Enjoy the holidays and embrace kindness and reason in charting our way forward
Editor:
Rethinking matters can be useful if it’s not a play for power and, additionally, sound analysis and “reason” are applied to avoid major collateral damage. Access to facts and ability to think and speak freely are a sine qua non of good problem solving. I do not think anyone can argue with that.
What we mean by “reason” though can be tricky. “Reason” can be a tool to solve and improve things. But the literature is clear that “reason” is also fact a Swiss Army knife that facilitates survival.
“Reason” which solves problems works the strands of a theme or a compelling question using rigor, fact, logic and reflection. Inherent is study and inquisitiveness.
But ”reason” also enables us to gainfully exist in whatever new or hostile environment we find ourselves. What a person once thought false they can come to believe is true. A hostile environment can change people; innate “reason” can tell us it’s better to adapt and join rather than perish.
Consequently, sadly, if something “bad” is wide spread, it will surely get worse before it gets better. It will increasingly become the (or a) norm with which people have to find a way to coexist. An easy example occurred when Pres. Clinton nudged the tax rate up (barely) to put the budget in surplus. This defied the spreading supply side norm and as a result over 30 brave Congressmen lost their seats. What was once called “ Voodoo economics” is a norm still with us.
The type of “reason” which solves problems was protected by our Founders in the First Amendment – free speech and protection of the press. Without both the Founders (and citizenry which insisted on that Amendment) knew our ability to identify, confront and solve problems would erode. Without exchange of facts and ideas to sort though, guide and sustain us they knew we would increasingly confront a vortex of personal and collective identity disintegration. What we had under the King.
This same vortex of disintegration many think is well underway again. We will have to wait and see if the keystone of reason – free speech and press – is actually under brutal, subversive, attack of if the threat is just a tactical maneuver. As long as we have it all can contribute.
In this world, right now, my Christmas wish for all is that no one brook thoughts that anything can obscure or eclipse their identity or the truest elements of “life” and “humanity.” Elements which for me (and I hope for you) include wonder, kindness, curiosity, empathy, generosity, courage, creativity, learning, and the ability to use “reason” as a tool based on fact, not rhetoric.
For those in doubt remember this is a temporal world subject to inertia and this is a big and great country. Remember there are hundreds of millions, around the world billions, who think similarly. My sense is that many of us will be defined by daily small-scale expressions of personal integrity and that too is a keystone!
In the New Year we shall see which form of “reason” shows up and if the coming change can be figured out by all involved without hurting many people in many ways. Till then my best wish to all is simply enjoy the holidays.
Conrad F. Cropsey
Albion
