OPINION

CRAIG DOUGLASS: The difference

Knowing that will carry us through

What or whom do you control? Care to make a list? Be careful. We find that many times the people and situations over which we think we have control are but illusions. Or worse: delusions. The former being external; the latter internal.

If my protective ego will permit, I suppose there could come a time when I finally realize that control only pertains to self. Most, if not all, over which grace can be said begins and ends with me. And grace is required, to be sure.

But what about existential circumstances? Choices and decisions that require either acquiescence or active involvement? Are we players, pretenders or passive observers?

Take partisan political participation, for instance. Or nonpartisan civic involvement. Oh, sure, we vote. But should there be more?

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in the vaunted Serenity Prayer that we ask for the serenity to accept what we cannot change but have the courage to change what we can. The key, however, is to find the wisdom to know the difference.

Neat trick.

Among Niebuhr's many contributions to schools of thought is the notion of political realism: how power is obtained, used and sustained; power pursued by societies in general, and individuals in particular.

Now I don't know about you, but if there are powers other than myself, and a power greater than myself, where do I fit in? Among all these actors, what role do I play?

Emails, texts, videos, all sorts and types of messages come at us daily. MediaPost reports that Americans see, on average, over 4,000 paid ads per day, including 400 Internet ads and 155 social media posts. Seems low to me. However, if we were to include the back-and-forth of text messages and emails, along with tweets that are reported by more traditional media outlets, we are overwhelmed.

In fact, it's numbing.

With the proliferation of information, some of which is promoted by non-journalists with no standards or professional fact-based editing, we struggle to glean what makes a real difference to us, and how we inform our choices of acceptance or action, compliance or complacency. How do we ascertain the wisdom to know the difference?

Seems to me, in order to make informed choices we must, in fact, be informed. If we eschew the responsibility of choices, particularly in our republican democracy, we fall short of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' admonition, "The most important political office is that of private citizen." And, as Jon Meacham said at his commencement address in 2017 at Middlebury, politics "is both an emotional and a rational undertaking."

Our challenge, particularly in trying or confusing times, times when we are bullied by loud hyperbole and self-serving prevarications, our challenge is to bend toward the rational; toward a search for facts and real truth, void or less directed by the emotions of passionate, ideological and predisposed partisanship, and more informed by an open curiosity.

As Meacham also said to graduates at that commencement, "So be reflective about our public life; make up your mind based on facts and evidence; be open to the very real possibility that you might be wrong from time to time and that people whom you thought beyond redemption might have a point. There is no shame in this. The shame only comes when we take refuge in unjustified certitude rather than fearless openness of mind and soul."

But make up our mind, we must. The structure of our American society, the very democracy that, through the genius of the founders, has adapted to and overcome crises of confidence, safety and security, depends on our choices and our participation. The American experience, indeed the experiment, derives its purpose and power from us. Are we up to the task?

Back to Niebuhr: To be full participants in our way of life, we must accept what we cannot change, and change what we can. The collective wisdom is in knowing the difference.

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Craig Douglass is a Little Rock communications and research consultant.

Editorial on 09/10/2018

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