The Arizona Shooting and Integral Political Discourse

If anything “good” is to come out of the shooting of Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords, it might be a renewed national conversation concerning political discourse.  But I, for one, am not holding my breath.

The problem is not that this conversation won’t happen – it has already begun.  But the conversation misses the underlying problem.  The heightened, inflammatory, and often violent political rhetoric is merely a symptom of our politicians being unwilling, and perhaps even unable, to truly listen to each other and be self-critical of their policies.

Self-criticism is not something that Americans teach or even find necessary.  After all, we as a nation are a “light for all nations” or a “city on a hill”.  We were supposedly founded on the highest values and principles, and therefore, it’s nearly impossible for us to imagine that we could go radically wrong.  Maybe we go wrong on small things, but on the major issues – particularly relating to democracy, capitalism, and militarism – we believe that we are virtually incapable of error.  Take a look, for instance, at the reading of the constitution this week in the House of Representatives.  The house took out all the mentions of slavery, prohibition, and any other parts of the document that were later deemed wrong.  With readings like that, no wonder people believe that the constitution is a sacred document.  We, as a nation, largely refuse to see the shadow of our history and political system.

If we lack the ability for self-criticism as a nation, then it’s only natural that individuals, such as politicians, lack the concept as well.  But without it, level headed, progress driven political discourse in this country will be impossible.

I am afraid that when liberals talk about the need for a toned down political discourse, they are talking more about being polite rather than being clearheaded, open minded, and compassionate.  Liberals won’t ask conservatives to abandon their political absolutes because it would also mean that they have to abandon their absolutes as well.  They simply want republicans to be nicer in their stubbornness and to express goodwill in the postmodern sense.  For example, they’re asking republicans to take on a failed democratic strategy: speak your truth and allow the other party to speak theirs, all the while respecting their “truth”.  This amounts to wishy-washy relativism that voids the world of any truth rather than rightly putting spoken truths within their appropriate contexts.

The problem with this “polite” approach to dialogue is that it’s dishonest.  As long as republicans and democrats both believe that their way is the right way, they’re going to continue to be angry that the other side just doesn’t “get it.”  So in their polite discourse, they’ll only be masking their underlying anger, resentment, and distrust of the other party.  After a while, the politeness will go away, and nothing will have changed.

What we need instead is for politicians to simply consider and engage these three points:

1. My political views are not perfect and may have some of the flaws that my opponents have pointed out.  Furthermore, my political views are undoubtedly influenced by my own point of view (remember – one’s view point is only a view from a point, meaning it only captures a limited glimpse of reality), my level of development (whether it is cognitive, moral, emotional, political or another line of development), and my socio-cultural context (such as my social status, my economic standing, my ethnic background, etc.).  And even more importantly, I am often blind to these biases and need to have a reliable mirror to point them out to me, and that mirror might sometimes be me political opponent.

2. My opponent’s views undoubtedly have some merit that might be worth incorporating into my policies.  As Ken Wilber says, no one is smart enough to be 100% wrong.

3. There are certainly some aspects of my policies that are right on and need to be asserted and strongly advocated for without casting my opponent as stupid, evil, or ignorant because he/she does not agree with me.  The problem in heightened, violent rhetoric is that it confuses my opponent’s political beliefs with his or her being or essence.  Regardless of political ideology, we are all human beings, and all human beings must be treated with respect and compassion.  That being said, that does not mean that a person cannot strongly and passionately assert one’s perspective of the truth.  A pitfall of postmodernism and contemporary liberalism is a certain wishy-washiness that stems from not wanting to offend anyone.  You can avoid being personally offensive by stating your truth, acknowledging potential pitfalls of your perspective, and respecting the dignity of the other human being with whom you disagree.1

You have to have all three in order to have a truly different and progressive dialogue (progressive meaning moving toward progress, not progressive political ideology per se).  If you only have the first two, you fall into the trap of liberal wishy-washiness where you have no solid ground to stand on.  If you focus too much on the third without incorporating the first two points, you can easily fall into the self-righteous “love the sinner, hate the sin” position.   In that case, you might think you’re being open and respectful of the other while being true to your truth, but without considering and incorporating the truth of your opponent, there will undoubtedly be an underlying tinge of self-righteousness in your rhetoric.  After all, it’s just patronizing to say to someone, “I’m right, you’re wrong, and even though you’re a stupid ignoramus, I still love you because you’re a human being.”

This is a much more difficult path to follow than simply “toning down our rhetoric,” which has largely been the suggested solution from political pundits to prevent future cases of political violence like the attack in Arizona this weekend.  Politicians might look at my proposal and say it’s woefully ignorant.  They might suggest that in a 24 hours news cycle in a strongly divided, dualistic culture, such an approach is political suicide.  Perhaps it is.  But it is still the higher road, the road toward integral politics.

I suppose that in the end, I am advocating for a change of consciousness more than a superficial change of behavior.  Change in intentionality, not mere behavior, needs to be advocated.  It does no one any good to be nice and polite in behavior while being righteous and narrow minded in intention.  This change of consciousness is the most difficult, the most radical.

What I am describing here is most likely a second tier stage of consciousness, or in other words, a level beyond postmodern development, an integral perspective.  And as we know, only 5% of the population is at that stage of development.  But we also know there are politicians and perhaps even some mainstream political pundits who are capable of employing this perspective – it is about time they take a prophetic stand and lead the way toward an integral political discourse.

1 It might be noted that I leave off one obvious, important point – the consideration that your political opponent’s views are influenced by their particular biases (personal, social, cultural, economic, etc.).  I intentionally leave that out because by and large, we already do that.  We are very aware of the biases and errors of our opponents and are very quick to point them out.  So what we need is a change in focus – perhaps if we focus on our own biases and errors in perspective, we’ll have more compassion and understanding for the biases and errors of our opponents.