It has been a mad season, and when I say that, I mean a lot of people are both angry and crazy. Sometimes I think that none of us truly knows or understands where all of the mad comes from. I am a strong advocate for never diminishing people's woes, because nobody knows or understands the depths of each other's personal struggles, but it is true that sometimes when you look at the big picture, it's easy to start quantifying and distinguishing between the real and the perceived.
One thing I see a lot lately is a backlash against being "politically correct," and people who express offense over things.
I am absolutely dumbfounded by this. I know that the term politically correct is not brand new, but it's not really that old either. It describes the effort to avoid specific language that demeans people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, religions or beliefs, and ethnicities--among other groups. But I think people have begun to use the term interchangeably with two words that have been around much longer--being respectful.
I make it no secret that I would have been better off to have been raised by wolves. That being said, I understood from an early age that there were some kinds of things you just didn't say--no matter what you might think. I learned as I grew up that there were ways to express your opinion without being rude, hurtful or disrespectful to others. That doesn't mean you don't have opinions, or that you don't share them, it just means you say what you mean in ways that don't make you seem like an ass. The interesting thing I have found is that in finding a way to express yourself that isn't offensive or hurtful, you often express yourself more effectively, and people are more inclined to pay attention to what you have to say in the long run.
I realize current events make that pretty hard to believe. After all, right now, it seems like the loudest, angriest, rudest voices are the ones getting the most attention in our media. I think the real reason why so many people are becoming angry, loud and rude is because it's easier to say you're angry than it is to admit you are actually afraid.
Fear, in the eyes of many people, is a weak emotion. Anger is the emotion of the strong and the ready.
The world we live in today is a dangerous place. There are pockets of hate, distrust, and opportunistic misunderstanding in every corner. There is poverty, injustice, savagery and violence. We can't feel secure letting our kids walk or ride their bikes to school alone, or to play outside alone. Even our food can be a source of danger on any given day. I have a healthy amount of concern and disappointment about all of these things and many others.
To a degree, we should all be angry about those things. But we also need to look deep inside all this rage and understand what its origin actually is. We're angry because we believe someone or something has given us reason to fear.
Here's the thing, being loud, rude, offensive and disrespectful doesn't make any of these ills better, and anger doesn't conquer fear.
When I was growing up, and found myself afraid of something, I learned to find someone to help, or to turn on a light.
Maybe instead of tearing others down over differences, especially the ways in which others differ from ourselves, standing together in spite of those differences would be a better way to conquer our fears. The loud mouths who are using our own differences and resulting fears to further their own agendas couldn't really care less about any of us. The more we fight amongst ourselves and assist them in perpetuating negative stereotypes and ignorant assumptions, the more we undo any of the work that has been done to heal old wounds and make things better. It seems like when we say we are tired of being "politically correct," and people need to not be offended so easily, we are letting these loud and extreme voices do the same thing to us as we do to those we offend--we are letting them dehumanize us.
Do we really want to be used like that?
Trying to learn more about what we share in common might help us pull together and find the light in a time that can feel pretty dark. Maybe that's how we become "humanly" correct.
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