Good morning,
A friend sent me a message a few weeks ago, after Charlie Kirk was killed. It took me far too long to respond because I didn’t have the words. But then, last night, I was asked to speak with a small group of undergraduate journalists and everything started to become clear.
She and I met in journalism school and our careers took very different paths—she works for a large conservative media organization, I freelance in the media/care/research worlds. But we’ve always deeply bonded over our commitment to openness and tolerance and need for spiritual and faith traditions to ground us.
My response to her came out as this letter, and I’m sharing it with you in case you, too, ever find yourself struggling with ambiguity or anger.
She wrote:
So much emotion this week and I’m doing some soul searching. In the middle on politics, crippled, unable to choose a side. There’s things that are morally right on both sides. I always thought my moderation was a gift, but is it? Why, when I tell people I don’t associate with a political party, do people look at me like I’m morally bankrupt? Why are we letting politics dictate morality anyway?
In the middle on religion, I’m Christian but have my own version of faith. Not a practicing Catholic…I feel like everyone just has faith in what they believe. Why can’t I just commit to something?
In the middle on having a kid, totally cannot decide. I asked God to show me some clarity on all three of these. I have to think I was made the way I am for a reason, but I am mad at myself for being tolerant this week when people I know relished that Kirk was dead and I heard them out and didn’t retort. I’m just entirely too tolerant. Is that possible?
Hi,
I’m sorry it took me forever to respond. I’ve been thinking over and over about what you said, and then, last night, something clicked.
As you know, I also am a person who’s always in the middle, who’s always willing to look at all sides of something, and I actually do see that as a skill. I feel like there’s a very tiny minority of people in the world who are willing to practice that skill. Journalism, in its theoretical form, teaches us to do that—but the industry itself doesn’t reward it.
Last night, I gave a workshop for undergraduates at my alma mater who are working on reviving the student paper (kind of my baby when I was in college). Talking to them forced me to go back to my own roots and ask: why was I interested in journalism in the first place? What is the humanistic lens on what journalism, as a practice, could do?
In my notes, I found a quote I had saved from Lee Bollinger (former president of Columbia) that goes like this:
The most valued trait is having the imaginative range and the mental courage to explore the full complexity of the subject. To set aside one’s preexisting beliefs, to hold simultaneously in one’s mind multiple angles of seeing things, to allow yourself to believe another point of view as you consider it… That kind of extreme openness of intellect is exceedingly difficult to master, and, in a profound sense, we never do. Because it runs counter to many of our natural impulses, it requires both daily exercise and a community of people dedicated to keeping it alive.
This feels like what you’re describing, doesn’t it? I think it affirms for me that being in the middle isn’t weakness: it’s a practice. Most people take sides because it’s easier—our bodies are wired to want to belong in order to feel safe, and the world rewards big emotions.
There are, however, some things, or maybe just one thing, that I feel like I can always take a clear stand on—and that is affirming and respecting life. This comes from my own Buddhist tradition as you know—I absolutely don’t believe it’s ever okay to take someone’s life. You can disagree, you can even hate someone, but you cannot erase their humanity. I guess that is where I’m at right now.
Other thoughts that have been floating through my mind this month, if you find them helpful:
Your note made me think again about media critic Jay Rosen’s “View from Nowhere,” which I’ll excerpt here:
[Philosopher Thomas Nagel, who wrote a very important book with that title] says that human beings are, in fact, capable of stepping back from their position to gain an enlarged understanding, which includes the more limited view they had before the step back. Think of the cinema: when the camera pulls back to reveal where a character had been standing and shows us a fuller tableau. To Nagel, objectivity is that kind of motion. We try to “transcend our particular viewpoint and develop an expanded consciousness that takes in the world more fully.”
But there are limits to this motion. We can’t transcend all our starting points. No matter how far it pulls back the camera is still occupying a position. We can’t actually take the “view from nowhere,” but this doesn’t mean that objectivity is a lie or an illusion. Our ability to step back and the fact that there are limits to it– both are real. And realism demands that we acknowledge both.
It makes me wonder, when you’re constantly pressured to have a reaction, to choose an opinion, and you try to be “neutral” to resist that, what are you actually choosing, if no one can be truly viewless?.
To take it further—Lewis Raven Wallace’s The View from Somewhere argues that objectivity has often been used to exclude—that journalists from marginalized positions were forced to perform “neutrality” in order to be legible, while those in dominant positions could pretend their view was universal.
Here’s the solution he offers on this podcast:
BROOKE GLADSTONE So now that we’ve established that neutrality and objectivity can’t be the principles at the heart of our journalism. For one thing, they’re mythical. What should we place there instead?
LEWIS RAVEN WALLACE Curiosity, for me is at the core, that’s like the center, the beating heart of what a journalist does. Asks questions and stays open. And this is where I see the gift that activism can give journalism is the commitment to justice and accountability, and the gift that journalism can give activism is a commitment to curiosity. And that’s why it’s such a beautiful thing to bring the two together.
In other words, I think it takes work to stay neutral. It takes curiosity and imaginative empathy and patience and being willing to take a breath to understand why our neighbors feel the way they do and do the things they do. And while I have a hard line against violence, it doesn’t mean I will write off my own curiosity about why people do bad things and why other people react to those things in the way they do. I think you feel the same?
It also reminded me of this piece I tried to write a few years ago on consuming the news in times of crisis and how amplifying content or offering comment are not our only options when reacting to crisis.
What I still find relevant here is this invitation to zoom out, from Japanese philosopher Tsunesaburo Makiguchi:
In his A Geography of Human Life, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi argued that every individual requires three different types of self-awareness: a local awareness, of being rooted in one’s own community; a national awareness, as belonging to a nation; and an awareness of being a citizen of the world.
In other words, by retaining a strong foothold in our awareness as members of a local community and citizens of the world to avoid being swept away by the evils of nationalism, we can deepen mutual understanding as good neighbors and good world citizens at the level of both the community and international society and enjoy shared prosperity.
Makiguchi advocated broadening and elevating our outlook by alternately looking at the world from the perspective of the local community, and seeing the local community from the perspective of the world.
Which is hard. But what if looking at all three levels is the only way to locate ourselves?
A few days after Kirk was killed, I read this article with some Buddhist friends and it clicked into place for me: What if committing to the act of generating hope is actually a way to take a stance? If outrage gives the illusion of moral clarity, hope requires us to sit in the tension.
Ikeda writes:
There may be times when, confronted by cruel reality, we verge on losing all hope. If we cannot feel hope, it is time to create some. We can do this by digging deeper within, searching for even a small glimmer of light, for the possibility of a way to begin to break through the impasse before us.
In this sense, I think your capacity for tolerance isn’t a failure, it’s part of the work of making hope. But how do you actually sustain that posture—day after day, conversation after conversation? For me, the answer has always come back to Ikeda’s writing on dialogue: “When we stop looking at ourselves, when we no longer question ourselves, we become self-righteous and dogmatic. Our discourse becomes a one-way street: we cannot hear others, and real dialogue becomes impossible. The kind of dialogue that can create peace with others must start with an open and earnest inner dialogue.”
Which brings me back to Sam’s words [Sam Freedman was our reporting professor] in Letters to a Young Journalist that I will always love:
To be a moral journalist, you must retain your humanity. You might think I’m stating the obvious. Yet the ideal of objectivity calls for journalists to be detached from those whom they cover… human beings cannot help but be subjective… Journalism is about channeling emotions, not turning them off. Part of your challenge will be to learn and master what you don’t know rather than to hide behind your ignorance… It takes time to acquire expertise. It takes time to hear out the innermost truth of individuals.
In other words, I think holding complexity is a discipline. It requires daily exercise, and companions to practice with. And if I’ve learned anything from Buddhism, from journalism, from the people I love who sit in their own contradictions with courage, it’s that we need people willing to hold space for the full complexity of being human.
In short, I think you’re practicing journalism as a life skill, not a profession. For the questions about violence, I do think choosing a belief matters. But for almost everything else, sometimes, saying “I’m not sure what I think, I’m still listening,” is the choice that opens paths.
TL;DR — I think you’re being brave.
Jihii
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I appreciated your naming importance of staying open to other's perspectives whatever your our view is. I was particularly moved by this notion:
"What if committing to the act of generating hope is actually a way to take a stance? If outrage gives the illusion of moral clarity, hope requires us to sit in the tension."
One thought about sitting in the tension. I don't think you have to be in the middle or even undecided to face complexity. I have found it possible to come to a point of view I feel strongly about and still listen to understand another's perspective. In fact, I find that a critical practice. The more I can learn how others see the same thing so differently, the greater the likelihood they will be willing to hear me as well. And, that sets us up for the possibility of discovering a third way together. And that creates hope in action!