What I'm Digging
This week, a consideration of words and the power they wield
Happy Friday, friends. You’re here. You made it.
It has been quite a week, suffice to say, both personally and nationally/globally/universally.
I had a breast MRI performed on Wednesday. I’ll alternate those with mammograms every six months for the next few years, to check for any new concerns. Results should be back sometime next week. I remain hopeful for the best possible outcome.
A bit after my MRI, while standing in line to pickup a prescription for my cancer medication (I’ll be taking Tamoxifen for at least the next 5 years; so far, I’m tolerating it remarkably well), I refreshed my phone to headlines about Charlie Kirk having been shot. Later, I’d learn he died from the wound.
My first response was shock. Then, concern. Which has only continued to grow. “This is very intense”, I kept repeating to Glenn and Huxley.
When I was 8 years old, my mom converted to Evangelical Christianity. This belief of hers would characterize the next decade of my life, until I left home to go to college.
While that particular faith and its beliefs are no longer part of my overarching paradigm about existence, aspects of it continue to undergird how I live and move in this world.
I believe in love. I believe in compassion. I believe, deeply, in empathy and its capacity to fundamentally change the world for the better. I might never meet you, but I will hope for ease, and comfort, and happiness for you.
I also, having gone on to get a sociology degree in college (and later, one in nutrition), believe in the systemic, pervasive, often invisible, undermining structures that exist in societies to marginalize, suppress, oppress, and undercut certain groups and individuals, frequently to the benefit of those in positions of authority and power.
Physical violence is wrong. Full stop. It doesn’t end things, it only perpetuates them. This is not the way.
The political climate right now in the US is the hottest I’ve personally ever witnessed it. On both sides. We are all up in arms. We are all hot and bothered.
Trying to pull back and gain a bird’s eye view of what might be causing it, I was intrigued this morning when I heard Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, attribute the recent historical surge in political violence in the US to this country going from a “white/non-hispanic majority to a white minority for the first time in our 250 year history as a country.”
He noted that, in his 30 years studying political violence around the world, big social change often leads to radical political views, which then often leads to political violence.
The last time this country was so fraught and fractured was in our last time of great social change, with the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam war.
As the demographics of this country shift, those attached to the status quo, having attached their sense of self and overall sense of identity to that status quo in the process (and largely benefitting from it), have a profoundly difficult time with changing times, to put it mildly.
Like I said, I grew up Christian. While I no longer identify or align myself with that faith, I am thankful for the degree to which the teachings of Jesus stayed with me, teachings echoed in other faiths around the world.
At their core, his words teach us to love. To love ourselves, to love our neighbors, to love our enemies, and, perhaps most importantly, to treat others the way we wish to ourselves be treated.
Charlie Kirk said many things I deeply disagree with. Things that are disparaging, dehumanizing, disenfranchising, and, in many cases, downright disgusting. He said things that are powerful, and lasting, and repercussive. Still, assassinating him over those words is wrong.
Our words have impact. Our words have meaning. Our words can harm or heal. Like I always tell my sons, “use your words.”
Chose your words ever so wisely. Are they kind? Are they supportive? Do they edify and encourage? Or are they malicious and spiteful? Are they bringing out the greater good? Or are they inciting and inviting violence, hatred, and contempt?
What is trickier is what is often known as the paradox of tolerance. While it’s all good and well to say “We can agree to disagree”, that notion becomes untenable to the greater good if opposing opinions and paradigms are expressing intolerant views.
I can’t agree to disagree with you if you’re espousing views that promote racism, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, transphobia, white nationalism, or any other worldview that denigrates and dehumanizes others.
But, I can use my words and you can use your words, and we can look for common ground. We can seek out each other’s humanity.
And we can take a beat, and press pause, and step back when our emotions cloud our thinking, and make our words opaque and inflammatory.
It’s how I parent my children, it’s how I show up in my marriage, it’s how I interact with my family, and it’s how I attempt to engage with the world at large.
My heart goes out all of those taken too soon. From Palestine to South Sudan, from Ukraine to Minnesota, and from Uvalde to Utah Valley University, may our words be wielded like the weapons they are—with caution, with care, and with concern for the greater good.
I’ll share a round-up of internet tidbits next week. This week, what has caught my eye online the most is the better job we could all be doing at finding the humanity in others, calling out injustices, and using our words in a clear and compassionate way, so that no more lives are lost to political violence, any where, at any time.