Our Founding Fathers knew, intimately, how fragile our Republic was and would continue to be – to be fragile forever. These past months, if not years, have confirmed our Founding Father’s concerns. The events leading up to and including 6 January, 2021 reconfirmed their belief: ‘Our Republic is Fragile – Indeed!’
Today, as I am putting finger to key, the fragility of our Republic should be obvious, and a concern for all of us. Sadly, our response is an ancient response – finger-pointing and scape-goat seeking.
We forget, or deny, that if we want to understand others we should look first and deeply into our own hearts. Thousands of years ago the Oracle wisely counseled us: Nosce te ipsum (Know Thyself).
We forget, or don’t know, or deny that the world we think we see clearly has already been distorted by our unconscious mental models/processes. We do not perceive the world as it really is AND we are especially prone to self-serving bias.
The events of these past months confirms that indeed we continue to be more than prone to our self-serving biases – we are indeed deeply rooted in our self-serving biases. We are so deeply rooted that we have put our Republic at risk.
Our self-serving biases lead us to compromise our integrity. Consider, Gentle Reader that one of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. We saw this ‘blunt refusal’ in action when ten House Republicans voted in favor of impeachment – each of them clearly stated their ‘blunt refusal’ to do so.
Even though a minority of folks are seeking to put our Republic at risk we must also remember the admonition of Rabbit Abraham Joshua Heschel: ‘Few are guilty, but all are responsible!’ Our Republic will continue to be at risk of imploding because too many of us are rooted in our self-serving biases; we walk on the edge of ‘not caring enough.’ Elie Wiesel reminds us that ‘the enemy of life is indifference.’
Our on-going embrace of our self-serving biases involves a hardening of our moral arteries. This ‘hardening’ is not new. I am remembering the 1840 Presidential Race. During this time Lincoln noted that the opposition (Martin van Buren, et al) strove repeatedly to engender a fear that continued immigration was a threat to America’s social cohesion (the immigrants that Martin ‘feared’ were the Irish and German immigrants). Lincoln also feared that sectionalism was becoming ever more divisive and he believed that Martin, et al, were putting the United Republic at risk (which, as we know, culminated in our Civil War). Our first President, George Washington, was fear-full of political parties for he believed that if controlled by the power-seekers they would focus on partisanship and move us way from becoming a democracy to becoming an autocracy.
I am not sure what else to write this morning. I am looking for the little pieces of light that reveals ‘hope.’ I leave us this morning with John Berger’s words: ‘Hope is a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.’
Searcher-Seeker 