This is Good

America is a nation founded on the idea that all people are equal, regardless of their background. This country was built using laborers that were mistreated and unpaid for hundreds of years. These are two facts of history.

Looking back at history is meant to teach us to avoid the pitfalls of the people who have come before us. It is also meant to remind us of the atrocities and mistakes our ancestors made so that they are never repeated.

Because of the stark contradiction of sentiment behind these two facts, there have been tensions between all sorts of factions; sometimes racial, sometimes religious, sometimes ideological. Regardless of the group, it’s always “us vs. them.” The only way to solve any of these conflicts is through open communication.

It may sound simple, but truly open communication is quite difficult when it’s not practiced. It requires listening without judgment and speaking without inhibition. Open communication needs both and as you probably know, it isn’t common.

Since the 2016 election, we as a population have been more politically vocal and active than any other time in recent history. Social media has helped that along by opening more types of communication. If everybody has a platform to speak, everyone has the potential to be heard.

To many Americans today, the future looks bleak. Every day there seems to be another political scandal, or another mass shooting, or another video of police brutality, or another accusation of sexual assault.

I just want to take chance to tell you: this is good.

Hang on, hear me out! Practice that judgment free listening.

Americans’ bleak outlook of the future is mostly due to an information overload. We’ve never had so much awareness of the world around us and it has come with the belief that reality is getting darker than it used to be.

The truth is that the world isn’t getting darker, we’re just shining more light on the darkness.

On social media, people have taken stands on loads of different topics and they have been quite uninhibited with their speech. A few glimpses at social media comments serves as evidence that the bigotry and hatred still exist. While we now have more evidence of its existence, it doesn’t mean there is more than there used to be.

Lack of evidence of a problem doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. When Copernicus offered his heliocentric model of the solar system, the planets didn’t rearrange from the model we were using at the time. The planets were always orbiting the sun, it just took us a while to discover it.

Just because we now have videos of bigoted acts and transcripts of bigoted thoughts doesn’t mean the bigotry wasn’t already there. America is racist. America is sexist. America is bigoted, but not all Americans feel the same way.

Our celebrated freedom as Americans allows us to think and say whatever we want and we are quite diverse as a population. The freedom to say anything is bound to cause some conflict between people with different opinions. But it’s better than keeping it hushed up.

This is good.

Many people believe that we live in dark times but I argue that dawn is coming. Issues that have been ignored are finally being discussed. People who try to spread hate are being shut down more than they’re being encouraged.

This is good.

Of course, people are going to have vastly differing opinions about topics that are usually avoided. There are some people who are going to support hateful ideas. However, it’s hard to see that you might be wrong about something if you never talk about it with anyone but those who already agree.

This is good.

Yes, things may be dark. Yes, they may get darker. But it is a temporary price we must pay to move forward together. The world is not becoming a worse place, we’re just discovering all the parts of it that we need to change.

We must question what we don’t understand and listen without judgement. We must empathize with people who are suffering and encourage them to speak without inhibition. Once we can learn to openly communicate, the healing can begin.

Open communication doesn’t guarantee immediate peace and happiness, there will be disagreement and frustration. The important thing is to communicate: both to speak and to listen. Enlightenment, after all, is a destructive process. We are destroying the illusion of a world where these problems did not exist.