monagustafsonaffinito   CHATS AND RANTS — PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

I just finished reading another long analysis of why the Democrats lost the election. It’s a good thing I never laid claim to being a Political Scientist because I am just plain totally confused. There are conservatives who nonetheless agree with some liberal priorities, and liberals who feel strongly about conservative ideas. So which is which? And just what is it the conservatives want to conserve? Based on current events it’s certainly not our established government organization, or our free news media, or our traditional international relations, or respect for our legal system. And why do we cling to the dichotomy of the two-party system anyway?

It does seem that we are clinging to old fashioned and ill-fitting dichotomous thinking. Democrats vs. Republicans, Liberals vs. conservatives, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, males vs. females. All imposed like square pegs being inserted into the round holes of the truth of who we really are. Of course the game is confusing, with all sides playing a huge monopoly game with principles that once worked. Sometimes the requests I receive for money to help in the political game feel like leaning against the closed door after the horses have left the barn. I feel like we old fogies are in denial about the real interactive complexities of our world. And maybe there’s no limit on how young a fogey can be.

It seems to me we need some really creative thinking to tear apart the ways that once worked and to create new adjustments to the real complexities. Come to think of it, that’s the first general step in creativity – to unravel the old patterns and put them together in new ways. Hmm. Maybe that’s what we’re living through right now. Trashing the old designs to make way for the new. Maybe being confused is just where we need to be. 

But there’s nothing that says the process won’t hurt. And I certainly don’t want it to go on without trying to reduce the pain as the axe falls. And I sure hope we don’t get stuck too long in the hopeless, cruel, and violent effort to reimpose the way things never were, and probably never should have been, in the first place.