Once upon a time, I felt I held the moral high ground.
I agree, it made me feel good about myself that I cared for other people and didn’t want to see anyone left behind regardless of the beliefs they held. I couldn’t understand how the Political right cared not what happened to other people, drugged by their own self-interest and indulgence. I just didn’t understand it.
But now we’re seeing a whole new era of Politics that is confusing me; I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I feel that we’re going backward as a society. For instance, in my youth, I could rally with my eastern European neighbor about a cause that we felt strongly about, and it mattered not in the slightest who I was, or what I believed; only that we were in it for the same reasons.
I feel people aren’t listening these days. Very few people are listening.
As a Caucasian heterosexual white man, I feel that I’m public enemy number one. Not in Britain of course, but in America, because I write to Americans, and these people tend to take me seriously (which is nice!), but it’s how I’m more and more feeling.
I can’t debate with Feminists these days because whatever I say I’m “exerting my male privilege” — and the funny thing is that I’ve never in my life felt in the slightest bit privileged; there’s always someone waiting to stand on me if I’m not careful. Its dog eat dog out there.
I can’t debate with the LGBQT community anymore because I’m heterosexual and have lived a life of unbridled sex privilege all of my life — if what I’ve experienced is sex privilege, then Jesus, sex must be shit. (I know it’s not!)
I’m Atheist, and I’m skeptical of letting that one go these days because people expect me to shout at them. Truth be told one of my best friends is a Pastor, and another lovely Lady a Lutheran. I’ve always believed in live and let live.
It’s hard, because no-one is listening these days, I’ll say it for those of you in the back: NO-ONE is LISTENING. I may be white, male, and heterosexual but let me be clear. I had zero choice over this when I was born, zero. So, when you assume that I’m a racist, or a misogynist, or a homophobe purely because of things that I cannot change — then it may be time for you to do some work on yourself, my friend.
My last manager said to me; assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups. You need to get to know people first before making any judgments; and that’s true for every part of life, and which doesn’t include making that judgment from three lines of text from Facebook. Would you believe that after zero questions about my character, and only assumptions from a statement that I had made I was bombarded by a shit-ton of messages from angry people telling me that I was part of the problem rather than the solution?
Yeah, see, I kind of understand why people voted Trump now.
If I didn’t have a deep understanding of society and people, then you’d probably have lost me to the echelons of MGTOW and those peeps.
By not listening, and judging, and assuming, you are only harming your own cause. I promise you this. I swear to you this — this is a plea from someone that identified with the Feminists, the LGBTQ’s, The Immigrants, the stood upon; anyone that needed a bit of social justice, I was quick to mobilize and rally to the cause. I still am, because I believe that love conquers all; and that’s not some crazy hippy shit — that’s proven worked through evidence with me as a witness.
Maybe it’s time for us all to do a little introspection rather than blaming assuming, and hate-mongering? If you think all men are dogs that need to be put down, ask yourself why you think this? At what point in your life could you have happened across an experience that made you think this way? Same with Race — why do you think all white people are racists? I’m sure the small amount of white people you know isn’t the gold standard for white people across the board.
I’ll tell you a story.
—
Once upon a time, I was this really nice guy. I loved women, like.. really loved women. I’d sit with them and emotionally embrace them, work through their insecurities and fears, and so on. None of them wanted to date me though, and this made me feel sad. I couldn’t understand why women were always so emotionally available to me but never sexually available.
As time whizzed past and the more rejections that I received, the angrier I became. It eventually came to the point where I didn’t trust women at all. I had worked out that women only called me up when they wanted something. I hated it, I despised it; it nearly got to the point where I didn’t want anything more to do with them at all.
Then something beautiful happened.
My friend Mark gave me this book called “No more Mr. Nice guy” — it was a book explaining the nice guy syndrome and how to overcome it.
Well.
10 years later and a lot of hard work, tears and empathy; it turned out that I was to blame for my own actions. The only person that was allowing these women to walk over me was me, and the only person that could stop that happening was me too. So, I did.
Turns out in a sly twist of fate that no-one likes to talk about that some of these women (not all) had me as a friend because they liked the attention that I was giving them, forever maintaining the carrot and the stick scenario.
Turns out the friends that I had made, the connections that I had sought, the circles I had forged; my entire universe and worldview was dictated by my self-hatred and loathing from a time long gone. I healed and shed this eventually — some friends I kept, those that enjoyed growth with me, others I laid to rest.
—
And this is what I’m trying to tell you. Introspect into your own life; seek out your biases, understand what motivates you to think this way; it’s much easier to blame people than to try and understand people. It’s far easier to be angry at something you do not understand that it is to love unconditionally.
Did you know that we are primed to seek out threats? It’s why anger and confusion come far easier than peace and love. It’s why newspapers sell bad news stories by the dozen, and no-one would buy them if they were only filled with good news stories. Come on? How many good news stories do you search out for? And how much angry stuff do you search for?
Yeah, sadly we live in a broken society for now. I don’t like it, but there’s a lot of healing needing to be done, again.
When will the people that steer us ever learn?
—
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash