independence for who?: a thought piece

Last Thursday was the 4th of July, which marked 248 years of independence for the United States of America. As the long weekend comes to a close it’s important to recall the significance of not only the specific day, but also the polarizing thoughts & emotions of the people who live here in this country. For as many people who celebrate the day for the idea it was said to be meant for, there are people who believe the idea of “freedom” in America is no more than a one-sided lie that should be deconstructed from top to bottom. Both mindsets can be argued to be the “correct” one depending on different demographic statuses such as age, race, sexual identity, upbringing, & other similar factors. This has been the case for every society since the beginning of time. So why does it seem like no matter what, humans have never been able to successfully find a solution to the problem of mutually beneficial coexistence? As election season has been underway officially since the beginning of January, many of us have been considering (or arguing) our opinions about the “correct vote” needed to be made on November 5th (voting day) since way before this year even started. In fact, arguing would be considered an extremely nonchalant way of describing the discord amongst the citizens of this country. There have been talks, even movies & tv shows made about the potential of a civil war that might erupt depending on who is inaugurated into office in 2025. People are losing jobs, relationships, & even their lives about their political affiliations & beliefs. The level of turmoil we seem to be willing to put ourselves & the generations that come after us through is nothing short of heartbreaking to say the least, over opinions. Considering how much these opinions have shaped & dictated every situation we go through as humans since forever, it would be redundant to ask the question of “why?”. Today I write this piece to pose a different question. could it be somebody else’s “opinion” that we are following in the first place that causes us to perpetuate ourselves into a cycle of self destruction? What if this whole time we have been carrying out a will based around opinions that were thought of by one person, which we have developed our own opinions about that now manifest themselves as emotions such as fear, pride, paranoia, etc. The same way a news reporter goes on a broadcast viewed by millions of people & shares information that will cause people to react & make decisions based on their opinions, there are small pieces of information that still to this day are being argued amongst the masses as to whether it should be considered fact or fiction. When people obtain new information & are unable to place a label on it such as if it’s true or not, they turn to the only thing they know, their feelings. Once feelings are involved new information is no longer received as just a tool of power, but also now, a possible threat.

Imagine a scenario where you have been locked in your room for weeks with no outside contact. somebody calls you & tells you the sky is red. Immediately you will want to go outside & see if this is true, now what if for some reason you can’t leave & see for yourself? The new information will fester up inside of you & cause you to develop some sort of emotions either positive or negative. Now I want you to imagine there's thousands of people in the room with you & hundreds of years have gone past. still, nobody has been able to confirm this new information that the sky is now red. Some groups of people are angry and consider it an obvious lie that lacks real proof, they’ve decided to label themselves “The people of the true blue sky”. Another group of people have put so much faith in you, being the one who got the phone call originally from an outside source that said the sky is now red. You call yourselves “The receivers of the new world”.

by this point, Borders have been made, wars fought, religions, sub-groups, laws & the order of the entire room have been created all based around one phone call that half the population doesn’t even believe actually took place (probably for good reason).  Regardless of what happens next, it’s pretty crazy to know that this has happened many times already in our world. What’s even crazier is to realize the only decision anybody on either side can make in that set of circumstances is to either continue to strengthen those feelings they originally had, or throw out all natural instincts & choose to not feel at all. a decision that directly & negatively impacts the internal health of a person (usually mentally more than physically). This we know, “Research has shown that confirmation bias is strong and widespread and that it occurs in several contexts. In the context of decision making, once an individual makes a decision, they will look for information that supports it. Information that conflicts with a person’s decision may cause discomfort, and the person will therefore ignore it or give it little consideration. People give special treatment to information that supports their personal beliefs.” - https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias

So why would anyone choose to not feel? What good would that do? Let’s go back to our world of “room-people.” We have the blue sky believers & the red sky worshippers, there’s even a middle group that really don’t know what to believe, we’ll call those “white people'' (red, white, & blue get it? lol). Everybody is so worried about the fact that they feel right & that the other groups of people deserve to be punished. Nobody is looking at the fact of how this whole argument in the first place punishes everybody in the long run. You & the entire room as a whole has yet to realize that this place is your home. Regardless of how you feel about a single event that happened in it, if we destroy our home along with us inside of it, we’ll never know what color the sky is. Would it matter as much then? What would be more important, defending your beliefs & opinions to the bitter end trying to argue the true color of the sky, or being alive long enough to learn you were wrong? What if this was supposed to happen? What if the phone call was just some bad joke that convinced everybody that they should be fighting to the death in order to agree unanimously on one thing. Even though there has never been anything in this world that was 100% agreed upon by everyone, even the color of the sky. In that case the only good thing that came from the phone call was that it motivated everybody to connect to the story in some way, families were created, jobs were given, bridges were made all based on one piece of new information. Perhaps too much weight is placed on the reason “why” we must do things, instead of doing the things we enjoy & letting that be our motivations. If we as a people prioritized organizing ourselves based on what we truly enjoyed showing up in the world as, instead of banking on what we “should” be doing, I believe we would truly experience our own peace of heaven on earth. As everyone weighs their options & tries their best to aim their decisions towards a better & brighter future, we must remember there will come a time where one new piece of information will speak to the world at once. It is up to us to decide how we’ll react when the time comes. God blessed.

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