Dignity over Violence was the actual name of the event I attended via zoom Sunday evening, September 14.
I just looked at the photos I took; some I thought I took are not there. Oh well! I do have a photo of the third panel, one of whom I quoted in yesterday’s post, and another I referred to, who lives in Indianapolis, only one hour away.
Which reminds me, the very first national event is being organized to occur in Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis, September 26-27. Will I go? Yes, IF I can find someone to drive us up there to share a room overnight.
Indiana to Host Inaugural National Civility Summit in Carmel
And IF so, this won’t be the final post!
In any case, here’s the one panel that I did get the one screenshot of:
Notice that Heather Blakeslee is there, as well as the Indianapolis person, Lexi Hudson.
The three panels addressed the same situation at different levels: individual, group and society at large.
This panel was the third and final one, the pie-in-the-sky visionary one: “What should society look like?”
Notes from their dialogue:
Jennifer: “My mother always said, when faced with a seemingly unsurmountable problem — grow to be bigger than that mountain.”
“Doing the work has made me less judgmental.”
Heather: “We cannot be a country where disagreeing in public is a death sentence. What we pay attention to matters. I too have gone through a transformation over these ten years. People are afraid to speak for fear of offending those in their own tribe.”
Lexi: “[This is] a crisis of dehumanization, where we fail to see the imprint of the divine in our fellow humans. . . Remember Michaelangelo: Adam reaches to touch the hand of God.”
Her book, originally published in 2023, has drawn high praise. Here’s one review:
This reviewer did complain, however, that her bibliography wasn’t long enough.
(I can relate to her decision not to frame it in the standard academic way by meticulously referencing absolutely everything she talks about. Indeed, I was commanded to go back and footnote my Ph.D. dissertation, which took to task the entire history of philosophy since Descartes. Turns out it took me only about ten hours in the Boston University library (and this was prior to the internet, 1971). BTW: I found numerous instances of plagiarism, which I gleefully included in the footnotes.)
Lexi again: “Remember the essential difference between civility and politeness.” Politeness has to do with manners; civility involves the heart — respecting the interior worlds of others.
Jeff from Carmel had read her book and was galvanized to organize the upcoming “Project Civility” in Carmel.
Many of the panelists in all three panels pointed to our culture of isolation, loneliness, and blame.
One of the panels included Manu Meel, head of bridgeUSA.org, for college students, who said, after Wednesday’s murder, the students’ question was: “What are we going to do about it?” And “We need the right tool for the moment. Now, it’s bridging through conversation.”
And guess what? Today, in my email feed, I see that someone has already taken it upon himself to hold a Bridge meeting at IU!
Over and over again, all 12 panelists stressed the idea that what happens next is up to us. That each of us must take the initiative: rather than avoiding uncomfortable subjects, and “staying with what we have in common” (my default position since the covid con), we need to step forward in dialogue with those whose views contrast with ours. Especially if “the other” becomes emotional, and “threatens to go out of control.”
This is my chief fear, instilled in childhood: “How embarrassing! Now what? Do I just sooth their feelings; back down? Don’t want to hit back. But I sure do feel like it!”
Instead of getting revved up ourselves, let us open our hearts to their distress even further; heart-centered openness tends to melt the divide between us.
Opening the heart no matter what is NOT easy to do. It requires the learned capacity to witness: internally observing one’s own disturbed inner state, which then, we realize, is also what “the other” is feeling! No wonder one of the panelists above, Jacob Bernstein, was the head of the long-running Meditators Foundation.
Over and over again, I remember panelists stressing that “we can’t just be against something, we must be for something.” And “Don’t give up. We must be relentlessly optimistic.” That “loving our enemies is the message of this time.” That “there’s a very great need to be heard — which requires listening rather than being triggered. Instead, take a breath and ask a question.”
One of the panelists called what we’ve encountered in the past few decades as “OIC, the Outrage Industrial Cycle: “Why aren’t we ‘influencers’? Because we don’t want to be outrageous.”
“Today the norm is conflict and violence. But what sells (now) is what isn’t the norm; now it’s dialogue.”
“We’re living in the tyranny of the loud (virtue-signaling) minority, who say (our) “words are violence.” NO! “We need more talk, not less!”
And the problem is not just political, “it’s in our culture.” We must overcome isolation and outrage by finding each other, in community.”
“For each of us as individuals: how to cultivate curiosity, listening, resisting the whirlwind forces of division.”
And finally, stressed over and over again, “There are far more of us than of them.”
If you’re like me, you’re going to pursue this direction of relentless optimism further, by, for example, checking out the organizations that came together during this galvanizing two-hour event.
And, if I’m really a Braver Angel, I’ll have a story to tell there soon.
