“Maybe there’s a God above, but all I’ve ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya. It’s not a cry you can hear at night, it’s not somebody who has seen the light, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah!”
Leonard Cohen bemoaned the bitterness of love. Or at least that’s how crooners and Hallelujah devotees (with broken hearts) often interpret his Biblical-laden lyrics. To hear Cohen, himself, however, define his overplayed ballad-tome, it is something a little different.
In a radio interview Cohen said: “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that is what I mean by Hallelujah.”
That fits nicely into my own view of cognitive dissonance; the duality that exists at our core as individuals. Our struggle with our own personal division creates stories, songs, poems, plays, and proverbs to give the inner conflict counsel.
Often we summarize that compromise to our own conflict when it collides with others with a dismissive “There are two sides to every story” and wrap our fight with a nice ribbon to get us off the hook when we reach loggerheads.
Its kind of like saying, “We’ll agree to disagree” when we argue in a marriage. But, I’ve noticed that often when couples adopt that sensible agreement to diffuse marital discord, someone has already filed.
Are there two sides? It certainly doesn’t appear in our political discourse that the “two sides” believe that there actually are “two sides.” It seems that solutions and policy directions are one way only and can give no quarter to the other. Views are often less about being correct than they are about making it clear that the other side is consistently wrong.
Yet, we continue to parrot the phrase and even
teach it to our children. Perhaps, we are hoping the next generation can bust the stalemate that we know we’ve created. We certainly can’t.
What the phrase means is that there are valid reasons for holding opposing views. What that means is that we must demand that our disagreements are researched with an appreciation for the plausibility of the other. What can be discovered is that there is an ethical path even for diametrically opposing views.
For example, take the ultimate disparity in ethical philosophy that is called “war.” Certainly, there is a strong moral position behind wanting to end any war as it is rooted in the inarguable position that war inevitably ends lives and lives are what we cherish. But, on the other side of that ethical fulcrum is the view that war can be justified to save lives; the eradication of those who would take lives will, in fact, save more.
While there was opposition to entering the European theater to fight the Nazis in 1941, it was diminished by the roar of nationalism that followed the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. Saving Europe, and ultimately ourselves, from a global fascist revolution was now morally justifiable.
That was also the justification used to end World War II when the atomic (and then hydrogen) bomb was dropped on civilian-populated cities in Japan. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were lost when that nuclear gauntlet was thrown down, but it ended the war.
You can choose whatever side of that ethical debate that you want and feel morally secure, but there is no question that it can be debated.
What it comes down to are “valid” reasons for our views; reasons that have justifications created from analysis, that bear historical relevance, and contain insight and vision. Specifically it means that a good argument must contain premises from which the conclusion is logically derived.
From where I sit the stalemate that keeps us from “transcending the duality” in today’s political divide is the mutual operation to destroy character. “Character” exists within every framework of humanity and that lays it bare as easy prey. Ive often concluded that anyone who agrees with certain policies (I’m being intentionally vague) cannot be of good character. And I believe I am correct. It demands a cognitive dissonance even within myself to accept that morally wrong positions are held by people believing they are morally correct.
How can such duality ever be transcended?
On the left there is within its core philosophical directive, a commitment to discovery in order to find more relevant and useful solutions. That even creates disagreement among progressives.
On the right, with a history of responding more quickly with an inclination toward prevailing over the immediate conflict, a commitment to the discovery of evidence that contradicts their premise is not only discarded, but is actually ridiculed.
Is there an answer to cooperate between “two sides”?
We are in societal divorce, but we can reconcile in what Cohen described as “moments.” Moments we can “embrace.”
At the risk of being pedantic, moments are small; they can be an enjoyment of music or a college team victory. They can be over wine or an inconsequential disagreement like Texas Red versus Oklahoma-style chili. There is a community of cooperation within this “cold and broken mess” and those moments we can commit to find.
Therein lies the only way we may one day rise to sing together in a chorus of Hallelujah! without being drunk around a piano.
Then again, even that could be a moment to enjoy.
