Surely most people have been in this situation: Someone makes anunkind comment about someone without being aware of the fact thatyou have a friendship with them - "I just don't understand howsomeone could be dumb enough to vote for Bush after all he's done!How could people in this country be so stupid?!"
Here's the part where I just smile knowingly. "I understandperfectly," I reply. "Some of them are my best friends and they'revery intelligent."
Cue awkward silence followed by desperate back-peddling.
Of course the coin falls both ways. After the second debate, myfavorite heckler sent an e-mail demanding to know how I couldsupport John Kerry when he "sounded like Hitler." I admitted that Ihad had to go to the bathroom during the debate and must havemissed Kerry's "lets exterminate all the Jews and take over theworld all without raising middle class taxes" plan.
Yes, brilliance abounds on both sides.
Now far be it from me to preach, but might I suggest not castinghalf the country as a horde of brain dead, paste-eating, easilymanipulated baboons?
And so I return to a concept I've been trying to sell in thiscolumn since Day 1. (If anyone can break it, then, by all means -it's dangerously close to becoming a belief and that would be aterrible tragedy.)
My new favorite documentary of the last few weeks has been"Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson." In it,the prolific author and philosopher says "We believe this isreality. In philosophy that's called naive realism - what Iperceive is reality. And philosophers have refuted naive realismevery century for the last 2,500 years, starting with Buddha andPlato and yet most people still act on the basis of naiverealism."
Many individuals think that the way the world appears to them isthe way "things actually are." In my freshman year, my first columnwas about the metaphor of the glass jars of beliefs that we allform. These glass prisons distort our perception of the universe. Afew millennia ago, Plato talked about the cave and how all one canreally see are the shadows on the wall.
As one starts to think this way, there becomes less of a reasonto get frustrated with other people.
Wilson goes on to say, "When we begin to realize that we're alllooking from the point of view of our own reality tunnels, we findit is much easier to understand where other people are coming from,or the ones who don't have the same reality tunnel as us do notseem ignorant or deliberately perverse or lying or hypnotized bysome mad ideology. They just have a different reality tunnel andevery reality tunnel might tell us something interesting about ourworld if we're willing to listen."
There came a point last week when even my "not idiot"Bush-voting friends became fed up: "Get over it!" To that, I slideoff the moccasins, point towards the track and say, "Four laps is amile."
If a scab is to form over the wound that jags across thiscountry, individuals must make that effort - to try and comprehendthe reality tunnels of their fellow Americans.
Write to David atswimminginbrokenglass@gmail.com
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