Open your mind

It’s not like the big brains at the Reno News & Review to write two “things that make you go ‘Huh,’” editorials in row, but it’s the end of the year, the beginning of an era, and many things have come together to make people all over this city, state and country re-examine some of our most cherished ideals.

Our society is embarking on a re-examination of fundamental political thought in a way not seen since the 1960s: Poverty/wealth, health care/pathology, equality/elitism, freedom/servitude and their relationships are all being reconsidered.

It’s as though the flimsy veil of false political discourse has been momentarily brushed aside for all us citizens to see.

Maybe it was the unintended consequences of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and this election. Maybe it was the smoke and mirrors of the fiscal cliff. Maybe it was one gun-related tragedy after the next. Maybe it was the greedy financial excesses that took us to the brink. But it was something. And something feels like it’s changing.

There are no all-or-nothing propositions in this country. The people who present things in such a way are either liars or misinformed.

Maybe that’s the major evil in this country: The proposal that we can only argue polar extremes. And maybe that’s how we can identify evil in this country: People who falsely posture discussions of complicated things as sports challenges with everyone either a winner or a loser. There is always a middle ground, and the middle ground is where everyone wins.

It’s easy to use the gun-control debate as an example. The argument in this country has been presented as polarized: Either no new laws or severe restrictions to gun ownership.

But the vast majority of people in this country could re-frame the argument themselves if they just stated what they want succinctly and went from there: We want to preserve liberty, we want to ensure personal security, and we want to minimize gun violence.

Any discussion on any topic should begin with the desired outcome, and then anything that distracts from that goal can be set aside. And then, everyone can say, “This is what I’m willing to give up to reach the most beneficial outcome for everyone.” We simply can’t allow the radicals to define the discussions any more in this country; we’re smarter than that.

But resolving our country’s biggest quandaries has to start with the individual. We all have to participate in the discussion. We have to be able to say why we think the way we do and back those statements up with real facts. We have to be able to restate our opponents’/collaborators’ points of view. We have to fit the whole issue into our heads in order to find the most beneficial path. The talk-to-the-hand syllogism is obsolete.

It’s got to start with you, and it’s got to start with us. We must recognize unthinking intransigence in ourselves first. As much as possible, eliminate closed-minded people from the discussions, but don’t use that concept as a rationale to remove unlike-minded people from your pool of thought.

The marketplace of ideas is a meditation. All ideas must be considered before the lesser ones can be dismissed.