With all due respect to fellow garden industry bloggers, columnists, authors, speakers, and social media influencers who choose a different path, I chose long ago not to bring politics into my own garden writing. I strongly believe people need a break from a constant barrage of Red vs. Blue; and there are plenty of contentious horticultural issues to debate for those of us who love to debate them.
But after experiencing a deeply troubling 2020 – a year that all of us have reluctantly shared – this gardener is galvanized to make a gentle – and perhaps political – plea. This one for order however, not chaos. For discourse, not demonization.
And it begins, aptly enough, in a garden, with my parents.
The dangers of stereotyping
My mother and my late father were two of the greenest people I have ever known.
All my life they dried clothes on a line, composted their kitchen scraps, recycled their recyclables, consolidated errands to save gas, shopped thrift stores first, cooked real food with real ingredients from a real garden, raised chickens to aid both garden and table, and made do with what they had before they thought about buying new.
By utilizing practices such as the reuse of graywater, the installation of drip irrigation, the maintenance of firebreaks, the clearing of invasive weeds, and the planting of erosion-controlling species, they acted as stewards of that land since the day they moved in.
In California, where summer temperatures regularly top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, they used their HVAC system so parsimoniously that it resembled the ’69 Mustang that sits in your great-aunt’s garage with twenty thousand miles on the clock.
But here’s the thing. Despite those stone-cold qualifications, my parents also happen to be politically and socially conservative. My mother would chafe and my father would utter a ghostly chuckle if I announced that their actions classify them as bona fide (if quiet) eco-warriors.
Stereotypes have always been useful to politicians seeking power, but they are rarely accurate.
Red? Blue? Get in Your Box.
I have thought a lot about my parents’ lifestyle over the last few months.
If we recognize and applaud the premise of human individuality, how on earth can we believe that the world is easily divisible into two rigidly defined groups, and train ourselves to despise the ‘other’ when we know that we ourselves don’t quite fit in the box made for us?
Is the concept of having urban backyard chickens a red/blue thing? Not in my mind, but it certainly was in the minds of others when I challenged the ordinance in my last house. An eye-opener for this gardener who just wanted eggs for the table and compost for her garden beds.
The inconvenient truth of individuality.
Thinking is hard, and memes are fun. I get it.
But boiling down points of view into one wickedly clever two-second read is liable to subvert reality just a hair. Boiling down news into one, SEO-polished, clickable headline might have the effect of encouraging clickable headlines before the news actually happens.
It is fast-food for the brain, when we should be choosing healthier options.
A diet of this pap trains us to demonize not only those that might live several states or time zones away, and whose anonymity makes such processes easier, but those with whom we interact every day, that we have called friends – that we trust on an instinctive level.
We assign those ‘others’ motives and monikers and thus feel justified in deeming them monstrous, even if our personal experience suggests otherwise. Nor do we make the effort to calm our emotional reactions, recognize our own biases, and sit in deep conversation with those whom we have condemned.
After all, demons and monsters are below contempt and incapable of goodness – why would one waste the time? If we do sit down in conversation it is to be won at all costs; opponents vanquished; preferably shamed and/or ridiculed.
We are not listening to one another.
Civility Lost
How many times have you been at a party or in a crowd of people in the last ten years where someone (feeling safe within the political stereotypes that particular crowd has assumed) has loudly and adamantly pronounced their views on a political subject? No invite to discussion – just pronouncement. Assumption.
Others, feeling ever-safer, create an echo chamber, oblivious to the division those words may have instantly created between them and the friend and colleague standing inches away – one who may then quietly stop working towards a shared goal, weary of being the butt of a joke but justifiably intimidated to speak up lest their job/position/social status be affected.
I have witnessed this on both sides of the political divide – and witnessed the resulting damage to friendships and working relationships, all done for a cheap laugh or to be seen as a fearless party advocate.
If we wish to work together with people – carelessly insulting someone, or assuming their philosophies, will only undermine that common goal. Free speech is a right certainly, but graciousness is a skill. Words, like actions, have consequences.
The failures of emotion-based argument
In the November 2017 issue of GreenProfit (an excellent green industry publication by Ball Publishing), Bill McCurry cleverly muses on the slings and arrows we chuck at each other in order to avoid discussions that could further understanding. “Come let us reason together,” he pleads, having been earlier rewarded for such heretical thoughts with the usual mix of ad hominem.
Wild and rampant name calling isn’t the sign of a rational, well-informed, thinking citizenry. It is a symptom of increasing mob mentality. And as Robespierre might have written in the fall of 1794 – had he not been arrested and executed in July by the very Terror he had orchestrated – mob-thought can be turned on a dime (or rather, sur un décime), rooted as it is in the volatility of emotionally-based argument and accusation.
Those things that feel true, are not necessarily true. No matter how hard – how passionately – one feels them. The Age of Enlightenment promoted reason and scientific method over emotion, dogma and orthodoxy, but we had to work for it.
We still do. ‘Science’ is not a homogeneous, amorphous entity that bats solely for one team or whose holy invocation can stop an argument – that’s antithetical to the entire premise of scientific inquiry.
For gardeners, the planet connects us. Love of soil and living, growing things connect us. And as much as those things can become politicized, they can also be discussed – and pursued – without rancor, name-calling, and contempt. If we cannot do this, the failing is not with our opponents, it lies within our own conversational skills, and it may be time to sharpen them.
The harder road, but a better way forward
So, my gentle plea I suppose is threefold: to strive for (and enjoy!) better, challenging, respectful discourse in our lives. To move beyond the easy boxes of my team/your team to navigate shared goals and a shared planet; and to treat each issue, by the merits of that issue, not by the party affiliation of those who would defend or reject it.
Thus when skillful manipulators goad, twist, and spin, we will instinctively rise above such trickery – preferring to seek truth through research, conversation, experience and the total rejection of convenient stereotypes. Humans may be inherently frail, but we are also inherently good – evil is thankfully an aberration.
So ends my foray into politics. Next week, back to broccoli, or backyard chickens, or beating out a few words to Scott. Political punditry is thankfully an aberration in this writer too. – MW
Red? Blue? What if you’re Purple…Or Green. originally appeared on GardenRant on November 21, 2020.
The post Red? Blue? What if you’re Purple…Or Green. appeared first on GardenRant.
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