The World Will Not Let Us Get Away With Being Separate
In case you haven’t heard, Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts last week in the “hush money” trial.
Yayyyy!
No, booooo!
Maybe you’re strongly allied on the “yay” or “boo” side, or perhaps you are like me and have mixed thoughts and feelings about it.
The focus of this article, if you’re up for taking the journey, is not the rightness or wrongness of the outcome — that’s a conversation I’d be willing to have, but not here. Instead, I want to point to something else happening in our zeitgeist of increasing polarization and division — something counterintuitive.
In this process of growing separation, the world is dropping hints about our unity. As the bubble of our shared reality gets siphoned into two separate spheres — the Trump trial, and virtually everything else in our political lives, appear to us through two distinct sets of eyes — our views of reality and one another couldn’t seem more different. There’s no denying that things look different on the surface. Yet, in the most clever of ways, I believe the world is revealing our shared humanity through the drama unfolding before us.
The world will not let us get away with being separate. Sometimes she has a sardonic sense of humor, but I assure you the intention is pure: to help us reach our higher evolutionary potential.
The Trump trial is just the next dial up in the world’s desperate attempt to move us closer to that potential, which I believe involves a greater recognition of our interconnectedness. Let me explain.
Look in the Mirror!
The main issue (as I understand it) in the “boo” camp is the assertion that the legal system was weaponized against a political opponent. Trump called the trial “rigged.” While this is wrong and reckless to assert (in my opinion), it is easy to resonate with the larger connotation of this: Trump and many others feel the system is intentionally working against him for political reasons. I agree with that. I think it’s hard not to see.
So, the “boo” camp views this as a subversion of democracy. But this sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Where else have we heard these alarms go off?
Of course, on the other side, the “yay” camp is worried about reanointing someone who himself may subvert democracy, hence rejoicing at the outcome of this trial in that it may prevent Trump from retaking office. In the name of preventing someone from destroying democracy, the powers that be are blindly becoming the thing they are attempting to eradicate. A mirror held up by the world. Hello? Can you see that you are not really separate or different? No, not yet?… Okay, how about we give you this absurd example?
At this point, we could get into the “he started it!” game. We are just responding to the guy who promised FIRST (and showed us) he doesn’t care about democracy. But that’s no use. We could rewind the tapes through the last decade(s) and still argue about who is to blame in breaking and bending norms, and whose counter-response is therefore more noble and justifiable. We’ll end up at the fuzzy part at the beginning of the tape.
It’s worth pinpointing here that the two “subversions of democracy” are not necessarily equivalent: overthrowing elections is more dangerous, in my opinion, than what is transpiring on the “yay” side today. But that doesn’t account for what can happen tomorrow. The two will continue morphing until they look like monozygotic evil twins — until we can recognize our own face in the mirror.
There is a slow creep happening, and if we’re not mindful, the so-called protagonist in the story may turn into its shadow.
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
These types of mirror reflections are happening more and more in our political lives, perhaps because the stakes are becoming higher for us to move beyond polarization and division.
For example, we say we’re for individual freedom. Leave people alone and let them lives their lives. Don’t take our guns! Don’t tell our kids what to learn in school! Don’t tell us to take a darn vaccine! Yet, at the same time, we want to tell women how to handle their pregnancies. We want to control who can marry and fu*k who. We’re okay with Trump being a dictator as long as he enacts the policies we like. What happened to freedom?
Don’t get too excited. It works in both directions. Indeed, we say we’re for choice when it comes to our health decisions about our bodies. Don’t tell me what to do! My body, my choice! Yet, we support vaccine mandates. We want to control certain types of speech. We want businesses to jerry rig their boards, and filmmakers their movies, to ensure equal representation of people’s faces.
I think the world attempts to point out our hypocrisies in any way that it can. I understand these matters are more complex and nuanced, but can we not begin to glimpse our sanctimony and projection in these battles? The thing that I acuse you of is actually what I am. The 3rd grade axiom, “I know you are but what am I?” totally applies here. Kids know when someone is projecting. We can begin recognizing the same.
As long as we don’t see these hypocrisies, the world will up the ante of absurdity. We will continue to see more dramatic and ridiculous displays of hypocrisy—or rather, common humanity. As the drama builds, so does the opportunity to see through the illusion of separateness. The world has an interesting sense of humor. But humor is funny because it’s true, right?
Matthew Goodman, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and organizational consultant. He is the Founder of Zen-prov!, an improv class utilizing play as a means of practicing mindfulness, self-compassion, self-confidence, and other key life skills. You can download a free copy of his book, “Simple Stress-Reduction: Easy and Effective Practices for Kids, Teens, and Adults” and learn more about him here.
