Although Americans like to cite the old saying that “the only constant is change,” we have a difficult time understanding how change happens and an even harder time accepting it, especially when those changes are not to our liking.
Politically, we are in a contest today in which both sides think that the other side should change its mind. We are frozen in a stalemate in which neither side wants to be the first to thaw.
But wait! What if that is not the best way to bring about change?
Students of human nature—Philosophers, Social Scientists, and Religious Leaders—have long told us that change must happen first at the level of the individual.
Now, before you disagree, I do understand that the asteroid that darkened the earth in the age of the dinosaurs created a massive change that was external in origin and allowed us mammals to evolve (with God’s help of course) over the course of sixty million years.
We can be thankful that this is not the way change usually happens, even as we test that idea with our current efforts to melt all the ice in the Arctic with our carbon emissions.
Change can happen slowly to us as individuals, as a result of life experiences that can anger or mellow us as we age. But change can also happen suddenly as well, as we see in the many stories of sudden religious “conversion experiences.” Many converts to religion recall how quickly they “turned over their life to God” due to such a powerful emotional experience.
Could such a conversion happen in our political views? And if so, what might be the trigger for such a change?
Here is one true story of such a change, and it happened to someone I know. Names and places have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
A very conservative man in a small Minnesota town had a daughter who was very sick. This man had voted for Donald Trump twice and was very frightened of persons of color, whom he associated with bad behavior, and a tendency toward laziness.
Since his daughter’s illness required specialized treatment, she was transferred to a hospital in Chicago and the man and his wife were most apprehensive.
However, his daughter’s condition improved and they finally returned home.
There he told one of his Democratic friends the following: “I went to Chicago as a white supremacist, racist SOB, but I have returned with a whole different point of view. The staff was mostly black but they could not have been a more caring, professional, and empathetic group of people. We were lucky to have them by our side.”
This moral epiphany was sudden but significant. It reinforces what many, including myself, have discovered to be true: it is in situations in which we are vulnerable and must depend upon others that we are most likely to be able to see a reality that differs from our pre-judgments. Such judgements are at the root of prejudice, a word meaning “judging before experiencing,” according to my counselor son-in-law.
It is only when we see people as people, and not as categories or stereotypes, that we can shed our prejudices. Recall that staunch conservative Dick Cheney, became more accepting of lesbianism once his daughter identified as one. I recall seeing a T-shirt that proclaimed: “Be careful who you hate. It might be someone you love.”
I suspect many of us have had such moments of realization when actually engaging with people of whom we have been “carefully taught to be afraid, of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a different shade,” as the song in the musical South Pacific says.
Over the decades, I have learned to accept those who are different from me most readily by getting to know them as individuals through conversations and cooperation on common pursuits, and by seeing them work, especially when I or those I care about depend upon the work they are doing.
Perhaps someday Democrats and Republicans may thaw our current stalemate without being forced to do so by circumstances. All would benefit if we could experience that conversion.