Reigniting Redemption
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Reigniting Redemption
Heavy week, for sure. It never seems to end, does it? They say large-scale conflicts, plagues, accelerating inflation, negative interest rates, and threatening climate changes are events that typically happen around every 50-100 years, at most. Well, we seem to be living in a very compressed version of history where we get to taste them all. Almost at the same time. As my friend, Justin says: "What's next? I am betting on aliens!"
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Right as I was preparing mentally to "get back" into a more post-pandemic posture, Russia attacks Ukraine and we all have to try to figure out what this means: for them, for Europe, and for the globe. I did get some comments last week around my "non-comment" on Ukraine, and I feel it is necessary to explain what I meant. OBVIOUSLY, what is happening is unacceptable, terrible, frightening, and could be the beginning of something really catastrophic. My comment was NOT rooted in apathy or lack of care. It was, instead, my attempt at acknowledging I didn’t yet feel adequately informed enough to provide substantive commentary. In fact, I care deeply. While I feel better informed now, I still feel at a loss. I don't know what to do other than to support organizations, people, and efforts trying to save Ukrainian lives and protest against this terrible crime. In the links below, I have posted a few great articles and interviews that I found helpful as I myself try to understand the many nuances of both possibilities and problems ahead.
This week, I am taking a break from the outer world and getting back to our inner world. And by that I mean inside of our minds and our attitudes. That's where I believe we can find the answers to most questions.
I started writing this newsletter because I am concerned about how far our public discourse has broken down. Even between people that used to love each other. I see it in my professional life. I see it firsthand in meetings. People are very trigger-happy, and they often travel from agreement to disagreement in an instant.
It seems to me that we have lost the space between love and hate. They are only separated by a hair, it seems. We can disagree more agreeably. Can't we? And we can certainly stop confusing the message with the messenger. It's NOT the same thing.
The worst version is, of course, what we now call “cancel culture.” When entire careers and livelihoods get erased, destroyed, and humiliated, oftentimes because of one tweet, one word, or one idea that some people feel injured by. And let me just state something important: it happens from both sides. The far left and the far right are both using "cancel-tactics" as very effective community amplifiers. "The lower someone else sinks the higher we feel" seems to be the essence of the emotional logic. And what’s more, is that we are not making these ideas disappear. We are just temporarily obscuring them. We are not offering a chance for meaningful transformation or healing.
Obviously, social media, with its reach, immediacy, and penetrating power is the most significant contributor to the demise of our conversational culture. There are two particular problems I want to highlight.
The first is fear. Fear of being misunderstood, particularly. More and more people are afraid to say what they think. I feel that myself. More often these days, I don't say what I think or feel just because of concerns that someone will take what I said out of context, and it might end up hurting me or the people I am trying to help. I know many of you feel the same way.
The damage here is that we don't get to hear from people even with a slightly different point of view. This leads us to believe we are more justified in our own views than we actually are. This is, of course, amplified by so many people currently living inside echo chambers where they only listen to what they want to hear. It’s so easy these days to walk through life unchallenged and how easy it is to cherry-pick. But it’s not helpful. It's like wanting to go from point A to point B, and yet removing all road signs and GPS equipment. You might think you are heading in the right direction, but without corrective feedback, you will most often get very lost.
Second, in the wake of this fear, people stop taking risks. We play it safe. That way we will never find new answers to the problems we all want to solve.
Trust is an essential lubricant for a society to continue its march towards progress. Without it, things get stuck. People remain still waiting for the other to make a mistake. It becomes a game of "gotcha". Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
This brings me to redemption. Somehow, we have created a toxic mix of two sinister cultural traits. The first is intolerance for disagreement. And the second is intolerance for recovery. We simply have to reignite redemption.
Redemption might take many to the realm of religion, like salvation from sin. It's certainly one of these words that perhaps is used more often in a religious context. Mainly because someone, often a holy one, was once the ultimate arbiter of who was to be redeemed and who is to be condemned. But redemption comes from Latin, and one of its meanings is releasing. In other words, releasing ourselves from our mistakes. Without redemption, we are all prisoners of our past.
And if you prefer, there are many related words that would work, as well. Recover, re-establish, make amends, reparation, atonement, restitution, compensation. I can go on and on. When searching for synonyms, I was actually encouraged by how many words there are to describe the phenomenon of redemption.
Many of you are fellow parents. We have watched our kids journey from birth to adulthood, reaching many milestones of achievement along the way. First comes eating, walking, and talking. Then, socializing, sporting, dating, graduating, and for some of us, even marrying and bearing children of their own. But very few parents cancel their children because of mistakes they made. We all might deal with "corrective nudging" differently. Some use wine, some might use vinegar. And some use both. But there is never any doubt that we forget quickly, we forgive deeply, and we can't wait to see how the next chapter unfolds in their lives. And always with the most passionate hopes for good health, strong love, and happy outcomes.
Our love must be stronger than our hate. This should also include people we don't know and people we don't agree with. We cannot and should not let disagreements infect and contaminate our capacity for love and for wanting the best for others.
We have arrived at a place in our culture where our desire to win an argument or fight for a particular outcome has made us lose both our connection to and care for the bigger picture. Means keep triumphing over ends, and very reasonable people promote very unreasonable positions in a desire to get what they want. Gandhi supposedly said that "an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind." Sadly, I think we are getting fairly close.
A more redemptive culture is at least part of the answer. Assuming good intentions in others is a good start. And allowing the necessary room for people to reflect, improve, reposition, and adjust is critical if we are to move forward towards the place, we all want to go to.
Below, I am linking to a great post on redemption that inspired me to reflect deeper on a word I rarely use. But like our culture, it's a lot less about words and a lot more about heart. In that article, Ariana Huffington says this:
“Because growth cannot happen without the necessary ingredients of redemption, forgiveness and self-forgiveness. If we’re not allowed to learn from our mistakes, atone for them, become better people, then we can grow neither individually nor collectively. After all, the great documents we live by assume a progression — whether it’s the never-ending journey toward “a more perfect union” or Martin Luther King’s “arc of the moral universe” bending toward justice — and even our Constitution had amendments.
But true change at the systemic level has to be accompanied by change at the personal level. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”
This all brings me back to Ukraine. Let us hope that this awful war is the wake-up call we might all need. A wake-up call that helps us realize that the seemingly intense fights "within" our own democracies are small and trivial compared to the larger wars beyond us. In that way, one can hope that we have found the enemy. And it is NOT us!
Democracy and liberal economies are always messy. The past few years certainly have felt that way. But now we must remember and reinforce what makes them better than the alternatives. I have at least been somewhat moved and encouraged by how quickly the rest of the world (most) came together in strong support for Ukraine. More is needed for sure and is coming. But it was a long time since so many nations so quickly agreed on anything.
Here are a few links this week:
Here is the Ariana Huffington article on Redemption that inspired me.
Yuval Harari wrote a great article in The Guardian on Ukraine and also gave a terrific TED interview that I highly recommend. It's both scary and hopeful and helps bring this situation into proper historical context.
David Brooks's latest column that I mention above is around what we can all hope this conflict helps us realize.
Bill Maher last week talked about restraint and more grace in our relationships with our opponents. I found it inspiring and truly relevant. "We need hugs, not smugs.”
So, here is to practicing more redemption. Let's throw fewer darts and more hearts. They say: kill them with kindness. I'd say, let's try that more often!
And let's all do what we can to support our Ukrainian friends!
