#236 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday December 31)
Good morning,
As we come to the end of the year, I’d like to end with words. One is the Merriam Webster “word of the year” and the other is a word I have loved since I was a teenager. This word learned in my youth is an expression of the notion that one can truly “walk in the shoes” of another, that one can understand another at a sublime level of comprehension and empathy. Indulge me here on the cusp of a new year, after two years of open warfare on a pandemic, political rivals, the truth, and each other. We must learn to grok. To try to grok might—just might—get us to a level of understanding in the coming year.
In Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, he created the neologism, “grok” (correctly pronounced like “hawk,” although some prefer to pronounce it like “yoke”). It resides in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here is how Heinlein describes the concept:
“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed – to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man.”
APPLICATION TO OUR MOMENT
It is high time that we tried to grok with those with whom we might disagree, those of whom we are fearful, of those with whom we are different. Yes, I know it sounds new-world-y and touchy-feely, but I think it’s important. To grok in the current environment, we should adopt one notion of another and try to shape our rhetoric and response in that context.
Here are two simple examples:
When a liberal confronts a right wing populist, center the discussion not on the acts and rhetoric of Donald Trump. Instead, plck up on their primary concern, whether it is to be heard and valued, whether it is the disappearance of jobs, or how tough it is to make ends meet, or how schooling has slipped, or how they feel safer with guns. Work from that value.
When a right-winger meets a liberal, don’t go straight for “the destruction of our American way of life.” Start with trying to empathize with the six year old Black girl walking past a statue of Stonewall Jackson on the way to school, try to empathize with the need to study racism within the context of an American history curriculum (avoiding trigger words that have meanings different than ascribed to them in academia). Talk about jobs and the economy.
If we try to grok, we can find areas of agreement.
WORD OF THE YEAR
Each year the dictionary people choose a “word of the year.” This year it is vaccine. So appropriate. Something we should expect people to take, not because government wants to control them, not that we want them to surrender their individuality, but because we want them to help us stave off this recurrent scourge.
Have a great new year,
Glenn
PS:
THE BRADLEY SONNENBERG LEGACY FUND
Several readers have asked how they can help support initiatives in the mental health area. If you want to help, we have established the Bradley Sonnenberg Legacy Fund, which provides grants each year to various initiatives that address mental health in teens and young adults. Below is the link to the fund, if you are inclined to participate (and you can still get that tax write-off in 2021!):
https://bradleysonnenberg.jewishfoundationla.org
From the archives: