The Echo
because I disagree
doesn’t mean you are wrong
<>
seeing things differently
doesn’t mean I know better
our ideological differences
ultimately don’t mean anything
minority majority
there’s always a power disparity
our control over
each other
is still limited
I may not be in charge
but neither are you
as we are caught in this dance
of conformity to
cultural imperatives
that define confine
us to gender roles
race roles
age roles
financial education class boundaries
that we struggle to tear down
or to reinforce
often without questioning why
they came to be in the first place
<>
there are noisy
spokespersons on all sides
who shout down each other
as to who is right wrong
when the loudest wins
it’s only the echo
of what could have been
This piece starts with what I consider a truism which if more people understood there’d be no real purpose for twitter 🙂 There not agreeing is seen as treasonous, seditious & unpatriotic. I’d say un-American, but only the US president can make that decision. That’s disagreeing on a bigger playing field. History is seen through the eyes of the historian, not the eyes of the people who lived it. Colonizers see property rights as earned not stolen.
A variation on that truism is ‘just because I’m not arguing doesn’t mean I agree with you.’ What it does mean is that I’m not easily drawn into arguing because my experience has been the more insistent either side is the less productive the conversation is going to be. Not that I think we ‘should all be friends’ but we can respect one another’s individuality.
One of things recovery has pushed me to do is to examine more closely my own conformity to cultural imperatives, how lack of conformity to some of these imperatives has influenced me. One, that I’ve blogged about before is how masculinity is childhood is defined by fighting back with bullies. I was not a fighter so my internal self branded me a coward.
The news is often dominated by media whores who will tweet, say, do anything for attention. They don’t need information or even misinformation int heir reckless disregard for common sense. Contradict them & you are seditious, ignore them & you are seen as resentful & envious. The only dialogue they are interested in is the one in which you agree with them, not one that will lead to change.
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee at – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
TOpoet 