RE: A Response from One of “Those People” in the Middle
A Response from One of “Those People” in the Middle
“Refusing to join a team and refusing to take a moral stand are two different things, and we’ve gotten into the habit of treating them as the same.”
This isn’t something I’d typically write about but in light of the recent election, I find it to be a particularly fitting subject, and one I feel quite strongly about.
Politics have traditionally always been divisive and specifically within our climate in the US, it can be especially hard to not be divisive when we have a two-party system. Having simply two sides to something will do nothing but create division. And unfortunately, I, as well as many others, find it challenging to fit yourself into the box of one of these sides.
I’ve been challenging myself recently to be less conformative when having conversations with others so whether this comes to religion or politics (the two most feared topics), I have been working on not just agreeing with a person’s point to allow the conversation to end. Yet I also don’t want to be divisive with my remarks, nor confrontational, but sometimes, the discomfort that comes with disagreement has less to do with how you’ve expressed yourself and more to do with someone’s inability to accept a perspective that differs from their own. If you’re unable to be honest without getting into some kind of an argument, this may have more to do with the other person and not yourself. And this is a concept I’m trying to retain because it can be hard to not blame yourself for a certain atmosphere created, especially if you’ve become so accustomed to conformity.
But in regards to the topic at hand, I do think it’s important for people to have morals and take moral stands, but I find myself unable to look at either side through a moral lens that I can genuinely identify with. In taking one side, I find myself compromising certain morals I have that would align with the other side and then this leaves me in some kind of a moral dilemma because I don’t want to invalidate any of my own ethics.
I think a typical response to this problem might be that you will most likely never agree with either side as a whole and it’s about standing up for the problems you see as most important, but that simply leaves me needing to weigh one moral problem with another, which I find morally reductive, as each carries its own weight.
This is also not to mention that I whole-heartedly disagree with our entire political system. I find both sides disgraceful within a lot of their actions / decisions / ideals and I can’t just lump myself into that, nor do I expect for others to do this. I find it unacceptable that our political system encourages the division of our nation and I wish more people could acknowledge the hurt it’s doing to us all. I disagree with the sentiment behind, ‘oh, I don’t align with either side because I just don’t care,” but I have so much more to say than that and I still feel like there’s a tendency to define me as ignorant just because I don’t choose a side. And this can become infuriating sometimes because I actually care a lot. Just because I don’t share your beliefs, which have undoubtedly been shaped by your own experiences, doesn’t mean I don’t care about the things that matter to you.
You should be able to take a moral stand on an issue without having to endorse the political party that happens to share that same position.