November 18--What We See or Don't See...

We may live in the same country, the same city, or even under the same roof, but we live in different realities.  --Brian McLaren

    This is written by McLaren and comes from the Nov 17 "Daily Meditation" from the Center for Action and Contemplation:

Over the last decade, I have felt increasingly alarmed about the vitriol, distrust, and destructive miscommunication that are tearing people apart everywhere I turn … in nations, in religious communities, in businesses, in non-profit organizations, in friendships, even in families.

On social media, name-calling, misinformation, and propaganda squeeze out intelligent, honest, respectful conversation. In the mass media, accusations of “fake news” fly in all directions, leaving people wondering who to trust. In the world of religion, shallow, mean-spirited, or profit-hungry preachers draw huge crowds week after week, and they consistently appeal, not to the better angels of human nature, but to our unspoken fears and unacknowledged prejudices.

In the world of politics, uninformed, dishonest, and manipulative candidates keep winning elections, telling people not what they need to hear, but what they want to hear. Because of our polarization and paralysis, major problems are going unresolved, which intensifies frustration on all sides, and leaves (literally) billions of us vulnerable to populist demagogues.

The social fabric seems to be stretching so tight that it might rip apart. That scares me. “What’s going on here?” I keep asking myself….

Here’s the simple truth I began to see as I observed the decline in reasonableness, monitored the rise in dysfunctional and even dangerous discourse, and reviewed the academic literature:

People can’t see what they can’t see.

We all, yes, even me—and more shockingly, even you, have a whole set of assumptions and limitations, prejudices and preferences, likes, dislikes and triggers, fears and conflicts of interest, blind spots and obsessions that keep us from seeing what we could and would see if we didn’t have them.

We are almost always unconscious of these internal obstacles to seeing and understanding, which makes it even harder for us to address them. We are, you might say, blind to what blinds us. The name for these unconscious internal obstacles is bias.

Bias makes us resist and reject messages we should accept and accept messages we should resist and reject. In short … we can’t see what we can’t see because our biases get in the way.

    We are reminded yet again that solving our current issues begins within each of us.

        Leta