BY DOMINICK DICARLO | STAFF WRITER
We live in a world where we increasingly ignore the perspective of other people. You can define this in any way that you please, but it is the central problem in our society today. This idea does not just end with the fact that many of us can no longer have a conversation with one another. You have to look deeper to have a full understanding of this problem that all of us have in some sort of way. So many of us live each and every day within our own personal realities. We are doing nothing but going through the motions of daily life without actually taking the time to think about those actions. This core idea flows and pushes itself into every aspect of society; it runs rampant in all walks of life. This idea has clearly bled into our politics, our personal lives, and into our culture. This is a societal problem as much as it is a political or cultural. It is central to the idea I brought up before when I said that we just go through the motions every day, without stopping to see what the world truly gives us the chance to do. If you look at it from a political perspective, you can think of it as people who refuse to accept basic facts. There are political talking heads and so-called “experts” who only look to push their political agenda, which involves ignoring facts and statistics. We do not call this out all the time because we see it as the political reality of the world we operate in. Although this is a problem we have to address, it goes far deeper than just politics. Whether or not it is because of the rise of technology, we have begun to put ourselves into a bubble. We are able to craft a world for ourselves to live in that is separate from the real world. It is a safe space to surround ourselves in that we never have to leave. Unlike other people who have called this out, I do not think it is inherently a bad thing. Just like any creation humanity has developed, there is a good and bad side. Giving us the ability to curate our lives helps people be productive, stay in touch with people and topics they care about, and it lets us all put things that matter to each of us into focus. Obviously, there is a bad side to all of this good. All of these ways in which we can fine tune our experiences can become ways we ignore people we do not like. It can morph into a way to ignore the stressful or scary things that come from living a full and vibrant life. This connects to the way in which we live our lives and the way that we look at and interact with the culture of our society today. Culture runs upstream from politics, so if the truth is something that our culture does not value, our politics will not value this either. That is a crucial problem with our system of government and with our culture. My generation does not respect the truth, they do not respect fairness and equality of thought. We cannot even have a civil conversation with each other today, and when we do, we cannot even agree on a basic set of facts to structure those conversations. If we as a society cannot accept a basis of fact because of our political differences, then we simply do not have a society that can accurately function in a healthy manner. These partisan bubbles we have blown around ourselves is part of the reason why we have such a problem with agreeing on things and actually just starting a dialogue. This is the biggest fear that I have about our world going forward. We are increasingly unable to have a civil conversation with people that we disagree with. Why this is the case in our society can be argued through various different angles. You could blame decades of increasingly partisan media coverage or you could blame politicians themselves making their opponents out to be terrible, evil people. The biggest reason for all of this in my eyes, is what I mentioned previously: we live our lives today within our own personal truths. We ignore the world outside of our bubble and refuse to talk or think about things that we do not feel comfortable with. We ignore counter arguments, we look to simply reinforce our own perspectives. This is continuously resulting in people across the political spectrum being unable to talk to other people.
We are going down a road in which we may not be able to come back from. If our society valued the truth as much as it really should, our political discourse would be more civil and respectful than it has ever been before. If we are going to survive as a nation, we have to be able to talk to each other with a basic structural understanding of what the facts are for every issue. Our politics have become so toxic because people choose to ignore the truth, when in reality, accepting the truth will do more to benefit society than any other measure.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Liberty Den University or its members.