Integrity

I had a long text conversation with my stepson, Sasha, yesterday evening. He was feeling very frustrated at how political debate has become for so many no more than a rather robotic exchange of slogans, an interaction of walking, talking memes. People tend to identify themselves with a certain position and then proceed to promote ideas not with any personal intellectual acumen but more like broken records. One broken record is played against another broken record, guaranteeing a general failure of exchange. He is discouraged by the stubborn divide which persists and becomes ever more robust in the absence of what we used to call "discussion". Dreary, is as he described it. And he's quite right. Damnably dreary it is. Any attempt to pry loose this or that dogma is met, as he notes, with name-calling and insult, threats, childish emoticons, and suggestions that the one trying so innocently to actually think should go and perform impossible anatomic contortions. Everybody on the internet is an expert in all fields of thought, and relentlessly suspicious of any actual expert.

I know, I know.

The good news, in a small way, is that Sasha is growing up, at 18 now, to be a very bright young man, with a good measure of intellectual integrity and a stubborn affection for personal honesty. Perhaps there are many more in the youthful world like him. I certainly hope so.