Touchy Pokey Nation

I was thinking about the divisive political discourse in our country. You have liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, rich vs. poor, black vs. white and any other dividing line you can think of. People love to push these boundries and define themselves by these categories.

I had heard an episode of the podcast LSAT Logic in Everyday Life where the analysis was based on a "part vs. whole" error. The example was one where Bill O'Reilly was calling some website a hate site, after showing a couple of examples of things posted on the site. The point was that you can't show a couple of examples and claim that the entire group exhibits those traits. How true. Think about how people hear about some crime in some nasty part of town and start thinking that it's a violent world, and maybe they aren't safe in their peaceful suburb.

I'm guilty of this effect. I know when I hear someone irrational or stupid, I tend to think that "those (fill in the blank)'s are such idiots". OK, it's easy to fall into this trap, it's easy to take or give offense based on preconceptions or individual examples.

Our nation is based on this phenomenon. It's almost as if our sports fanatic ways are translating into the way we treat each other. It's one thing to trash talk someone because they like another team, but does it really help our society to trash talk people that don't think like you. One of the ways that people like to disparage others is to call them "touchy feely". This is supposed to mean that you are too emotional and not thinking right. I think what we have in the country is a lot of touchy people that are quick to take offense, and a lot of other people that are quick to give offense. Touchy and pokey.

The problem with this phenomenon is that the same people that like to give offense are usually just as likely to take offense. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. You just don't see a lot of people trying to understand other people's point of view. Less touchy, less pokey, more feely. That's what we need.