31.Jan.2010 at 31 | xn
Reaction to JK Rowling's Harvard Commencement Address
Before you read further, be sure to set aside 20 minutes to watch her talk. It’s worth the time—inspiring words on failure, poverty, imagination, empathy, action, & duty.
(Sorry-it requires Flash player to view it!)
This was a human speech, not a political one. I don’t know and I don’t care what JK’s political views are. She inspired us to good deeds, and that’s a good thing.
Reflecting on her talk, though, I couldn’t help but consider our current all-or-nothing, black-and-white polarizing political environment. We too often forget that at the bottom of it all, we all care about the same things. We all want to help people who are suffering.
Our problems become insurmountable when disingenuous people try to score political points by blurring the line between the what and the how…between the goals and the best methods to get there.
Whether it’s 1994 and “the Republicans want to starve children“, or it’s 2008 and the “‘gay lobby’ wants to destroy the family“, or 2010 and “Tim Tebow wants women to return to back-alley abortions“, there is little to no acknowledgement that we all want the same thing:
- healthy, well-fed children
- solid, caring families
- laughing babies with healthy mothers (and support and help for women who become unexpectedly pregnant), etc.
Instead of “believing the best”, we sound-bite demonize the opposition. Instead of “giving the benefit of the doubt”, we operate out of fear. And we completely short-circuit any hope of synergy and using all our strengths to find a better way.
Voters wanted a new tone when they gave President Obama a mandate for “Hope and Change”. To date he has failed to deliver on that, and has furthered the “gridlock” and “politics of fear” that he claimed to want to change. He has shunned alternative ideas on everything from the deficit to energy to climate change to health care. And he continues to assert that his opponents “don’t care”.
When we can honestly sit down and say, “I believe you truly want to make the world better, let’s discuss the best ways of doing that”, instead of “Since you don’t agree with my methods, you must want people to suffer,” we will move forward.
If that doesn’t happen, we can never realize the potential to which JK Rowling’s words have inspired us.
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
The problem seems to be in the willingness on either side to actually talk openly – to share ideas while being willing to amend their own. To dialogue, in other words.
The best comment I’ve read on this came from one of the other blogs I follow:
“I can’t tell you how many students wrote in to my college’s newspaper whenever one of their pet projects was dealt a blow somewhere that what was needed was debate and then passage of the bill or conduct of the action in completely unchanged form. They were often explicit about this latter point, that the proposal critically not be changed during the debate. The debate was just kabuki theater designed to make the people proposing the radical legislation or actions *feel* like they were following mainstream American traditions. Never was it intended to actually have any chance of changing their cherished proposals into something more palatable to the electorate. It’s the same completely non-introspect naivete that I point out when the multi-culti crowd projects onto every single actor in the world, including radical milennarian takfiri terrorists, the willingness and ability to sit down somehwere and talk out their differences. However, since they never actually change their own positions I can’t actually blame so many parties for calling their bluff and not subjecting themselves to the ritual dance before not getting their way or being heard whatsoever. Like talking to a brick wall . . .”
This kind of close-minded mindset (all while presenting the appearance of open-mindedness) is what strikes me the most about the current administration. Had they actually made the White House more “transparent” some of their changes may have actually had a hope. As it is, they try to ramrod legislation down our throats, all while telling us that they know best.