The discomfort of disagreement.
The discomfort of education, awareness, and experiences outside our own personal bubbles and comfort zones.
The discomfort of a shared society and history where some people enjoyed the finer things and other people struggled only to know hardship, but the discomfort at discussing or acknowledging such things.
The discomfort of addressing the “elephants in the room” where skin color, gender, wealth, and privilege define where you start and where you’ll finish.
Whether on social media, in the workplace, in the news, or in the classroom, it’s become such that we can’t have a rational conversation without it devolving into heated arguments.
Discomfort alone is reason to shut down any conversation, any rational discourse, any attempt at bettering ourselves or our shared situation?
I’m just as guilty of these things. I don’t like having my failings pointed out to me. I don’t like being reminded of an uncomfortable past. I hide behind a “it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my circle, it wasn’t my tribe” as a reason to avoid a conversation. I don’t like being discomforted, made aware, or reminded of terrible things.
And so, I keep seeing arguments online and in the news, where people get angry, sometimes violently angry, because they feel entitled to their personal comfort and yet would deny others their own comforts. It isn’t reasonable to think that life would be easy, and that life is equally easy for everyone. No one politician, whether red or blue, liberal or conservative, will save us, wave a magic wand, and make all the hurtful things go away.
So, are we unable and unwilling to even have the conversation?
Should the conversation be banned in schools, on social media, and in the halls of our government?