THE SILO-IZATION OF AMERICA

Deconstructing the walls that divide us

We often complain about how divided we are in this country, yet we create more divisions all the time. Unity will never be achieved until we begin to view it as a practice. It isn’t simply a goal; it’s also the only way to achieve the goal. Unity is a state of mind.

The deep divisions in this country today have wounded us, hurting our capacity for connection, community, even friendliness. Yet we won’t heal if we insist on remaining in our silos, for the silo-ization of America is a large part of how we got here. We separate ourselves from other citizens any time we allow identity politics to pervert our perceptions of the other. Identifying almost solely with our gender or sexuality, religion, region, race, outlook, ethnicity, politics, socio-economics, age or anything else to the exclusion of our common humanity, we forget not only who they are but who we are. Such separatist thinking has twisted our perspective of one another. It implies that mine/ours is better, or mine/ours deserves more attention, or mine/ours is right and yours is wrong, thus diminishing our capacity to see or to learn from one another. America is like a beautiful piece of fabric and we’ve taken to ripping it up.

It takes vigilance to notice the ways we subconsciously divide ourselves. Many years ago when I first moved to Detroit, my friend Robert Thibodeau offered to introduce me to a well known grand dame in the city. I’m embarrassed to say I turned down the invitation and for the most ridiculous reason; I’d heard she was a big Republican donor and I assumed we wouldn’t have too much in common! In time - and too late, I’m afraid - I came to learn what a fascinating woman she apparently was. By rejecting her I had rejected myself, not to mention fallen far too short of the principles I thought I adhered to.

Becoming a better person, like becoming a better country, takes work.

That’s one of the reasons I always enjoy talking to people on airplanes. They don’t know your beliefs, and you don’t know theirs. It’s amazing what you learn when you simply ask questions. It’s so refreshing to be unburdened for a while of the arrogance of a judgmental mind.

One of the First Principles of this country (yes, we do have them) is E Pluribus Unum - “Out of Many, One.” I remember as a kid we were taught that America is a “mixed salad.” That idea - profound, it is - is that we’d be many ethnicities and cultures, all joined by our fealty to a common set of principles.

Obviously as we grow older we learn the many ways in which America has not lived up to its principles. But that’s not a reason to trash the principles! It’s a reason to reclaim them. With maturity we realize that other generations didn’t owe us anything; they were dealing with their own challenges, and in many instances they did more to actualize American ideals than we have. The point is, this is our time now. We’re responsible for building on where others before us got it right, and correcting where others had gotten it wrong. America isn’t a thing stuck in time; it’s an ever evolving process.

It’s not that we should downplay our differences; in many ways our differences are the richness of this country. But we shouldn’t let those differences divide our hearts. When I was a child, my uncles used to say things like this at Sunday family breakfasts: “Don’t listen to your father, kids! You’ll never make any money.” Then my father would respond “Don’t listen to your uncles, kids! They won’t survive the revolution.” Then my mother would walk in and ask, “Okay, who wants white fish and who wants roast beef?” Such conversations never lacked humor or indicated a level of personal enmity. People knew how to take a joke in those days, and political differences in our family would usually end in, “Okay, let’s eat!”

Age is another example of how we separate ourselves in dysfunctional ways. With the dissolution of the family unit we’ve lost a lot of interconnectedness among generations, and at a certain point enough is enough with who’s a boomer, who’s a millennial and so forth. The younger you are the more you know certain things, and the older you are the more you know certain other things. Younger people know more about what’s happening now; older ones know more about patterns that never change. We miss out on a lot when we only think it’s worth talking to people around our age.

I would often say on the campaign trail, “This is about the American in you - not the young American or the old American. Whether you’re eighteen or eighty, I’m talking to you!” I would feel a mild surprise and appreciation in the room when I did, even noticing some conversations afterwards that might not have happened otherwise.

Such are ways that the personal becomes political and the political becomes personal. Disconnecting the two the way we have, we have diminished both; things like giving other people the benefit of the doubt, refusing to lie or bear false witness, and withholding automatic judgement are as important with people we don’t know on twitter as it is with our own friends. And if we begin to compromise our ethics anywhere, we’re tempted to compromise them everywhere. We won’t become a better country until we become better citizens, and we won’t be better citizens unless we take responsibility for ways we think as well as for ways we act.

As individuals and as a country, we need to dissolve, not fortify, the walls that divide us. As Americans, reclaiming the principles on which we purport to stand - embracing them in our hearts and teaching them to our children- is our greatest defense against forces that would divide us. That “one nation, indivisible…” part only works if it’s a psychological as well as political commitment. No one gets to own this country; we all do. And no one has a monopoly on truth. A certain humility is required to understand all this. But that’s exactly how we heal in life, whether as individuals or as a nation: one piece of understanding at a time.