. . . we're all in this together . . .

Jamie and I watched the presidential debate last night.

Oxford looked great. Ole Miss was stunning. I'm really proud of Mississippi right now.

In the midst of this tug of war, though, I think we sometimes forget that we're all in this together. We pretty much all want to go to the same place, we just have different routes we prefer to take. And, man, how hurtful and spiteful we can be if it's not our route that is chosen.

Yes, I understand there are many, many more details, and I am simplifying things. But the gist is still there.

My mother writes a column for several newspapers here in the Southeast. She recently wrote the column below, and I thought it would be a great idea to share it with all of you today. I think her words are very wise.

Thanks, Mom, for letting me share this.

As we go forth in this uncertain time, I hope we call can remember our neighbors. That we can remember that none of us can make it alone, and we all need to work together to create the world we envision. Compromise and compassion are the two greatest traits we can have in my opinion. I hope our leaders not only realize this in the coming months, but they practice it and inspire it as well.

~wj


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"SNIPPETS
by Beth Boswell Jacks



Beliefs: Trying to figure it out


“Before you can begin to think about politics at all,
you have to abandon the notion that there is a war
between good men and bad men.”
~ Walter Lippmann


Raise your hand if you’re all fuzzed up over the presidential campaign. Now take that hand and scratch your head while you ponder these words of conservative philosopher and author Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University: “We all have visions of how the world works. They are the silent shapers of our thoughts.”

That quote is from Sowell’s book titled “A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.” Sowell says our visions are like “maps that guide us through a tangle of bewildering complexities” in this topsy-turvy world. He claims we base our beliefs – political, social and religious – on these visions that form our hunches or gut feelings.

We can no more dismiss those feelings than we can fly to the moon.

Oh, wait. We CAN fly to the moon. Well, let’s restate that. We can no more dismiss those feelings than we can change the nose on our face. Darn. We can do that too.

Shall we say it is very, very difficult to change one’s vision of how the world works?

Last year, in fact, National Public Radio broadcast a program [Oct. 25, 2007] during which the speaker stated he was researching the theory that our deepest beliefs are programmed into our genes. In other words, we can’t really help it if we’re flaming liberals or rigid right-wingers. We’re just made that way. It’s genetic.

His research was being done on identical twins, separated at birth. How many thousands of identical twins separated at birth could there be? I can’t imagine his test group is legion. Anyway, that’s something to think about.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to blame something else on our parents?

The editors of Volume III of “Public Women, Public Words,” Keetley and Pettegrew, have another idea about the factors that contribute to our deepest beliefs. They write in the introduction to the book: “One’s politics are determined by and, ultimately, confined to what one opposes; [one’s belief system] is defined in other words, in the negative” – by what we’re against, not what we’re for.

Okay, this is getting deep, but I can’t help my mind’s twists and turns. I’m curious about how and why I’ve arrived at my political, social and religious beliefs. So where am I going with this?

Just here.

No matter which way this election goes, no matter what our theology is, no matter what we believe about social and philosophical matters, we’re going to have friends and family who are just as ardent on the other side of the fence. Does this mean somebody’s good and somebody’s bad? Does this mean somebody’s going to heaven and somebody’s going to … umm … a warmer locale? Does this mean we have to hate and demonize one another? Does this mean we can’t discuss issues without blowing up at each other with, yes, sometimes permanent alienation?

No, no, no and no.

Eric Hoffer, sociologist and writer, maintained that “the capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves.” We’re quite tolerant usually of our own shortcomings and “quirks”; shouldn’t we extend that same courtesy to others? Is this not what we must do to attempt to promote civilized discourse in this “bewildering and complex” world?

“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.”

Besides, it’s probably our mamas’ and daddies’ fault."