And being Switzerland, I'm constantly frustrated by how easy it has been to divide us and blind us to our commonalities. Take poverty. Both parties (assuming they are average citizens) would solve the problem once and for all if they could. Poverty is both heartbreaking and a nuisance. It drives down property values, it leads to obesity and malnutrition in the same individual, it pushes up healthcare costs, it leads to more unplanned births. The poorest neighborhoods are eyesores and hotbeds of crime and watching all this suffering take place in our own communities is very depressing indeed. Some are afraid of the crime, the litter blowing around...maybe just the whole thing in general makes them feel uncomfortable. Others take it a little more personally, feeling more sympathy for the underprivileged, uneducated, and the chronically ill lower class. Whoever you are, I doubt you would want poverty to continue if you could choose.
Where we diverge is how we believe we can go about doing this. Generally speaking reps choose tough love. End social programs. Sink or swim. The strongest will survive. Dems choose a more nurturing approach and believe we can make a difference through assisting those who can't help themselves. To my mind, it doesn't matter which way is better. What really needs to be brought to the forefront is this:
Until we can agree, that in order to end poverty we must first identify the cause, we will make no real progress.
It's the same kind of thinking that has led this country down the dark path of over-medication. We simply don't address causes as a people anymore. We prefer band-aids. We like to fix the symptoms but we don't like to think about what might be causing them. We are LAZY thinkers. And although I try to avoid pessimism at all costs, I am disheartened by how ready we all are to disagree with each other, sometimes just for the sake of argument. Even if we do suddenly redevelop our mental muscles and really get to it thinking about what led to poverty in this country to begin with and what factors still contribute, our political habits have our minds entrained to pigeonhole everything and I fear it would be a difficult task to come to any kind of consensus. And to be quite honest, I think it would be difficult to engage the minds of our population in a non-politically aligned activity. We seem to be addicted to this right vs left, this vs that paradigm.
An open mind will be absolutely necessary. We all live here and the world we are currently experiencing as "life in this country" is the cumulative result of 236 years of our "opinions". Opinions are a reflection of worldview and worldview is what ultimately influences actions and creates the reality we experience. It would be tempting to find what seems to be a cause and end the thought process then and there, refusing to consider others' "findings", but I think in order to get a complete view of the issue, a complete review of the populations' opinion on the matter is necessary. I think we need to keep going and asking why, long after we think we've gotten to the bottom of it. For every answer, we should again ask "but why is that the case?" Eventually we will come to an "aha moment" as happens when you apply this same technique to some burning question in your personal life. For an easy example, "Why do I sabotage relationships?" A month later you get to the bottom of it, finally, after scurrying down a psychological rabbit-hole of cause and effect. It's a very useful tool for freeing the psyche from limiting inclinations which leads me to think it would be useful on a larger scale.
Is this possible for an entire nation? And would everyone even care? Or are we too distracted with our own busyness to consider it worth our time and mental effort? One thing seems certain to me. With every tacit decision to ignore the increasing destitution in our country, we gamble with the fate of our own progeny.
