NIH Budget cuts will “imperil work on cancer and other illnesses.”
NSF Budget Cuts Would Put the Future of U.S. Innovation and Security at Risk
The Price of Progress: How Federal Budget Cuts Could Devastate American Innovation
These are just three of the many alarm-raising articles I have seen recently that predict the harm coming to the country by what the current administration is doing or not doing.
That seems to be the fallacy today – looking for absolutes in labels and headlines and not bothering to read beneath the surface. Yep, [insert favorite news source] said it so it must be true. And we could probably put every news source in that sentence regardless of political leaning.
Don’t get me wrong – I am very concerned about what I see happening. But I can’t be comfortable with embracing either “side.” At least not until I know enough to render an opinion.
It only takes 10 words in a headline to spark anger and fear. And it is happening on both “sides,” each side pointing to the headline and saying, “See!” But does the headline tell the whole story? Rarely.
Perhaps even the entire article tells only one side. If we trust in that news venue, should that mean there is no need to think further? Should we take what we are fed and feel either comfortable or frightened?
We can argue and point fingers at the other side all we want, but the reality is that we don’t know. We don’t know enough to predict an outcome for something as complicated as healthcare research, innovation or security.
This is all new to everyone.
Most of us grew up in a world that was predictable, and we have become comfortable with having a pretty good idea of what will happen, based on our experience and on history.
But the new Administration was elected to be a disruptor, and they are doing just that. I would like to trust that the disruption won’t turn into destruction. I’m not sure I have that trust.
Nevertheless, we now have disruption. We can either embrace it or fight it without asking questions, or we can move beyond our comfort zone and ask questions.
Something needs to change for us to come together
But must we discard all our beliefs in order to change one?
I saw an article this morning that held a lesson about changing beliefs. The New York Times morning email today had the subject: Opinion Today: The radical process of questioning everything you thought you knew. The subject line really spoke to me because I am questioning everything I thought I knew.
The email opened with a preamble to the main article “My father was a conservative evangelical preacher. Then I came out.”
That preamble was intriguing: “What does it take for someone to change a core belief? For beliefs that are loosely held, it seems relatively straightforward, even trivial. You thought one thing, then you got a piece of new information, and now you think another.
But how does this process work for fundamental convictions that are firmly and deeply held, in areas like ethics, politics, and religion? Such changes can be hard to learn about by reflecting back on our own experiences. Our fuzzy reconstructions of our thought process can be inaccurate; our memories may flatter us by making it seem more linear and more logical than it actually was.”
It is about love
While the premise of the mind change in the article is acceptance of the LBGTQ community in the face of religious teaching, that is not the only lesson.
I see the real lesson as love. Love, it claims (in my own paraphrase), calls us to look beyond the labels. Love gives us the courage to face our fear of something different.
I invite you to read the poignant and profound article and ask yourself how the feelings of divisiveness and polarity we all feel now work with the concept of love and I hope that you will. That could be the first step toward a different perspective.
Nothing is absolute
There is no right answer to anything we see today no matter how firm we are in our convictions. The complexities of our times mean that one tiny action can create ripples everywhere.
Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into the water, the actions of individuals can have a far-reaching effect.
~Dalai Lama.
Every action taken in our government that has become what it currently is over 250 years will have some unintended consequences somewhere. And we just don’t know when or where.
What can we do?
We can talk with each other.
Yes, talk with those who think differently. I’m guessing that, if the discussion gets below the “label,” we might find that we have more in common than the last 10 years have led us to believe.
It shouldn’t hurt to have a respectful and open discussion. We may have concluded that we can’t do that anymore and that everything is wrong on “the other side.” But I think we all know that isn’t completely true.
