“I’m rubber and you’re glue, everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” We all remember that fun little rhyme. It was a sorry attempt to say you couldn’t hurt my feelings if you tried. Ah, if it were only true. Of course it doesn’t work. We say these things when were six or seven, a simple act of return fire when we’re being picked on by some kid that picks his nose and, on occasion, tries the flavor to see if it’s changed any. But in the end Mr. Schnozz Miner wins because no matter how silly he is the words don’t bounce, they stick like a particularly good and juicy extraction. We learn that words matter and more importantly, opinions matter.
We’d all like to say that others opinions of us don’t matter one lick, but they do, and we all know it. If they didn’t we’d all be sociopaths. So, for those of us that aren’t sociopaths, we begin the long, terrible journey of finding acceptance. On that rocky strewn road we test ideas. We have ideas that brew in our little brains and we test them on other little brains that are just as confused as we are. When we get some good, old fashioned, positive feedback we lock that acknowledgement in our heads and over time build a worldview. Depending on where that feedback comes from we get good ideas cooking or we start concocting some wicked cocktails. All of it goes into a big bubbling pot of thoughts that we use to find our way in life. As time marches on we begin to lay out our beliefs and with those beliefs our bias.
Bias, in the simplest of definitions, is where we land on some arbitrary scale on an issue. The scale is the problem. My scale doesn’t measure like your scale. My weights and measures are tilted towards what I believe and yours are the same. It’s not like there’s a grand Pyrex measuring cup in which we all pour out our contents and get the same reading on how much is there. Your cup isn’t the same as mine. Imagine baking a cake like that. But that’s exactly what we are trying to do.
There’s an old saying about too many cooks in the kitchen. Not only do cooks start getting in each others way but they all measure with different cups. So there are two solutions to the problem; you can either banish some cooks or you can get everyone to use the same cup. That’s where we are today, deciding which recipe to follow. We used to do fairly well because though we may have disagreed on using buttermilk instead of whole milk or baking at 325 instead of 350, we at least had one cup. Now it seems we can’t even agree if there is a cup, let alone what to put in it.
At this point you may be asking yourself if this is one of those recipe blogs where I write 3000 words of backstory just to tell you how to make a cake from a box at the end. Fear not, this isn’t Pinterest.
In order for us to form a more perfect Union we need to agree on some things. First and foremost, that there is, in fact, a cup. Do we or do we not have a Constitution? Are we or are we not governed by Law? Do laws really matter and where do those laws come from? If we can’t agree on these things then we’re not forming that union. We’re bound for a divorce. But before we can even begin to reset we need to pull even further back, back within ourselves, back to the playground, and figure out what makes us believe what we believe. Why do we believe the things we do? What shapes us? It’s not an easy road to travel. It’s full of bitter memories, let downs, failures, and forgotten dreams. But those ghosts from the past haunt our lives today, unless we banish them to the great beyond where they belong.
It’s up to each of us to dig within. There’s a lot of accusations out there right now. There’s lots of name calling and enough blame to go around. If we can’t stop reliving grade school we’ll never get to live as grown-ups. One place to start is with your own bias. Don’t set scales for others, your scale is tilted. It’s not about falling to the left or right of center. Did you ever ask, who set the center? What did they believe and where would they put themselves on this scale they demand we all use? I believe one way, you another. That’s okay so long as we can come together and reason with each other. I recognize my own bias and you recognize yours and together we can agree to where the center just might be.
Oh sure, there’s so much more here that could be pulled apart. It goes way deeper, of course, but even starting a conversation is in vain if we’re going to do no more than hurl insults at each other. If that’s all we’re going to do then I say to you, “I’m rubber, you’re glue…” and this time I mean it, nose picker.
The Fourth Watch 