Month: February 2017

I Believe

What happens when it all goes wrong?

We should know. We’ve been living that scenario for some time now.

Our society stands divided, perhaps more than it has in a generation. And our divisions have never been more visible or more evident.

There are no winners in a divisive society; we all stand to lose. If you don’t believe that now, take a closer look at what has happened to us.

All of this is far from ideal — the polar opposite of it, in fact. By accepting a world where facts don’t matter, a world where the opinions of bullies drown out the truth, we set ourselves down a dangerous path. After all, an authoritarian view is seldom a representative view of a society.

The more we feed into this cycle, the worse it gets. Distrust is like mold — once it sets in, it’s hard to eradicate. Rebuilding the bridges we’ve burned will take time, and the project will become impossible if we lose our way completely.

Take all this into account, and our situation might seem dark. Hopeless even.

But I still believe.

I believe in righteousness. That Do Unto Others resonates deep down for us, and always will.

I believe in unity. That what brings us together is ultimately stronger than what drives us apart.

I believe in truth. That we will naturally gravitate toward our foundation of facts, even when they’re not in our favor.

I believe in joy. That anger and hatred are but temporary, and that love and happiness sustain us.

And most of all, I believe in good.

Why do I believe in all this? Because these attributes have driven us forward since the beginning of time. And because we’ve consistently chosen them for the long haul.

Think about it. While we can trace moments of evil all the way back to the Garden of Eden, they’ve been just that — moments. Horrifying, devastating moments, but moments nonetheless.

You see, evil is like a wildfire. It can spark suddenly and destroy everything in its path, but it will ultimately burn itself out.

But goodness is both sustainable and everlasting. It will rise above wickedness every time.

Goodness represents the path we should choose. And while we sometimes go astray, we always find our way back on course.

So, while our present might seem bleak, and while we have a lot of work ahead to mend those broken fences, we shouldn’t give up on tomorrow. For the promise of a brighter day is still ahead of us.

I believe this, with all my heart.

Do you?

Navigating a Complex Society

As I reflect on the state of our society, one thought lingers:

I feel lost.

Not in a dark and hopeless way. More in the sense of: Where do we go from here?

The roadmap used to seem so simple: Do the right thing, connect with each other, grow as one. But there are layers of complexity making that path much more obscure.

Consider this:

  • We aim to build bridges across cultural divides in pursuit of a common good. Yet, by ignoring those cultural divides altogether, we ruin all the goodwill we’ve built.
  • We strive to care about each other and share a goal of a brighter future. Yet, by caring too much, our partisanship serves to divide and alienate.
  • We seek to trust others and find solace in their best intentions. Yet, blind trust easily exposes us to exploitation.

Shades of gray are everywhere. And they make the principle of unity seem as unfeasible as it is noble.

You see, striving for a common good requires us to rally around what we share, and use empathy to connect over what we don’t. But that connection only goes so deep. As a white man in Texas, I can’t pretend to understand the plight of a black woman in California. There are barriers of geography, skin color, gender and upbringing — along with 400 years of ugly historical constructs.

I can’t break through that barrier; neither can she. Even as we each strive to build a better future for our collective society, our differences remain a visible scar.

How do we build off this? How can we accept and celebrate our differences without letting the presence of that divide – and its associated fear, mistrust and isolation — destroy us?

I don’t know. But I know we need to try.

We must seek to get a better grasp on the complexities of our society. We must discover what unifies us and what divides us. We must understand what we should rally around together and what we should respectfully leave be. And we must build upon what we share without whitewashing that which we don’t.

This process will be difficult and uncomfortable. But it will help us remove the divisive stench of racism, misogyny and xenophobia — three ugly results of our unwillingness to come to terms with a complex society.

It will take a lot more than truly understanding the real ground rules of how we create to each other if we want to build a brighter future for everyone. But we owe it to ourselves to at least take that first step forward.

The Picture and the Frame

A picture’s worth a thousand words.

We’ve uttered this phrase millions of times, collectively, over the years. But do we really believe it?

I don’t. In fact, I feel it misses the point entirely.

You see, I love photography. It’s one of my great passions, along with cooking and writing. And it’s one of the reasons why a sweeping desert landscape greets readers as they come to Words of the West. I took that photo, and I’m as proud of it as I am my many blog articles.

Still, I feel photography is underappreciated and misunderstood. In our technologically advanced world, too many people see photos as a snapshot reminder of a moment in time — a crystal clear alternative to a thousand winding words of prose.

I feel it’s something far greater. To me, photography a blank canvas open to interpretation.

For there’s so much more to a photo than just the objects in it. There’s lighting, shadows and sky color. There’s depth of field and the signs of motion. There’s framing, balance and orientation.

All of these elements converge on one theme: perspective.

Perspective is what makes photography more than just a Polaroid of a time gone by. Perspective makes photography as much art as science, if not more.

But perspective has a unique place in the world of photography — as it’s twofold by nature.

First, there’s the perspective of the photographer. The artist who manipulates factors of light, time and frame to create his or her own window into a moment in time.

Then, there’s the perspective of the viewer. The person who takes in the image secondhand in a gallery or on an Instagram feed and makes that window all their own.

Both perspectives are significant. Both are unique. And both demonstrate that even the simplest snapshot is not so simple.

This dual narrative is what draws me to photography, what captivates me. There’s something uniquely beautiful and powerful when one relatable piece of imagery has the power to tell two stories.

Yet, there’s something sinister about equating this phenomenon with a measure of the written word.

It’s apples and oranges.

After all, writing serves a different purpose than photography. It’s about conveying a message through a protocol that both the writer and reader share — language. While effective writing can stir emotion, there is often a narrow frame of interpretation for the reader. The rules of written language make it so.

With no words to steer a course, photography is much more open to imagination. How something is captured — and what’s left out of the image — are key elements in the story. The frame matters just as much as the picture.

This is an important distinction — and one that stretches far beyond the camera lens. For in a world where technology makes it easy for all of us to broadcast, share and connect, framing matters more than ever.

We cannot take everything we see, hear or read at face value. Whether they’re filled with truth or alternative facts, the messages we consume are just one part of the story.

How we frame them matters. Our perspective matters — more than any 1,000 words can say.

So never forget the dual narrative in every experience. We have the power to shape the stories we consume. Best to use that power wisely.

A Foundation of Facts

There are few things in this world more concrete than facts.

The world is round. The sun rises in the east. The first one to the finish line wins the race. We inherently know these pieces of information, regardless of our interpretation of their meaning. While we might advocate vehemently for our perspective and our interests, we don’t mess with factual evidence.

Factual are indisputable, verifiable, proven. After all, there’s no plausible way to deny that 2 + 2 = 4.

But what if it wasn’t?

If there’s one theme from recent weeks, it’s that facts are negotiable. We can be hypnotized into believing that 2 + 2 = 5, and that anyone who says different has a dishonest agenda. We can suppress those who have taken the and due diligence to determine facts, and replace the void with opinion taken as absolute truth. With a mighty hand and blustery belligerence, we can take all that has been proven as “Just So” and make it “Anything But.”

This is as dangerous to humanity as it is ridiculous.

Facts serve as our foundation. Without our acceptance of these self-evident truths, humanity would long ago have gone extinct in a blaze of total anarchy. For if not for a common base of knowledge, we wouldn’t have the capacity to collaborate, build and evolve as a species.

A foundation of facts has led us to establish cities near plentiful water sources. It has helped us to accurately calculate profit margins for our business. And it has given us a jumping-off point as we seek to create ever more powerful microprocessors for our tech devices.

While it could be noted that an interpretation of specific facts could be directly attributed to these innovations, the point remains that humanity had to accept the ironclad nature of those facts in order to have a base to build from.

By attacking the fortress of factuality, we risk it all. With no semblance of order in our collective universe, those with the most power can coerce us into accepting their opinions as absolute. With no common core in our consciousness, we’re likely to jump off the figurative cliff, unwilling to accept the indisputable pull of gravity leading us to our demise.

We must fight back.

We must advocate for the presence of facts in our society, regardless of our views regarding them. We must separate fact from opinion, taking great care to evaluate each with the proper amount of weight. And regardless of our views, we must never let anyone rob us of the ability to think for ourselves.

These actions don’t represent the hallmarks of democracy. They represent the hallmarks of humanity.

And that’s something worth fighting for.