It began as these threads often do, with a concerned person asking if now’s not the time to discuss gun control when kids are getting murdered, then when is?
The post quickly descended, as they often do, into a heated discussion, then outright ugliness. The young woman who posted the question in the first place did her best to keep the conversation on track, but it got hijacked into attacks on the various attempts to provide facts about gun ownership, gun violence, and all the other heated talking points that swirl around this debate.
One thoughtful young man simply excused himself out when it got nasty. His attempts to introduce facts into the conversation got him splattered with vitriol. He said, simply, “I’ll see myself out.”
At some point, to keep your sanity, you have to. The problem is that it’s not about gun control, or abortion, or any other difficult topic that we live with today. It’s about our inability to talk about anything at all without becoming entrenched in our POV, and wholly unable and unwilling to accept any other viewpoint as valid if it doesn’t happen to track with our own.
The Ability to Debate Difficult Issues is a Sign of Maturity
This kind of mindless, bull headed, blindered and righteous thinking is what leads to war. On any front, from the online viciousness to the international stage where such petty, immature posturing could well throw the world under a nuclear cloud.
The ability to debate, to consider, to hear each other’s viewpoints is part of maturity. The skill of listening to understand is rare indeed these days. Most folks negate anything that is said and wait their turn to pummel their points on others. The fury behind this righteousness isn’t hard to understand at all.
We’re scared- we all are. We are scared of change and how things are shifting under us, we’re scared of a landscape we don’t recognize. We’re scared of a lot of things. The problem is that too many of us are desperate for black and white answers in a world where everything is, “Well it depends.” Life is all about shadings. That’s terrifying when we are looking to leaders, or gurus, or parents, or family for something to believe in that is absolutely for sure. Nothing…