A Little Bit of Grace
Some thoughts on bad opinions that age really poorly, and why we should have a bit of patience for those who hold them
This piece of writing is one I wrote back in June, but never quite got over the finish line. So I polished it off and sent it out a little late today. The focus of the piece is the arc of human progress, and why the seemingly uncontroversial is often met with controversy. I hope you enjoy it - smash the like button at the bottom of the page if you do.
I grew up in a normal midwest neighborhood.
There were normal houses and normal cars, normal two-parent households and normal packs of pre-teens on bikes on every street corner. It was a town of opposites: a quiet neighborhood within a big, loud city, a deeply religious (Irish Catholic) space yet largely liberal. Neither rich nor poor, we were squarely middle class. It was the quintessential American neighborhood.
I was barely out of high school in 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled in Windsor v. United States, paving the way for marriage equality. Like many midwest neighborhoods, my hometown’s reactions were mixed:
“I don’t care, let them be happy,” cheered one voice.
“It’s an abomination, I just believe what the Bible says, crowed another.
“I don’t care what they do, but don’t call it marriage. Marriage is sacred between a man and a woman,” opined a third.
In my midwest neighborhood, these reactions were wholly uncontroversial. Some groups embrace change, some resist, and others are indifferent. It’s a tale as old as time. But this was a decade ago, and society’s changed quite a bit since then. In hindsight, the issue of gay marriage should have been wholly uncontroversial, especially in a place where Liberty and Freedom are King and Queen. For two of those three voices, there’s an obvious antiphon: what on earth were you thinking?
That’s change, in a nutshell: the world is rarely aligned on it. Every social overhaul since 1776 has been met with a similar mix of emphatic support and intense disdain. The Emancipation Proclamation was met equally with cheers and boos.
What were those boos thinking?
Anti-suffragists fought against the 19th amendment.
What were those misogynists thinking?
And then there was resistance to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the death of Jim Crow.
What were those racists thinking?
The question innocuous enough: those idiots who resisted progress, what were they thinking? Why couldn’t they just get with the program?
There are many such explanations: a general resistance to change? A sense of self that’s intertwined with deeply-held religious and political beliefs, often to a fault? An inability to appreciate a challenge we haven’t seen or lived first-hand? There’s probably some truth to each of these. Humans are deeply flawed, even when faced with choices that carry obvious benefits and obvious consequences.
Therein lies the Shakespearean rub: we’re all victims to flaws in the human condition. We can boo and jeer at the ones who resisted marriage equality, but a laundry list of poor decisions mars everyone’s credibility.
There were those of us who called to defund police departments, an act that tightly correlates with heavy spikes in violent crime1. Something meant to protect the weak actually hurt them.
What on earth were you thinking?
Some of us called to decriminalize hard drugs, resulting in significant increases in overdose deaths and substance abuse disorders2. Something meant to protect the vulnerable caused them harm.
What on earth were you thinking?
Each of these examples, in some interpretation, were driven by the same guiding principle: all men are created equal. The intentions behind each were admirable, but well-intentioned decisions are often outright stupid. And none of us can know for sure which side of history will be the right one.
This is all to say: we’re far from a perfect society, because society is comprised of humans, and all humans are flawed. We resist change. We hold our religious and political views so close to our identities that they blind us. We fail to appreciate the challenges of others unless we’ve seen them first-hand.
On a long enough timeline, we all believe stupid things. The best we can do is have a bit of humility today, and give each other a little bit of grace tomorrow. At our core, we’re all doing the best we can.
The image below shows Portland, OR’s homicide rate per 100,000 people between 2012 - 2021. The city cut their police budget by $15 million after George Floyd’s murder. Chart source here, budget cut source here. Note that there is not sufficient evidence to suggest a causal relationship between the two, as the homicide rate likely increased before budget cuts took effect, and the chart also shows a nationwide spike in homicide hates across the same timeframe. I can’t imagine those budget cuts helped the cause, though. And I don’t know if the US’s increase carried into 2021 the way Portland’s did.
.