We should learn to “see, understand, and respect other people in all their depth and dignity,” writes David Brooks in his best-selling book How to Know a Person. My friend George says he has been struggling to do that with friends and family members who have different beliefs and political views than his own. This is hard, he explains.
Part of the problem, we agree, is that America has morphed from a society that leans into civic discourse to one that venerates antagonistic speech. How do you respect people who denigrate your views as you try to appreciate theirs?
Brooks captures the transition like this: “We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.”
In other words, we have flipped from agreeable “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” to indignant “I'm all-knowing, you're irrelevant.”
George seems somehow able to stretch his mind around the notion that others may see him as irrelevant, but vainly wrestles to develop a capacity to show appreciation or respect for uncaring, angered know-it-alls.
The uncaring anger that has descended upon us, as Brooks intimates, extends beyond personal relationships. We see it in the demise of national compassion for the left out and left behind, for peaceful immigrants seeking asylum and opportunity, for starving children in war torn countries, for public servants dismissed for suspected political beliefs, for politicians vilified for taking conscientious stands contrary to the know-it-alls’ tenets, and so on.
George and I wonder how Christianity fits in now. You know, the version where Jesus said “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Our president says Christianity is important: “I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief….Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.” He established his Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias and also said, “I’m a very proud Christian.”
Yet it is this president’s administration that willingly helps spread the plague of uncaring anger. Both George and I were unable to develop a capacity to show appreciation or respect for that.
Crawford is the author of A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.
