaks from the online world. I won’t leave it; that’s not heroic IMO. Just take breaks now and then to remember my values so I can recharge and come back to living with, and listening to, differences.

I re-quote my grandma’s Yiddish saying: If everyone pulled in the same direction, the world would tip over.

She was not the most tolerant person. But she did leave me this gem. Just sayin’.

Galileo and the Scientific Truth

On this date, February 26, in the year of our Lord 1616, Galileo Galilei was formerly banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

Now, I am not anti-Catholic (emphatically not) or anti-religious. The church had its reasons, with worry that challenging this dogma would lead to questioning all dogmas, an unstoppable process. Indeed, history showed this fear to be justified, and the loss of dogmatic faith that had already begun then, continues to this day. The church had reasons to fear that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, an expression so vivid I’m using it despite it being a cliché.

The thing is, four centuries later and a formal reversal of this ban by the church itself, we still ban thinking that we fear will lead to abuses of the social fabric and result in hurtful conduct. Only now, it is happening in the name of freethinking.

We haven’t changed. We’re still terrified of our own species propensity to abuse one another, and in the name of protecting us from ourselves we fire/take-down/ban/shun uncomfortable ideas.

I know real tolerance and considered debate when I see it. We’re not there yet.

Saluting the brave Galileos out there. You give humanity some hope.

Social Media Stress and the Take Down

Apparently, that’s a thing. And it’s not funny.

Social Media Stress, not to be confused with Social Media Phobia, is what happens when you live your real life on social media. It causes some to compare their lives unfavorably to the glowing images streaming through the feed.

But there is a darker more noxious aspect to this stress--     The Take Down.

And so I watched one Facebook friend whom I know in real life disappear from the virtual space because of a barrage of attack-comments, something I later learned is called a “take down” campaign. This particular friendly acquaintance shared many family events and relatives' successful milestones on social media. Something in the life of one of her nearest has rubbed someone wrong, very wrong. Then came the attack dogs, mostly under pseudonyms, and now none of us can see her anymore.

The stress was too much.

The Scarlet Letter, a book taught in English lit classes to the young as a cautionary tale of a society gone hysterically wrong, has had the opposite effect. Young’uns have taken to social media to shame and hang a label when politics or social stance or even a less than thoughtful comment somewhere don’t align with their own. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850’s novel lives on, not as a record of what we don’t do anymore, but as blueprint of how it was done back then before we had better tools.

I’m sad. Especially when the shamers carry the flag of diversity and inclusion. I guess tolerance does not apply to people who don’t think like them. I once knew a vegetarian who said he was ready to kill people who ate meat. No kidding. Totalitarian Liberals fall under the same flag, and with them, we’re all taken down.

This is my plea for real diversity: race, religion, identity, sexual preference, and varied political affiliation. All are welcome in my life.

And if I ever am called on such on social media, I hope I can manage the stress. Probably not. But then, you wouldn’t know because I will cease to be here.