We live in a time when binary opinions are expected and when self-righteous indignation is the norm. An issue is black or white, a travesty or a necessity, a terrible injustice or a long coming reckoning.
We are encouraged to forget about evidence, reason, logic, facts. Instead, we are supposed to take a side and hew to it. Emotion is truth. To question is akin to heresy. Doubt is forbidden.
Lots of people suddenly seem to declare their purity of motive and purity of belief, and in the grip of this faith, whatever this faith is at the moment, they are ready to point at others who disagree with them and shout, “I accuse.”
The present moment feels like a storm of shouting, angry voices.
It can be disorienting – turning this way and then about face, jolting from one voice to another, pivoting, doing a 180, sometimes a 270, your head snapping, your balance precarious.
The lights can be so bright and the bullying tenor of these voices brimming over with such certainty, such a desperation to convince.
If ever there was a time for a reassertion of a counterbalance and poise, now is that time – for nuance, for gray areas, for layers of truth, for truths that are contradictory, for an acceptance of the incredible, inevitable complexity of events and of human beings, for the rejection of slogans and jargon.
And for the hardest and most important elements of reason – the fundamental need to try to see clearly what is actually happening and then to figure it out without resorting to the distorting effects of ideology or rage or resentment.
