Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
If It’s Not a Creative Solution, I’m Not Interested.
The tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has me thinking about political discourse in the USA. My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, and my heart goes out to all Americans. Once again we grieve over guns and politics. As a “Boomer” it takes me back to another time, in a sad way. I am once again sitting in grade school and hearing over the loud speaker that John F. Kennedy, my hero, our President, had been shot, and once again, I’m re-living the shooting deaths of Robert F Kennedy , and Martin Luther King. Dead hero’s all, it’s not a proud legacy.
I now pray for Congresswoman Giffords full recovery, and for the others wounded in the attack.
This post is not about blame. There is negative, harmful, and unintelligent speech on both sides of the aisle. This post is not about gun control. Nuts will always find a way to get a gun, or a bomb, or a bow and arrow. I’ll leave others to make the gun control argument.
This post is about Language, Thinking, and Results. What are the alternatives to unfortunate metaphors like “don’t retreat, reload”? This post is about alternatives to the constant war of words. Words that 99.9% of the time go absolutely nowhere, except in the ears of the addled or insane. Call me elitist, but sadly, they also go in the ears of the under-educated who don’t know how to filter them.
I’m simply tired of all the negativity. If you really examine what’s being said by all the negative pundits (and it’s hard to think of a pundit who isn’t relentlessly negative), you’ll see that while they are great at hype, critique, analysis, and blame, they offer virtually nothing instead. They are anti-creative. And it’s not just pundits, it’s politicians. Why for the love of God do we accept that our elected officials waste time on party wars? Why spend a minute debating a law that is already passed and can’t be repealed? Why isn’t the measure, the factor, we most use for awarding our votes simple Creative Effectiveness?
It’s about work you get done. It should be all about results and nothing else.
While I’m all for lowering the intensity of political vitriol, I’m thinking that what we should be looking for is creative solutions. Positive, inventive, new, different, and yes, innovative solutions. Why can’t this be the new, generative, way to discuss things? This is how we take the lemons of this tragic event and make it lemonade. This is what we should be looking for from both politicians and pundits. And among ourselves.
From now on, I’m tuning out any pundit or politician who does not offer solutions, creative solutions, to problems they identify. And neighbors, the same for you. I’d love to hear your ideas, not interested in hearing gossip, blame, or anti-right, or anti-left diatribes.
If you don’t like taxes, tell us what you would cut, exactly. Tell us how, in specific terms, we can do without something or do something more efficiently. I’m all ears.
If your solution is spending more money, tell us why it’s going to work, tell us how it’s going to work. Tell us what the benefits are to spending our money. Tell us how you’re going to raise the money. Be specific. What results are we buying?
Don’t tell me what you are against. I don’t care. Tell me what you are for, and more precisely, what you will do. Let’s get practical.
Pundits and politicians here is your new mandate: Think up something brilliant. Invent something. Solve problems instead of endlessly carping about how the other side doesn’t do it right. Create an atmosphere that’s all about solutions, instead of an atmosphere filled with hate, blame, and allusions to violence and guns.
Find a way to create solutions, or get out of office, get off the air. If you don’t know how, read Jack’s Notebook!
We can’t control nuts, but we can control our language. Let’s start now.
Call me Pollyanna, call me wacky, but give me creative solutions, otherwise, I’m turning you off. And I’m not voting for you!
7 responses to “Innovation Not Vitriol”
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I wish I could have stated it this well. My feelings excatly. I too went back to the sixties and going through so many killings of the people I admired and loved. Those were bad times to grow up in, but I think today is even worse. We try to teach our children toget along and work together to solve problems, but we don’t always see that with our elected officals. We all need to tone down our language, and think before we speak. We never know what crazy person may be listening, misunderstand and use what was said as an excuse to hurt others. Thanks for your insight!
Thanks for your comment Brenda. I’ve thought for a long time about this issue and know that I’m something of a hopeless optimist. It’s about the language we use, and, it’s about how we treat people. While it’s simplistic to blame Sarah Palin’s comments, or Glenn Beck, the truth is that the sum total of this vitriol does influence people’s thinking and does influence the climate. One reason why this happened is that a lonely, confused, weird person was ignored. Didn’t much the same thing happen at Columbine? Where might so many of us be if not for the good influences of kind and caring adults. I remember saying something as a teenager about gays that was fairly intolerant, and it was heard by a teacher I had. He pulled me aside and asked me to think about what I was saying, was I being kind? That’s all he said. It made a world of difference.
I’m thinking we all need to take a look around us and see who needs help, who needs simple human interaction to be pulled back into the mainstream of humanity.
I suggest everyone to step back, take some time. Daily or a long weekend and reflect on ourselves and the world around us…..
Let what our normal or default responses to the issues of the day, slip away. Actually ignore th default thought….and consider other answers.
Some may call it meditation, others may say contemplation, but take as long as it takes to put our minds at ease to give our being time to reflect on our lives…..to restate what is important what we deeply care about for ourselves and for the world. Think about all of the people with whom we co-habitate this blue earth……try not to think about our own well being.
For an extended time, turn away from news sources and think, on our own.
Pathetically, I must admit my priorites are not what my soul thirsts for……maybe that is why I hunger..
This year, I will stop before I speak or write, not be a person who knee jerks what ever comes out of my mouth, but to weight more my thoughts…consider the consequences of my chump words and be determined that whatever I think, there is a better answer than what I emote.
peace and love,
patc
Lovely thoughts Patrick. There is a labyrinth with your name on it in Three Oaks!
I say lets have a National Media Time Out.
Even if it’s just for 15 minutes a day. Let’s take a time out from reporting the disasters, the wars, the corruption, the rapes, the murders, the shootings, etc. Let’s replace that time with something positive…whether it’s spending time with your loved ones, participating in a community event, exercising, reading a book…whatever it is, it must be positive.
And then let’s track this activity and see how it affects our surrounding areas. We could track the amount of crimes, track the amount of auto accidents, and so on to see if there was any impact on such an action.
I submit that there would be a HUGE impact on our lives. I submit that it could be something that could be tangibly measured and palpably felt.
But then, I’m an idealist walking around in a pragmatist clothes…
I have suggested this for quite some time now and I’ve challenged those that think my request is plain nuts, to provide for me any shred of evidence that they’ve learned anything constructive from any of the mainstream media outlets today. And I used the word constructive specifically…because it should be something that should help, something that should improve their lives.
If you objectively look at the content that comes across the media lines on any given day at any given time, they will invariably contain the exact same topics with a slightly different take on the headline. And if you surf the channels as fast as I surf the web, you’ll get the same result. Besides, it’s designed that way intentionally.
The corporate news media moguls know that the average American doesn’t have the time to sit down and listen to their entire news program. They know that between getting dinner on the table, the kids fed, dishes cleaned, the responses to the Facebook chats…American’s want their News fast. They don’t care much about depth of the story nor it’s content, they care only about the three most important facts and what the sports scores were for the previous night.
If it’s scary, has a massive death rate, reveals huge corruption, or affects several persons then it makes the headlines. It becomes, “Breaking News”, although that “breaking news” was repeated over and over again through the course of the last 8 hours. So I ask you, was it really news? I mean, if the color of blood is red, how many times can you describe it? Was it dark red? Was it blood red? Was it blue red? Do you see my point? It ridiculous.
Maybe if we took that 15 minutes of “Time Out” on TV, we could teach our youth the value of discerning the real content of what is being flashed across the media waves,- they could see that there was absolutely nothing of substantive value in the majority of the news “stories” out there.
Maybe, just maybe that would be enough to stimulate our minds to seek other alternatives. Maybe it would be enough for us to realize that we should demand more.
Just sayin’…Robin
Hi Robin, I find your comment interesting and provocative. I like the idea of a National Media TV Time Out. Why not make it an official Day/Week? Like you, I think that even if it’s a bit less TV/media it’s a step in the right direction. I would go so far as to suggest, for many of us, a complete media fast for several days or even weeks, in order to clear the head of the constant stream of argument and negativity. Then, come back to TV/the media (and that would include web video) with a fresh eye and a fresh set of criteria for what makes it worth our time. My list would be: Is it positive? Does it contribute to solutions? Is there an attempt at neutrality? Does it have me thinking, or is it selling me something? If it doesn’t fit the criteria, change the channel, or switch off the TV. And, nothing wrong with pure entertainment TV, but, would suggest that a constant stream of say, cop shows, might be programming you in a certain way, and would ultimately not be positive.
I actually think there is good TV to be had. Oprah! Say what you will about her, but at least she attempts positive programming and sometimes she succeeds.
Thanks for your comment Robin. I’ll be looking for Your National Media Time Out Day!