My father worked several jobs at a time to provide for our family. One of those jobs was fixing and maintaining sewing machines out of our home. Since our house was clearly visible from one of the busiest roads in town, he had a local artist paint a sign for the side of our house announcing “Sewing Machine Repair.”
It turned out to be a magical sign. The wording changed constantly! “But it says so right on your sign!” people would insist when they’d stop in and we’d inform them that no, our dad did not fix lawn mowers, refrigerators, dishwashers, or the numerous other things they wanted him to fix. They had a need, and the sign would magically change in an attempt to meet that need.
I guess I needed it to say “Sewing Machine Repair”, because I never once saw it say anything else.
As I often tell my kids, you find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for examples of human depravity, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for examples of human goodness, you’ll find it. You’ll subjectively interpret what you see as much as possible in order to see what you want to see. It’s normal. We all do it.
Knowing that, we should also all be careful to rush to judgment. Are we trusting reliable sources? Do we have access to all the facts? Are we imposing our own desires on the situation? Could it be we’re only seeing what we want to see?
It seems lately a lot of us want to see people behaving badly. We want our own biases toward what ever side we feel opposes our own to be confirmed. And looking at what we want confirmed, I have to admit I’m pretty scared of what we’re becoming. We want teenage boys to be racist jerks. We want a powerful new member of our ruling body to be an incompetent idiot. We want the most powerful man in the world to be a foolish, racist warmonger collaborating with our primary geopolitical enemy. We want our enemies to be worthy and deserving of horrible deaths, rapes, or numerous other tortures.
I don’t want us to be that way. I’d rather not see us that way. I still would like to think we are better than this.