Listen

I haven’t written anything in a while. With everything that’s happening, I ask myself what I should be doing. I’m a writer so part of me says I should write about it. But I also know what I don’t know. The kind of writing I want to do requires a lot of research and access to people who know more about it than I do. And those people have lots of better things they could be doing than talking to me.

What I do know is myself and the way I think about things. How I have changed and evolved over time. If you have read any of my previous blog posts, you should have some idea of the way I think. You might also have noticed that in my blog I write in very general terms. This is an intentional choice. I am hoping to engage people that might not think they way I do and get my message to them in a way that won’t turn them off to me immediately. I am trying to get to them before their biases come into play.

But today, I’m going to revisit some of the topics of my old posts and apply them to current events. And you might notice that I’m still not naming those events. Even though we all know what I’m talking about, I believe that just naming them will trigger people’s biases. My choice of words alone in that matter will convince some people how I feel about those events one way or another. Make the people who disagree with the words I choose less likely to listen to me and those who agree with my words give them too much credit. But that’s not what I want. So I need to make my point first before I tell you how I feel. Because I’m trying to manipulate you.

All persuasive writing is about manipulation. That might make you defensive, put your guard up. That’s good. That’s the way you should read everything whether it’s worded in a way you agree with or disagree with. With an open, but guarded, mind. Now that you’re forewarned, let’s get to it.

Listen. That is the single most important thing you can do if you care about truth and knowledge. The collective experiences and wisdom of the people around you dwarf your own. No single person can know or experience everything. But you have to learn who to trust. People with personal experience with a subject generally know more about it than those who don’t. If you want to learn about history listen to a historian. If you want to learn about trees listen to an arborist. If you want to learn about infectious disease, listen to an epidemiologist. And if you want to learn how black people are treated in America, you have to listen to black Americans. 

Sometimes experts tell us things we don’t agree with or want to hear. Sometimes they disagree with each other. So we listen to someone else. But ask yourself, does the talking head on the cable news or the politician really know more about the subject than someone who has studied or lived it, or are they just telling you what you want to hear to get your view or your vote?

Trust people you disagree with. Because you might be the one who’s wrong. Then you’ll never know the truth if you don’t engage with people who think differently. Even if they are wrong, most of the time they are expressing their honest opinion, and you can learn how they think. Then you can form an argument that might actually sway them. Of course some people are habitual liars, but (outside the political sphere anyway) I think they are relatively rare. Look at the people you know. I bet you trust most of them. There’s no reason to think people all around the world aren’t as honest as the ones we know.

Leadership and responsibility. Responsibility isn’t about fault or blame. It’s about responding when something needs to be addressed or fixed. A good leader is someone who takes responsibility for everything that happens on their watch whether they had anything directly to do with it or not.

These ideas inform how I view the world. We are in the middle of global pandemic. I listen to epidemiologists and other infectious disease experts because they know a lot more about what’s going on. But somehow in this crazy world, the pandemic is taking a backseat to another issue at the moment.

Black Lives Matter. I know because I listen. And if you listened, you would know that is not an exclusive statement. Obviously all lives matter. Unfortunately we live in a society that has normalized police brutality targeting black people, George Floyd being only one example of hundreds. However, a lot of other people are more qualified to speak on the subject than I am. It’s not my place since I don’t have that experience.

What I can talk about is responsibility. Police brutality is not an issue about individual bad cops. It’s a corrupt system. Shit rolls downhill. Those who should be responsible pass the buck down the line until it’s sitting on the victims’ shoulders. Every instance of police brutality is the responsibility of every single person above the offending officer in the chain of command. And every one of them should face disciplinary action each time. Louisville just fired the Chief of Police because an officer killed a protester. That is what every city should do every time a cop kills an unarmed civilian. If you are in charge, you are responsible. Your job is to keep people safe. If the people in your command cannot do so, and, even worse, are the ones harming people, you are unworthy of command and should be relieved of it immediately unless you take swift and decisive actions to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That is your responsibility.

However, it’s also, to some extent, everyone’s responsibility. If there is something in this world you want to change, you’re the one responsible for doing so. You can’t rely on anyone else to do it for you. That’s why I write. In the vain hope my words will reach someone and begin to change how they think so that someday, maybe, they’ll come around to my point of view. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that is not enough.