Half Full or Half Empty (11/18/2022)

Is the glass half full or half empty, that is something I sometimes ask myself. Regular readers of my blog probably know that I can be either a pessimist or an optimist or maybe both, at times. A friend of mine who read some of my posts called them scarry (I think). Now, he is a foreigner, as I am, so maybe he meant ominous. Honestly, I don’t intent my posts to be negative, as such. A lot of them are biographical, telling you readers about my past or my current life. Some of my posts tell you about my thinking and quite a few about my political and environmental leanings. They are not intended to upset you (maybe except for one or two); however, the teacher in me wants to challenge you, my readers to critical thinking at times. Yes, I would not mind persuade you to change your minds, my way.

As I mentioned just now, I encourage critical thinking, not necessarily my thinking. However, what has been upsetting me most, is folks that just accept everything that is being handed to them on a platter, or told to them without questioning it, investigating it, and just taking it as the new truth. This is what I started seeing with a lot during the past 5 years of the conservative MAGA folks. While a lot of us progressives will take everything that folks tell us with a grain of salt, even if it is from the mainstream media, our political leaders, or even our churches, it seems that the MAGA folks close themselves off from all alternative thinking. The latest example is the Arizona republican candidate for Governor Mrs. Kari Lake, who told the press she would only accept the election when they were in her favor.

So, why am on this soap box today? My recent posts have been so non-political, so non-controversial. Why now. The elections are over anyway. The big red wave did not happen. It seems that most election deniers were denied elected offices by the public. Voters voted with their brains. The glass was half full after all. My wife saw the glass as half empty going into November, I predicted it would not be that bad. Did I win? Who cares? Often, I needed to remind my wife that this was not the end of the world we are living in, but we need to fight, our way. That it would all come out OK and it did! The elections are behind us. Or are they?

One of the principles from my Unitarian Church tells me, I am free to independently search for my own truth and meaning. This applies to religion, society, and life in general, as long as it does not hurt anyone else. To me this applies to everything in my life. I am seeing that the American electorate did the same thing, they did not sheepishly follow the directions of the red-haired biggest looser who seems to want to try to lose again.

I agree, this year started out poorly (or the glass emptied) with the Supreme Court decision on abortion. We were all angry. In my wife’s eyes this was the end of the world. I agreed it was terrible, I demonstrated with her and agreed we needed to do something about it and work to defeat the conservatives. She is a woman, who was much more affected by that decision than I as a guy; I understand that. I wrote a couple of posts about it, we sent money to political candidates, and the Planned Parenthood. We made an informed decision to do these things without being encouraged or almost forced to do so. We did not roll over because our politicians or religious leaders told us to do so. I am neither an optimist, nor a pessimist. Am I a realist? I don’t even know that. In the past I was a pessimist for sure, most of my life. Old age is mellowing me. Maybe I’ve become a fatalist, but then I do believe we can change our fate, instead of just sitting back an taking it as it comes. That is what I try to do here and in life in general, and in my job; all in the hope that I create a few extra critical thinkers before I leave this earth. I try to do that overtly in my classes, in my sermons, in my interactions with people and here in my blog posts. Because that is what we need to do to make a better world, and this is the only way I think I can make a contribution to that.

A mushroom?  How does this fit in with what I wrote in this post.  A mushroom is the fruiting body of thousands of mold threads that are growing underground and that we cannot see, When the time is just right (the right temperature and humidity), all the hyphae get together and decide to for a mushroom to have "mold sex."  They do very well on their own without sexual breeding, but this mixes the chromosomes which is good for future evolution etc.  To me it shows the importance of the unseen, the undercurrent, being able to subtlety work on blogs like this hoping to come to fruition and help change the world a little bit.