Monkey man don’t do 'civil discourse'

Sisters Mayor Lon Kellstrom read a proclamation Thursday night reaffirming the city council’s commitment to civil discourse. The proclamation was in response to the Tucson shootings and the (tenuous) connection with the overheated rhetorical climate in America.

It’s always a good idea to remind ourselves that, as our president is fond of saying, “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” But how realistic is that? In a free society, with a lot of convenient megaphones that amplify our sometimes strident voices, people’s feelings are going to get hurt. And they’re going to get mad. And at a certain point, they’re going to get so mad they can’t think straight.

When our political ideologies are tangled up with our identity, civil discourse is really difficult, maybe impossible.

One of my favorite bloggers is a corrections officer/writer/martial artist/philosopher named Sgt. Rory Miller. One of his recent blog entries hits on a phenomenon that I believe explains the tenor of a lot of our national — and even local — political and social discourse.

...Two conversations today, talks where intelligent people lied and math (not fake philosophical math but simple "2x4 is less than 2x8, you realize that, right?" ) was dismissed, and historical documents didn't count. But the most important thing is realizing, whether in criminals or martial artists or debate, that there is an identifier. When the other side gets labeled. When the person says "You are a _________" or "You sound just like___________" Right there the tribal mind is engaged. You are no longer reasoning with a human but trying to reason with a monkey...
With patience and by pretending to not notice dominance games or accepting a label as 'other' I have sometimes given people the space and time to let the monkey brain die down and get back to tangible problems. But rarely, if ever, when the problem was tied directly to their identity.

We’re in a phase where, for many people, politics is tied directly to their identity. People choose sides, and lash their identity to their party, their movement, their tribe. They label those who disagree and perceive them as “other.”

This is by no means a new phenomenon in our history. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more common than periods of broad consensus and “civility.”

No proclamation, no matter how heartfelt, is going to change the climate. Unless... it causes us in that critical moment to pause, to question whether our identity is really under threat, to ask ourselves, “am I a monkey or a man?”

Jim Cornelius, Editor