This was going to be a piece about Israel, but somehow my thought process went awry (I can hear the snickering about my “attention span”) and I felt this was something worth considering independently, and hopefully worth sharing.
Recently, I found myself forwarding two positions/points of view about Israel which made sense to me. They came from sources that many people, including the sources themselves, would think were from the right and from the left. Both of these sources, Dennis Prager (about the peace process and double standards that seem to have obscured relevant facts) and Uri Avneri (about the need for separation of religion and state), have many points of view with which I disagree, in some cases very strongly, but does that mean that I cannot find wisdom, or a source of common ground in anything they say, or write, or believe?
Ideology seems to be taking over – and along with it, I believe there is an accompanying notion of knee-jerk, lock-step support, i.e., I am a conservative or liberal, and therefore I support conservative or liberal people and positions no matter what. An extreme example was the madness surrounding Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars. Apparently, conservatives felt compelled to support Bristol because they support her Mom???!!! I’m sure there are equally crazy examples on the left.
Many of you have heard me remark when asked about my “inconsistent” – some might say hypocritical – religious observance, “Don’t screw (I often use a stronger word) with my hypocrisy.” I say that somewhat jokingly, but I am not preaching to anyone about what they should do, nor have I really come to a complete, consistent understanding of what I should do, and I’m comfortable with that. I can’t put a label on my observance nor do I expect, or even want, anyone else to label it. I just do what I do because it is what I believe…and over time that has changed – and I fully expect it to continue to change because I keep trying to learn, and I keep thinking, and life keeps happening.
I find myself disliking labels more and more. Why do we have to pigeonhole things, or ideas, or people? I understand labels can potentially be useful as a form of “shorthand,” but it seems to me that they can also be dangerous, and a bit of a lazy substitute for deeper thought.
I surely do not want to be a hypocrite, but I’m not really certain whether or when I’m a hypocrite, or I’m behaving inconsistently, or I’m just living my life. Recently I had a discussion with my Rabbi that wound up on this very topic, and we agreed that we could talk for hours about the distinction between inconsistency and hypocrisy, and perhaps never come to agreement.
It seems to me that inconsistency could be defined as what we do, while hypocrisy is what others do….after all I’d never want to be a hypocrite! (I’m guessing there are some among us who believe they live their lives in a completely consistent way, and I’m at least as sure that any of us could find what we believe to be inconsistency in their points of view or behavior.)
Of course all of us have lines we don’t cross – although those lines can and often do move. And we have issues that ultimately take priority when making choices, including voting choices. But seeing validity in other candidates' points of view, or even agreeing with some of their positions does not make us inconsistent or hypocrites. What it does is make us dynamic, thinking human beings – and if you are going to put a label on me, that is one I will wear proudly.
I leave it to each of us to determine whether or when we are being hypocrites, but hopefully none of us will feel compelled to blindly/obediently follow any ideology simply because we self identify in a specific way. Some might call that hypocrisy – I call it nuanced (or dare I say intelligent!) thinking…perhaps the highest form of human behavior.
Thoughts on Israel will follow – as soon as I can figure out how to get all of my inconsistent (some may think hypocritical) points of view to make sense to me, so I can share them.
No comments:
Post a Comment