Our Culture’s Resistance to Nuance, Complexity, Change and Information Overload: What 16 Months of Campaigning for Beto O’Rourke Taught Me About America.
If anyone reads this about 50% will stop after the next sentence without reading for the spirit of content (which is non-political). I started campaigning for Beto O’Rourke for US Senate in the summer of 2017 on my home turf — rural Texas. The 90% vote for Donald Trump land. I knew Beto and knew he not only had the down to earth authenticity, common sense, centralist non-label attitudes, rationality and pragmatism of a West (far west) Texan … he had the positive and unifying nature of magnanimity, listening and an Ivy League mind, spirit, literature lover / rock band wanna be and passion to be articulate and spin spell binding stories in a way that anchor ideas and ideals. Setting aside political views, it seems to me it’s hard not to like Beto as a person.
After weeks of listening to what my neighbors said in private and informally my deep conviction was Congressman O’Rourke would win 30–35% of the rural Texas vote based on substance, issues and message. I thought we would win that % of vote based on self interest, issue alignment, the foundation assumptions around representative democracy we nominally claim as our constitution. I promised Congressman O’Rourke that I knew family and friends and would get a 30% vote in 5 counties where I had lived and worked. I knew we would win urban Texas in a big way. We would win 35% of rural, game over. I could not have been more wrong, after 16 months and lots of events and door knocking we moved the needle 3–4% points in my part of rural Texas.
For years growing up I had sports coaches pound into me we can learn from defeats (which I hate) but that we didn’t need a lot of defeats to practice learning that way. I don’t like to lose and believe that my ability to use competition constructively is hampered by my lack of maturity around the age old adage to focus on just doing the best I can do. I have spent 3 months pondering the shellacking my efforts took in November 2018. I dissected every move, success, mistake and effort I could replay after 16 months of political campaigning.
The greatest epiphany for me is a deeper recognition that in general humans don’t like nuance, complexity, studious research, non-polemic and multifaceted investigation. Especially Americans. We Americans want our movies with an obvious 100% bad person, the glorious 99.99% good person (a cute and endearing flaw is OK). In American the plot ends with the killing of the bad person and material immortal glory to the good guy. Simple. Culturally, relational, psychologically and politically the it may be that compulsion for “simple” doesn’t often work well — not to mention a desert lifeless internal life with little or no self-reflection or mindfulness. Like the Romans, it does work well to dominate the outside world as well as conquer the old west (damn the torpedoes — or nature or indigenous peoples).
We live in a world of accelerating and disruptive change — technologically, environmentally, politically, socially, spiritually. Economics, relationships, race, celebrity, gender, cultures, medicine, materialism, media, information and events swirl at overwhelming and mind-numbing speeds. It is uncomfortable. It frightens and frustrates us. Staying up (whatever that means) can feel futile. We live in anxiety over becoming obsolete in skills and competencies. There are ways of reacting. We can dose ourselves with alcohol and opiates, become 18 hour a day workaholics, invest ourselves in a cyberspace of digital media and distraction or turn our spirituality into a hardened set of note-card rules of “don’t do / must do” regulations and viewpoints which are pillars of lifeless salt. Lot’s wife longed for the simplicity of “knowing” — it turned her to sterile salt. When it comes to politics we pick a simplified lightning rod (“don’t touch my guns / we need gun control”) or isolated aspect (“abortion is murder / a woman has a right to her own body”) or simply a broad generalized undefined group identification (“conservative / liberal”). Once locked in we entrench in comfortable “simple” and shut down.
In the end we often fail to calm (which, BTW, I think is a great app) ourselves, sooth ourselves, find an “OK-ness”, accept our own drumbeat then explore counterpoints to our own biases. The restless, irritable, anxious discontent manifests itself in shallow self-reflection, simple silver bullet answers and stunted unresolved relationships with ourselves, family, friends, community and nature. We sacrifice a lot in our lack of investment in open minded search for nuances and depth. In the hurricane of information and change it is difficult to pick out those few things which are worth the vulnerability, grace, compassion and mercy of suspended judgement of ourselves and others … and letting go of binary good-bad distortion that is devoid of nuances. Contempt prior to investigation, the surest path to ignorance, as the sage has said.
Maybe a new age of enlightenment will evolve where we collborate and cooperate with each other so that each is encouraged to aspire for their own authentic life and and expression of their own gifts honored by those around them and then offered as a service to this miracle of our short mortal time here on this earth. For all of us, especially the vulnerable and hurting, I hope we do find our way to a path of caring, peace and increased sanity. What we know is finite. What is unknown is infinite. Practicing that unassailable truth as a practical matter in our daily lives means searching and fearless openness for alternative viewpoints — and that is not my human tendency.
