Hogan: It’s not personal, just the complexity of humans

We live in a funny time. Folks who grew up able to have a difference of opinion without it destroying their day, or friendships, have seemingly lost that capacity.

Everything is elevated to critical mass. Social media have given us so much algorithmic affirmation that we’ve lost sight of the notion that you and I aren’t supposed to see things the same way. We’re different.

I have outcomes I’d like to see achieved, and yours may be totally different.

I prefer foods, music and entertainment that you may not care for, and your preferences may be not at all to my tastes.

We understood this once. Now it seems as though we’re expecting everyone to align with us, or they’re bad folks.

Ironically, it cuts in all directions.

Last week I saw two separate stories of teachers being fired for social media posts pertaining to immigration enforcement. One was fired for posting a vulgar condemnation of our federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the other fired for posting a supportive message about the same agency.

In both cases, the parents and administration thought the person posting had outed themselves as a bad actor, and both persons lost their job.

Now, there is certainly a cautionary tale here about our times. Posting anything about hot button issues can come back to bite a person, and perhaps that’s the loudest message. Just don’t.

That’s also sad.

We live in a country where if folks hold a different opinion than you, they can and will try to see to it that you lose your livelihood. That’s a good thing to know, but not a particularly good thing to be true.

Sure, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but we’ve lowered the bar quite a bit in our hypersensitive era. Expressing neo-Nazi views is mostly a dealbreaker for any gig in the nation, but folks expressing their belief that identification should (or should not) be required in order to vote should probably not be elevated to the same level.

Part of it is a sort of tribalism. The thinking, in mirror image fashion, goes, “If you don’t think ID should be required to vote, you’re a Kamala-supporting leftist, and I can’t stand your type, which means you must be destroyed,” or “If you think ID should be required to vote, you’re a Trump-loving MAGA nut, and I can’t stand your type, so you must be destroyed.”

Of course, not everyone who holds a myriad of different positions can be so easily crammed into those camps, but introducing complexity is too much work for our encamped, algorithm-numbed tribal brain, so into those camps they will be shoved.

This makes Sen. John Fetterman, the darling of the Democrats a few mere years back, a MAGA nutter for supporting border enforcement, and Sen. Rand Paul a raging leftist for questioning the tactics used to address the immigration issue.

They don’t really fit neatly into those camps, but it’s too much work to think in nuance.

Except that nuance is where the truth often lives. In addition, the capacity to think in a nuanced manner is higher level thinking, the fuel for critical analysis and reasoning, and uncovers the truth that most people aren’t caricatures.

I had a very conservative friend who agreed with the 2016 version of candidate Trump on most matters. She actively campaigned for Clinton and against Trump because her husband was in America as an undocumented immigrant. Her higher priority was trying to ensure that her husband was not sent back to Central America, so she ended up supporting a candidate with whom she disagreed on nearly everything.

I have a lifelong Democrat friend who voted for Trump in the last presidential election because she believed his policies would be better for her business than those of his opponents — even though she can’t stand about half of what President Trump represents.

If we try to make cartoon villains out of everyone with whom we disagree, we find it easy to harbor malice, and nearly impossible to surround ourselves with folks to sharpen our thinking and our communication skills.

Folks become saturated in like-thinking, which feels warm on its surface, but on a more real, human level, it’s a regressive step. It’s also the step that has chased many a culture downward toward the most base of human behavior, the stuff that has fueled many a massacre and genocide. We need to reach higher.

The Rev. James Hogan is a native of Stowe Township and serves as pastor of Faithbridge Community Church. His views do not reflect the views of the West Hills Gazette.