"Join the national conversation on..." is a frequent invitation, but what is this conversation and where is it being conducted? I sit down with my friend Rodo to spend a lunch hour reviewing what we both think is going on and going wrong in politics, but is that part of that larger conversation. We talk about the political Other who are people not very different but talking about us; are we encountering them?
Often the 'national' conversation is conducted in conducted online, in the news mediia, through TV ads, on billboards, and the like, where usually each speaker figuratively stands with one arm outstretched (and outraged) trained on the opposition, but the head turned to track the gaze of our folk following the pointed finger. It's an indirect conversation, often conducted by proxy.
The Other we encounter in, say, politics, we see more and more as an anti-Us. It's not so much that the Other is different as the Other is opposed. What I take to be true, this Other is convinced is false. Where I propose to go, the Other is committed to putting up a block. That which I take to be valuable, this Other thinks is useless, even detrimental. Words that mean a certain thing to me mean the exact opposite for this Other. The least relaxation of assertion is like leaving a sally-port unbolted, unguarded. This constant skepticism of and opposition to my basic working premises irritates and enrages me, and especially if I suspect that it is done in bad faith or with malicious intent.
This is an Other who seems like that chess player who, maddeningly, always finds just the moves that put us again and again in check. This otherness thwarts us; denies us freedom to move, even to be; makes us self-conscious in a way that leads to constant second-guessing; forces us to define ourselves in the face of one distrustful but disdainful. Reciprocally, the Other experiences the same in and through us.
This is a zero-sum otherness. It feels like trap, claustrophobic, exhausting, ultimately futile. Worse than the winning or losing is the having to always play the game, having to always care about winning and losing, when what we really want are fresh-air encounters of friendship, exploration, hospitality. I've experienced the glee of victory, of triumphant self-assertion, and it feels great for a while, but it's not as interesting to me as open conversation. I'm not as interesting to myself.
Winner-take-all contests often produce this other/anti-other (me as the anti-other) interactions and are favorites modes of encounter if we see the world in the 1st-3rd person terms. I'm more interested in 2nd person interactions that God-in-love's perspective vis a vis the beloved Other. Is there a way to engage in national conversations in 2nd person mode?
Is there a way forward in that portion of the God-in-love prayer: "Forgive us when we do that doesn't honor you/As we forgive those who disappoint, dismiss or despise us"?
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