Human beings are very complicated individuals. The factors that contribute to personality, values, tastes and expressions are countless, and therefore so is the variety of the combinations of these and other elements that comprise a person’s individual identity.
Human society likewise has a great many continua by which individuals find and assert their very unique identities according to where their own morals, ideologies, aesthetics, loyalties, life experiences and instincts position them. But, as unique and individual as the people are who make up society, as we gather and form communities and groups, we expose equally myriad sensitivities and potential for discourse, yes, but also discord. It is a nearly miraculous state that we manage to have sustained peace and harmony at all! Yet, we do find such unity, a unity that is as fragile as it is special.
This is where we who as individuals have strength and integrity can fall to the pressures that compound within “the group” or “the masses”. These pressures can be manipulated, and you can bet that they are, as ideological agendas of these individuals and groups so motivate.
The points of contention, if you will – these continua – are myriad. And yet, as vast and deep as they are, political ideology usually finds a voice with which is opined even more inumerable views, often fervent, on the goodness or badness, the authenticity or contrivedness, the validity or absurdity of our various positions on these lines.
The ferocity of our arguments (and doesn’t history record some devastatingly tragic expressions of this ferocity!) comes not from the pure positions themselves, or from the purest and objective substance of the arguments for and against, nor even from a juxtaposition of the most extreme and polar ends.
No – what makes these dogmatic matters so intense, and the inherent conflict that arises from humanity’s variety of opinion so dangerous, is that we SO very intently and intensely internalize and *personalize* our positions. When we argue, we are just as likely to be defending our individuality (or our loyalty) as we are our opinions.
See – it is not just about beliefs and values. It’s about identiy. And that is exactly the button that pundits, politicians and other blowhards often try to push with their vitriole and urgency. But it is largely a phantom button, as the arguments so often made by those people whose beliefs are on the far ends of an issue, are very often misconstrued and deliberately misrepresented.
Most of the seriously strident arguments, if examined closely and cooly, contain quite a variety of logical fallacies and manipulation. If a republican doesn’t like a democrat’s suggestion that homeless citizens, for example, should have access to or the opportunity to earn housing vouchers, he may very well scream “Bleeding heart!” or “tax and spend!”. A democrat who is offended or irked by a republican’s position that all illegal aliens should be herded up and sent back to their own countries – no questions, no exceptions – might quite indignantly and haughtily holler “heartless redneck!” or “elitist”.
And who reading that last paragraph didn’t get their dander up, if just a little bit, at the tense or disgusted recognition of the accustions and name-calling that so often infests public discourse? This is where the masses, alas “we the people” are rather vulnerable. It is the gut reaction and, frankly, our parasympathetic “fight or flight” response to arguements that, for many of us, do indeed threaten our very essences, or so we think (or rather, *feel*) that is behind so much of the vitriole and venom.
Yes, this very human tendency is weilded and manipulated all the time, especially by those who stand to gain from the stoking of controversial fires – be they the various media outlets for whom the very controversy – “the story” – is their lifeblood – or be they members of the body politick or indeed our representatives in government who seek to “fix” our problems and win our admiration, and our votes!
It is equally human, however, to stop and THINK. We have the wonderful facility to form thoughts and ideas, and yet of course, feel visceral emotions as well. We are individuals who can choose to act on our gut, or on our carefully considered and yet still deeply felt convictions.
We as individuals have that control, and thus so do we as the masses. For sure, our values, and political ideology can be used to manipulate us. We do, though, have it within ourselves and within *us*, to reclaim that control, and be thus not manipulated, but empowered.
