The Whole Story

Last week in the New York Times an article entitled   We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint   censured the popular Microsoft software for limiting military presentations to shallow and mindless proportions.

"PowerPoint makes us stupid," said Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander.

"It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control," General McMaster said in a telephone interview.  "Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."

Um, some problems?  How about most problems?

Politics.  Religion.  Immigration.  Energy.  Environment.  Health Care.  Abortion.

Shall I go on?

We are a polarized nation because we’ve become a PowerPoint nation.  We take our soundbites of summarized information from our pet sources, which are designed to encapsulate complex and dichotomous issues into shout-able phrases and ideas that match our politics.

And when you can shout an idea, it has no depth. 

Drill, baby, drill.   

BUILD THE FENCE

The Nazis Were Socialists

Vote Democrat, it's easier than getting a job. 

Vote Republican, it's easier than getting a life. 

Vote Green, it's easier than getting a clue.

In 1776, Liberals Fought For Independence; Conservatives Wore Red Coats

Don’t want a government?  Move to Somalia.

Who would Jesus bomb?

Has Anyone Seen Our Constitution Lately?

Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.

If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

These are slogans.  Propaganda.  The issues alluded to above are big, messy, complex issues with no easy answers.  In and of itself, propaganda is not a bad thing.  It becomes a bad thing, a deadly form of misdirection, when, instead of thinking, we take boiled-down tag-lines and craft our whole idea of who we are, what we think and who is right or wrong along the bold and carelessly drawn lines of buzzword black and white.

But the real world isn’t made up of bold black and white lines.  The world is gray.  A million shades of gray.

Buzzword propaganda never gives us the whole story.  Obviously.  But the media caters to our hunger for abbreviation and gives us buzzword propaganda instead of news.  And though we might think that this is a recent development (and, certainly, it has gotten more epidemic with the onset of 24-hour news channels and web-based news), I would guess that, since the dawn of human communication, purveyors of news have understood that people crave easy answers and condensed digests of simplicity rather than the cluttered aggregate of reality that would leave us free to form our own opinions.   Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

And I just did what I’m railing against;  I quoted Jefferson and made him support my point.  Propaganda.  It turns out that I can make Jefferson support a variety of different ideas.

Jefferson is a Liberal

"Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society."

Jefferson is a Conservative

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

Jefferson is an Atheist

"Question with boldness even the existence of God"

Jefferson is a Spiritualist

“Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”

Jefferson is a true follower of Jesus
“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus Christ]  by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence..."

In every one of these instances, we’re missing context.  And context changes meaning.  Here is a Jefferson quote that is often taken out of context;

“To this a single observation shall yet be added. Whether property alone, and the whole of what each citizen possesses, shall be subject to contribution, or only its surplus after satisfying his first wants, or whether the faculties of body and mind shall contribute also from their annual earnings, is a question to be decided. But, when decided, and the principle settled, it is to be equally and fairly applied to all. To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers' has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association,  the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.  If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree ; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra-taxation violates it.”

I’ve seen this condensed by Conservatives as,  “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers' has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association,  the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.”

Liberals condense it like this;  ”If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree ...” 

If you don’t have access to the full quote, you don’t see the whole picture.  You can’t even see the whole picture with the whole quote because the quote comes from a letter that provides even more context.  

But we read the quote, or part of the quote, and say, “Hey!  Jefferson thinks the way I think!”   And we say this even though what we "think" is a broad brush stroke that we hand-picked to match the notions and ideas we formed by reading and listening to the hand-picked abridgments of others.

Kate Walbert, in her novel A Short History of Women, wrote, “"Conversation is now just approximations of opinions adopted from other opinions that were approximations of opinions, etcetera, etcetera. I'm just trying to be real when everything is an approximation." 

And that’s what I’m trying to do here, in this ridiculous blog; be real in a world of approximation.

Of course, I don’t have time to research every story to the depth it would take to find the whole story.  What I DO have time to do is to allow my assumptions to be presented as just that; assumptions.  I have opinions.  I have ideas.  I have very strident views of how things ought to be done.  But I know they are my ideas.  Only ideas.   Not basic truths.   And my assumptions change as I develop and grow.

I believe what I believe.  I take stands.  I advocate.  I counsel.   I teach.  But part of teaching is learning.

If I don’t learn from you - if I just shout and decry your wrongness and stupidity - I have cut myself off from the opportunity to strengthen my beliefs while simultaneously incorporating some of yours into my lexicon.

We can’t escape our PowerPoint World.  But we can prevent our PowerPoint World from irretrievably polarizing us by listening to our opposition - provided they, too, learn not to shout and synopsize without real meaning attached.

You and I may never fully agree but if I have your story, and you have mine, we are one step closer to that whole story that I crave.