A love song for American democracy and an impassioned plea for its preservation.
Quotes:
Much has been said about the “voice of depression.” It is a voice that speaks despairingly about the whole of one's life no matter how good parts of it may be—a voice so loud and insistent that when it speaks, it is the only sound one can hear. I know that voice well. I have spent long days and nights listening to its deadly urgings.
Perhaps we share an abiding grief over some of modernity's worst features: its mindless relativism, corrosive cynicism, disdain for tradition and human dignity, indifference to suffering and death.
I, too, have a nonnegotiable conviction: violence can never be the answer.
American democracy was intended to generate, not suppress, the energy created by conflict, converting it into social progress as a hydroelectric plant converts the energy of dammed-up water into usable power. But our democratic institutions are not automated. They must be inhabited by citizens and citizen leaders who know how to hold conflict inwardly in a manner that converts it into creativity, allowing it to pull them open to new ideas, new courses of action, and each other. That kind of tension-holding is the work of the well-tempered heart: if democracy is to thrive as that restored prairie is thriving, our hearts and our institutions must work in concert.
I believe in democracy as long as we understand that it is not something we have but something we must do.
If I were asked for two words to summarize the habits of the heart American citizens need in response to twenty-first-century conditions, chutzpah and humility are the words I would choose.
But a heart that has been consistently exercised through conscious engagement with suffering is more likely to break open instead of apart.
In a healthy democracy, public conflict is not only inevitable but prized.
And yet this is one of the most crucial lessons of the twentieth century, one that we forget at our peril: tension is a sign of life, and the end of tension is a sign of death.
The civilizing impact of science, for example, does not come primarily from its most widely heralded discoveries. It comes from insisting that we embrace contradictory observations and explanations, using the experimental method to let their tensions advance our knowledge. Good scientists do not fear divergent views but welcome them for whatever new truth they may reveal. They also know that every new truth is likely to be followed, sooner or later, by yet another contradiction and that only by holding such tensions over time can we advance our knowledge.
Unlike the political and the private, which are realms of relative order, the public is an arena of unpredictable and uncontrollable disorder.
we are so obsessed with our private lives that we are largely oblivious to our public diminishments.
Try to love the questions themselves…. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them—and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. (Rilke)
My core religious beliefs include this simple article of faith: the God who gave all of us life wants us to do the same for each other.
When people or groups who claim religious motivation make their points by using violence in any form—spiritual, psychological, verbal, or physical—it seems clear to me that they are driven by fear rather than faith, committed to control instead of trust in God.
Anne Lamott says, “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
White American pioneers—who found themselves in a land with abundant food, water, and building materials almost everywhere they went—prided themselves on being self-sufficient, a virtue Americans have claimed as a national trait ever since. But Christianity and Judaism, America's dominant religious traditions, all began in the harsh deserts of the Middle East, as did Islam. Nomads in that trackless, treeless terrain must often depend on others for shelter and sustenance.
the Internet has become a public space—perhaps the public space—where people meet to share news and discuss issues as they once did at the crossroads or on the plaza
When we openly acknowledge this gap between aspiration and reality and are willing to live in it honestly, a myth can encourage us to bring what we are a bit closer to what we seek to be. When we confuse the aspiration with the reality of our lives, we can get ourselves into very deep trouble as individuals and as a nation.
All we Americans need to do is chant “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” and we get a booster shot of national and delusional self-righteousness.
A movement's success is signaled by a slow accretion of small changes in the system of institutional rewards and punishments by which all societies exercise social control.
These four stages—deciding to live “divided no more,” forming communities of congruence, going public with a vision, and transforming the system of punishment and reward—are found in every social movement I have studied.
The organic renewal generated by a movement eventually withers and dies, setting the stage for yet another movement. The movement called American democracy is no exception.
For the last six of those years, I have worked on this book, making a case for a nonviolent politics in which creative conflict is possible.
we cannot settle for mere “effectiveness” as the ultimate measure of our failure or success
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. Reinhold Niebuhr
Finally (and here is a sentence I never imagined writing), I thank my conversation partners on Facebook. (you're welcome!)
