This is a somewhat reworked version of a comment I left on a friend’s Facebook post. In essence, this person was lamenting how tribal we have become in today’s society, and their contribution to it. I wish I could say I wasn’t part of the problem as well, but I am. I’ve written before about the serious fragmentation of our media. I’m old enough to remember the days when our choice for getting news was very limited. You had the three networks, newspapers, a few news magazines and journals, and that was pretty much it. Nowadays, though, there are different choices for basically any political leaning you may have, and you can feel free to completely ignore everything else. What this does, unfortunately, is cause righteous obtuseness in way too many. The art of compromise and civil discourse has been almost completely forgotten, because we are so wrapped up in the overpowering need to be right. Not only that, but we need to prove everyone else is wrong and, beyond that, beneath contempt because they’re wrong. One of the more comical byproducts of this is the passage into common use of the term Nazi. This term has become so overused that what it actually means is, it seems to me, in danger of being completely forgotten. But I digress. One of the main reasons the American system of government has worked so well for 200 plus years is the concept of compromise and give-and-take. This is another art form that is going the way of vinyl records and Betamax. We are all so entrenched in our various ideologies that not only can we not see the other person’s point of view, we see it as dangerous, treasonous, criminal, etc. Not much useful dialogue can result from this state of affairs. I’m beginning to wonder if the societal fragmentation has become so acute that we’ll never again be able to find our way back to any common ground. I’d like to be less pessimistic, but it isn’t easy. This society needs to relearn the art of listening, fast. Otherwise the near future could wind up being very bleak indeed.
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