A Shift in Thinking

This is something I e-mailed my brother Miles in 2008.  We had been e-mailing a bit about the political season, and I just wanted to share a personal story.

I watched in my university dorm hall as Quayle took on Gore in the VP debate and naturally, as we all do when we use emotions, I whooped and hollered when Quayle got the best of him.  Well, needless to say, Clinton won out over Bush. But before the election...in fact, the summer before....I went on a Summer Missions trip to Canada.  I was young and didn't know much about politics really. I was just doing "God's Will."  Away from the US, though, I started listening more to politics and Perot caught my eye...a down to earth fellow who seemed to be one of the people (à la Palin but with a billion $)...this appealed to me.

Back at Samford after the missions trip, I remained excited about Bush's prospects.  But I started noticing how mean-spirited the election was and how consumed Christians were in denouncing Clinton as a baby killer and more.  On occasion, I got up the courage to press people on what I considered a wider range of moral issues. And I started commenting that neither party seemed to have a lock on these moral issues.  Nonetheless, I went ahead with voting for Bush, and clearly believed he was America's best choice. Bush lost and I was disappointed, but I realized it hadn't affected me as much as, say, my brother Mark and my dad.  That was in November.

Then, in January, the same month Clinton was to take office, I went on my first trip to Russia and Central Asia.  Numerous Russians asked me what I thought of Clinton.  And what I discovered was that my nationalistic impulses set in and I started finding things I liked about Clinton.  The list started growing.  This was a Galileo moment - an awareness that I had learned something, and that I had questioned a belief that to me was ironclad up until then.  It didn't mean I had to totally switch allegiances and adore Clinton at all costs. It just forced me to think with an open mind. It also showed me something about human nature.  It's the same with families. It's okay for you to talk bad about your own family, but let someone outside the family hurl insults at them and you will instinctively come to their defense. Countries are nothing but big families....and I found that Russians, like Americans, are very proud people.

The conditioned mind is made up of all we have been taught either overtly or covertly from family, culture and social systems.  Everything in your mind was put there one way or another.    - from the book, On Being Idle