It dawned on me the other day that I have allowed myself to be drawn into and consumed by negativity. How did that happen?
Pessimism and negativity and confrontationalism is overwhelming so many people in this country on both the left and right.
An aspect of many, not all but many, people who tend to be on the more liberal side of things is a residing negativity that seems to be always present. I’m not sure why, but that has been my observation. There is always a crisis right around the corner that will destroy just about everything. Of course, we also see this kind of attitude when dealing with morals and God’s coming punishment on what has become the Religious-Right. Right now, the left pushes the next crisis as global warming. In the 1979’s, I can remember it was the coming ice-age. In a matter of 20-30 years, we went from dire predictions of advancing ice-sheets that will cover most of the upper part of the northern hemisphere to dire predictions of melting ice-sheets that will flood all our costal cities and forever damage our fragile environment. Does anyone remember the coming energy crisis when all the world’s oil will be completely depleted by the 1990’s and the world economy will be plunged back into the pre-industrial era?
This isn’t the stuff of philosophical liberalism, but it is the way liberal politics fueled by political-correctness and identity-politics (and lots of other things) has played out over the last 40 years or so. I have to say, too, that the emphasis on dealing with the less fortunate and less advantage among us that permeated liberalism is quite laudable and far closer to a core of the Gospel than was evident in many blue-blood Republican conservatives. If it were not for these liberals, much of the care for and integration of those who are not WASPs into every aspect of American life may not have happened as quickly or at all, no matter that the methods to achieve such care and integration didn’t work very well.
One thing I liked about pre-Bush & pre-Religious Right culture-wars era conservatism is the optimism that seemed to imbue many, not all but many, conservative people. There was a trust in human ingenuity, there was faith in the human spirit, and there was an expectation for personal liberty and responsibility. The idea that the solutions to our problems were always available as we humans put our minds to the solutions and as the need (and economic imperative) made such solutions available and probable. We can face our future head on with a positive and hopeful spirit.
Again, many conservatives didn’t want non-WASP’s anywhere near them nor to participate in the full life of the nation. Many conservatives would have rather impose their solutions on the populace rather than allow the people to decide for themselves.
Those who whether intentionally or unintentionally worked against the positive aspects of both philosophical liberalism and conservatism betrayed their own inner inconsistencies. They were and are not “true conservatives” or “true liberals” in the classical sense.
So, I’ve found myself falling into the pseudo-liberal negativity, (which has also overtaken the pseudo-conservatives) even though I really do identify as a moderate (whatever that really means). I have seen the nefarious intentions of those godless or apostate types, as do so many post-Bush/Religious Right pseudo-conservatives. I have found myself being so absorbed by all this stuff that I have not lived into, as I used to do, the positive-ness that sees the future as hopeful and anything but negative despite obvious hardships and problems, as an opportunity to live life in the full (being content in all things despite the circumstances, as Paul wrote), as an opportunity for human ingenuity (an aspect of being make in the image of God) to work to solve our pressing and future problems. I have let negativity rob me of the joy and eagerness for what lies ahead; and you know what, that really deadens one’s life! Life and all its stuff is not a zero-sum game.
So, I refocus and retake control of my future. As a Christian my happiness or hopefulness do not lie in the “systems of this world.” There are dire problems in our world and great human suffering, but we work for their relief. Let those who want to destroy and denigrate go right ahead. They are destroying their own lives, their own security and satisfaction, and I don’t have to participate with them. I take the step to move forward with what I believe to be a vision for ministry and life that is given to me by God (no, not just me but to all of us), a means of living that draws me closer to who I am in Christ and for the purposes God has for my life. There is nothing negative about that. Why do I find myself so easily pulled away and into the quagmire?