I think I understand

An antidote to the politics of fear.

Photo by Barrie Kreinik: Grand Central Terminal, NYC.

Oh, I think I understand:

Fear is like a wilderland.

- Joni Mitchell

There’s a lot of noise on the internet right now. A lot of rage and blame, a lot of sorrow, a lot of anxiety. Many of us are horrified by millions of voters’ seeming disregard for the humanity of women, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and all others whom the right wing seeks to oppress. We feel betrayed. We wonder, like this fellow, how core values such as respect, empathy, kindness, and generosity can be disregarded in favor of cruelty and lies. We say, How could anyone vote for a racist, misogynistic, sociopathic criminal? I don’t understand.

I’ve seen some people declare that they’ve blocked or unfriended anyone they know who cast such a vote. I understand that impulse, and if that’s the right choice for you, then you must make it. But I can’t help thinking that it’s exactly this kind of shutting-down and cutting-off that got us into this mess in the first place. So as we ask ourselves what to do next, I offer one possible answer:

Start listening.

Now, before you jump down my throat and accuse me of appeasing evildoers or bowing to tyranny, hear me out. It’s that very impulse to throat-jump that I want to address here.

I believe the root of our current situation is one of our most basic, most powerful emotions: fear. We fear what we don’t understand, what’s new and unfamiliar. We fear change, even if its promise is progress. Media, both traditional and social, thrives on this phenomenon, stoking our fear to provoke ever more scrolling and clicking. This year, we’ve seen how the flame of fear has been fueled on the right, building into an inferno of misinformation that doubtless had a huge impact on the election. That process was aided, as several writers have noted, by the algorithmic stratification of the internet: when every person exists in their own information bubble, lies proliferate and fear burns unconstrained.

Yet, that same fire has also been fed on the left. When we fear that our hard-won rights could be taken away, or that the rights we’re still fighting for might never be achieved, it’s tempting to reject any statement that even hints at opposition. Yet, in doing so, we suppress voices that might otherwise be convinced to join ours. By giving into our fear and leading with I don’t understand, we cut off our ability to help others understand us.

The journey away from fear begins with understanding. The only way to understand another person is to listen to them. And when we begin to listen, we open ourselves to an emotion that the world needs far more of nowadays: compassion.

As an actor, compassion and understanding are parts of my job description. In order to portray characters accurately, I have to understand them—I have to activate my empathy, cue my compassion. But understanding a person, even empathizing with them, doesn’t mean that I condone their every action. If I’m playing Medea, it’s my job to understand why she murders her children, but that doesn’t mean I support infanticide. It simply requires that I have enough compassion for Medea to portray her without judging her.

In real life, I’m not always a world champion listener. I’m guilty of interrupting, jumping to conclusions, failing to hear. At times in the past, I’ve judged instead of empathizing; I’ve lashed out in anger because I was afraid. But over the years, compassion, non-judgment, and empathy have become three of my highest values. I fall short, as all humans do. But in life, as onstage, I try to listen as well as I can.

Over the course of the past decade, we as a society have stopped listening to each other. We’ve begun refusing to even hear, much less consider, any political or social opinion that strays too far from our own. We’ve lost the gift of nuance, the desire for debate. Cancel culture has crippled our ability to carry out productive discourse: if a person can’t even express an opinion without being slapped with a pejorative label, they will cease engaging altogether. And that is how democracy begins to die—when we stop trying to express ourselves for fear of being rejected out of hand, not only by those on the opposing ideological side, but by those on our own side as well.

Shutting someone down when their views upset you isn’t going to change their mind. The only way to do that is to engage. But when any level of engagement is seen as capitulation, we rush to condemn others before hearing them out. We scold them instead of reasoning with them, shun them instead of trying to understand them. In doing so, we shoot ourselves in the foot and then wonder why we can’t walk.

So, in a country divided along increasingly stark lines, what can we do that might bring us together again?

We can listen.

If it’s too difficult right now to imagine listening to those whose views are diametrically opposed from yours, then start by listening more closely to those whose views are similar. Liberals are a heterogeneous group: we’re never going to agree on everything. But if we’re going to resist the ascendent regime, we have to do it together. We have to stop policing each other’s ideas and start finding common ground. Let us open our minds to the possibility that multiple viewpoints can exist at once, that we can be paradoxical without being hypocritical. Let us turn our rage into determination, transform our confusion into curiosity, quell our fear by seeking understanding and striving for compassion. If we can achieve those things, then perhaps we can fulfill the words of Isaiah: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Then nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

In the meantime, I’m channeling the lyrics of Joni Mitchell:

Sometimes voices in the night

Will call me back again,

Back along the pathway of a troubled mind.

When forests rise to block the light

That keeps a traveler sane,

I’ll challenge them with flashes from a brighter time.

May we all begin to envision a brighter time—a future full of compassion, free from fear.

#unity #empathy #compassion #listening #fear #election #understanding #democracy