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Hallowed middle ground
The last time, I wrote about the rules of being a modern urbanite and how being competitive and rudely opinionated seem to be the new social norm.
- Gautam Raja, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:49 September 8, 2008
The last time, I wrote about the rules of being a modern urbanite and how being competitive and rudely opinionated seem to be the new social norm. Just after, almost as if to assure us all is well with the world, we met two couples on separate occasions who were completely, blessedly normal. We were able to have conversations and not competitions, there was no defensiveness, and they were relaxed and relaxing to be with.
They both agreed that this social problem of self-aggrandisement was getting worse and we wondered why? One possible explanation is that since we're expatriates and in our early 30s, settling down and being able to afford nice things is still fairly new to us - it wasn't long ago that we were all starving college students having to count out money to buy even a samosa (Indian snack). But a darker possibility, one that explains the all-age nature of this collective boorishness, is a gradual wasting away of the imagination.
Just look at the amount of writing on children and the information age, and articles such as Nicholas Carr's in The Atlantic titled "Is Google making us stupid?". Something is happening to my brain, he writes. "My mind isn't going-so far as I can tell -but it's changing."
One of the more worrying results, to me, in the living rooms and lounge bars of 2008, is how loud opinions are prized, and open-mindedness is looked at as spinelessness. This is sad because the much-derided middle ground is actually the hardest to find footing on. It's easy to love and easy to hate. It's even easier to dismiss. So why do people sneer rather than cheer when someone chooses to say, "I don't agree with you, but I see what you're saying" over "You're an idiot"?
Open-mindedness
Maybe, as with empathy, open-mindedness requires imagination. You need to see something from another's point of view. But applying the imagination requires one to stop thinking about oneself for just a second. This is where the problem lies.
I'll admit that most of us resort to uninformed or unfair dismissal in some area - there's always an outlook that pushes our buttons. Even if it's intolerance that makes you intolerant, you are, in the end, being intolerant. It's only when intolerance puts on the sheepskin and starts being celebrated as strong-mindedness that it becomes worrying. And when it disguises itself as modern balanced thinking, it's even more insidious.
This usually occurs when the discussion is about issues such as women's rights, racism or disability rights; when a person thinks they're being a freethinker simply because they're policing the language of the discussion rather than its ideas. (You know the type. Someone who makes a rude joke about a less-than-attractive person one day, and is all shocked when you use the word "ugly" in a discussion the next. "Oh, you can't say that anymore. Tch tch tch." The result is the dangerous assumption that what we say and what we think are the same thing.)
As you read this, you might think that I am dangerously close to the tail end of the quote: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people". But I find the minutiae of how we interact endlessly fascinating because they often say so much about the bigger ways in which we live our lives.
As the Roman playwright Terence said, "I am human, and let nothing human be alien to me." Even if it means the near-impossible work of constantly reaffirming one's fallibility rather than one's superiority, and not acting superior in the process. And failing? Probably.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
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