What an election cycle! It had it all: drama, comedy, and more information about every county in every swing state that any one human being can retain. Did CNN’s John King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki just have that overwhelming amount of knowledge swimming in their brains? Also, did either of them have time for bathroom breaks? Were they hooked up to catheters? Are they even human?
While these were the questions I had on election night between sips of double IPAs, there is a much bigger question that must be answered, regardless who won the presidency: what now?
If you’re anything like me, you probably want to talk about something — anything else, but I’m sure you’ve probably noticed there is much more work that needs to be done. The message we keep getting from politicians and media alike is that “we’re more divided than ever,” but because of the access to social media, we’re more connected than ever, so this is a bizarre paradox in which we find ourselves.
Just because we are connected doesn’t mean we have connected, and that — more than anything — must be first on our to-do list. No matter who won the election, I was going to write this particular blog post because, red or blue, the core problems that we’re facing are colorblind.
There are three things we must do as a nation in order to come together and come up with solutions that will help us thrive in the 21st century:
1. Connect
As a comedian, one of the first things I do once onstage is to make a connection with the audience. If I don’t connect and can’t get them to see from my P.O.V., my material isn’t going to land quite as hard. Connecting is about finding common ground, a common goal, or a common interest. Scan through any political “discussion” on social media — it’s two people trying to get their point of view across without anyone learning anything. When we go into a conversation with the goal of talking, there is no room for communication, as the key to communicating effectively is listening. This is a fundamental problem that transcends party lines, and it has ingrained itself to the point where too many people can’t even fathom why other people have differing perspectives. I’m guilty of it too. The course of action is to find common ground and/or agree on a common goal. What do all people, no matter their race, socioeconomic status, or ideology want? According to positive psychologist Martin Seligman, there are 5 pieces of the human well-being puzzle: positive emotion, engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive social relationships.
We all want these things, but we disagree on what it takes to ensure that each one of these needs are met, so instead of insisting on your rightness, ask open-ended questions. Find out their passions, stresses, pains, desires, and needs are. If we aren’t starting from common ground, it’ll be difficult — if not impossible — to reach a common goal.
2. Collaborate
At the very least, we all want to live in a better world, but we each have a different vision of how exactly we get there. The way our political system is set up creates a diametric opposition, so that those who think differently are wrong. Throughout the entirety of the election, Joe Biden’s message has been a consistent theme of unity, however, there are plenty of Democrats who refuse to even consider working to connect with Trump supporters.
This refusal to connect or work together is why we’re in this situation to begin with!
Watch the presidential debates — they’re about who “wins” — but imagine if they were centered around who works together the best… it would change our political dynamic. The basic level of human collaboration is “yes, and.” That is, taking a problem, and presenting ideas in a way where the next idea adds to the previous idea, rather than proving why it won’t work, taking credit for the idea, or one-upping it. Working together like this will not only bridge the gap between ideologies, it has the power to bridge the gap between problems and solutions, and it focuses the conversation on ideas instead of problems. Think about how powerful it would be if, instead of dismantling the Affordable Care Act, we improved upon it. Do you work for a leader who, from your perspective, has awful ideas? What if, instead of resisting those ideas, you got to work to improve upon them? Whether the goal is to make the world or your workplace better, undercutting the other person or idea is energy that can be spent actually doing the third thing…
3. Create
What set America apart from the rest of the world during the Industrial Revolution was the fact that we innovated and created so many new inventions and systems. Over the past 60 years, America went from being the world’s greatest creator to the world’s biggest consumer. Most Americans agree: if everyone who could work in the United States had a job, that’d be great. However, it’s 2020, and many of the jobs that brought the United States to the world stage in terms of innovation are now being done by robots and A.I. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but many of those computers and robots do those formerly human jobs way better and way faster than people. That’s why it’s vital that people of all ideologies connect and collaborate on creating new jobs for this new world, otherwise more and more jobs will disappear and we’ll be left with a bunch of angry, hungry, unemployed people feeling betrayed by the system. Demanding more jobs in manufacturing and fossil fuels would’ve been like demanding more blacksmiths and carriage manufacturers after guns and cars became commonplace. It’s urgent that we put our heads together and see what kinds of new jobs we can create in new, burgeoning industries — like creating a robot to break down the minute-by-minute, county-by-county election results so John King and Steve Kornacki can use the restroom in November of 2024.
Our common goal is to create a marketplace that works for everyone. Though I may joke about what separates us, I do it to point out how distracted we are by it. Our differences are a positive tool we can use to our advantage. Once we connect and see how much we really have in common, we can collaborate on creating a world worth living in. Reach out to someone who believes differently than you and tell them you’re grateful you have them in your life, then start asking questions to learn about them. All it takes is an open mind and a conversation, but if we wait for others to have the open mind first, we may be waiting forever.
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