We know the “woke”, and we know the “patriotic”, or at least who wants to be seen that way.
by Mauve Maude
October 6, 2020
You’ve surely seen it before. A development pops up in the news. The hottest wave of reactions begins. Somebody posts something on social media from their own special slant, somebody comments, and the crossfire of criticisms follow.
It’s yet another round in the Liberal vs. Conservative game, which works kind of like rhetorical Tetris. One building block drops, another one comes down on top of it, you try to piece them together correctly, and respond appropriately, and clear some blocks out of the way. But then the blocks start coming faster and harder and arrangements start getting more complicated, and before you know it you just don’t have the space for it anymore, and you’re just done. And then you play another round, and another one, and another one. There are always more if you want to play.
Those “blocks”, when they’re piling up in comment threads, come in a few different shapes that can be turned over in a few different variations, but you start to see the same ones over and over. The longer you play . . .
Lately, since the President tested positive for COVID-19, in particular, I’ve heard a lot to the effect of these two:
A scathing “The supposedly compassionate and tolerant left reveals its true colors yet again!”
and
A smug “The moral, Christian right isn’t moral or Christian. Who knew?”
Which, when your capacity for arguing and listening to people argue is full up to the brim, both kind of make you say, “Really?”
There are two realities here that we can’t wisely ignore. The first is that the quiet ones are the ones we should be paying attention to. The second is that none of us are perfect.
We certainly know, and loudly hear people who purport to be the most moral, the most righteous, the most tolerant, and the most compassionate. We know the “woke”, and we know the “patriotic”, or at least who wants to be seen that way. We know because they work so hard to make sure that we do. But do we really? If they have to tell us so insistently, is it true?
There are two realities here that we can’t wisely ignore. The first is that the quiet ones are the ones we should be paying attention to: the ones you don’t hear from much on Facebook, the ones who show up outside the news feed and the comment box, the ones who are less busy talking and more busy doing, the ones who aren’t eating up all the attention. The second is that none of us are perfect.
Morality and compassion are goals we constantly strive for, not things we always attain. Tolerance and Christ-like behavior are things we practice, not things we always land. “Wokeness” and “patriotism” are not labels we should slap onto ourselves to make ourselves look good and feel better. They are things that should be acted out, and probably the fewer words the better. And these ideals should be striven, practiced, and acted out in our actual interactions with other people, especially those who see and do things differently. All of these involve being with people, not against them, and not ignoring them. And if we haven’t mastered morality and tolerance and Christ-like behavior (or any other religious behavior), or compassion, how in the world can we expect it of others?
If a higher sense of morals and decency is what we want to see from somebody across the table, certainly if we expect it of them, then we have to live that ourselves. If tolerance and compassion are what we want, and what we think people should be treated with, then we have to model that too. And not just because they made a claim to be something they’re not quite pulling off. There’s a reason that bothers us. There’s a reason almost anything bothers us about other people. It’s because we see some reflection of ourselves that we don’t like. It’s often not about the other person at all. So we can’t rightly call out the wrong in other people’s claims if we’re not living up to ours. None of us really have the moral room to be leveling accusations at others of not nailing things we haven’t nailed ourselves. And we certainly shouldn’t have the nerve to criticize someone for not perfecting what we haven’t even tried. Because deep down, we’re the ones we’re really mad at.
And that’s because in the deepest sense of reality, we are only our own responsibility, and it bothers us. We try to reach outward and get away from that itching responsibility, and give it to anybody else who will take it. We know that other people are doing the same thing. We think we can help each other by taking on each other’s existential loads. It takes so much of our lives just to figure out that taking ourselves on is the only thing that scratches that itch, before we even start trying. And it’s hard. We’re with ourselves all the time, and we annoy the hell out of ourselves. But we’re also the only ones who can do anything about it.
We are only our own responsibility.
We simply can not try to control what other people do, what they say, how they say it, how they behave, how they feel, how they act, or how they react. It will never work. All we can control is ourselves: what we do, what we say, how we say it, how we behave, how we act, and how we react. We can’t choose other people’s responses to any problems. We can only choose our own. We demonstrate. And if we fill all of our time lashing out, criticizing others, and blaming them for everything that’s wrong, we’re not taking any responsibility for ourselves at all. We’re doing the complete opposite. We’re acting like children who don’t know better. We are not free. And we won’t be until we take the responsibility that comes with freedom.
Does this mean we should let others get away with what’s wrong? No. Responding to problems is necessary. Somebody has to, and sometimes it’s your turn, sometimes even when it’s “not my problem”. When we come across a wrong, we get to decide whether we’re going to respond or pass. Fix it, or let it go. Quite often we’ll feel worse about letting something go wrong, than trying to fix it and failing. Our instincts tell us this, if we listen. Inside we know, and we can’t escape knowing. So making things right is the right thing to do. But we have to show what’s right, not just say it. And some things we just can’t fix.
However, spitting venom in a social media post, a meme, or a comment box doesn’t make anything right. Taking that anger out into the real world, mentally, verbally, or physically, definitely doesn’t make anything right. We make things right with our positive actions, one thing at a time. Sometimes we don’t get it right. And we can’t take responsibility for the whole country or the whole world at once. But we can take care of it, if enough of us take our responsibilities. Just ours. Not theirs.