Friday, April 28, 2017

Why is our culture so horrible now?

I don't understand the anger and the violence, particularly from those on the right.  Their guy won.  But they seem consumed by grievance and rudeness, seasoned with glee at the pain of others.  Indeed, much of our discourse is cruel, and suffused with an undercurrent of potential violence.  Anti-semitism, racism, hate crimes against gays and Muslims are all increased.  It's as though the GOP victory has allowed a festering sore of hatred to be exposed.

 Obviously some of these are the professional provocateurs of the Alt-Right.  But it's not them I want to discuss. It's the casual cruelty of the average Trump supporter, who is so mad.... mad at the elites, mad at the folks in cities, mad at washington, just plain mad.

How do we recovery decency?  John Pavlovitz promotes a solution:  the Church of Not Being Horrible. He writes,
our sacred calling is to be decent, to be kind, to be compassionate, to be whatever it is that we believe the world is lacking: to be the kind of person the world needs—and it definitely needs people being less horrible these days. 
And this call to humanity isn't limited to any belief or denomination.
If you’re interested in joining the church, you don’t need to pray a magic prayer. You don’t have to attend a membership class or recite any creeds or take a test or promise to give financially. There are no theological or bureaucratic hoops to jump through. 
There is no conversion, there is only commencement. You simply begin, right where you are, in this very moment—seeking to be less horrible to the people you live with, work with, come across in the street, interact with online, see from a distance. That’s it.

It may seem like a low bar to set, but it’s actually a beautiful aspiration: making the world less cruel, less violent, less insulting—less horrible.
But not as long as violent would-be brown-shirts are in training to beat up "libtards".

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