Dissent

It’s always difficult for an individual to go against a group of people. We all want to get along and be liked by people, so we often keep quiet about opinions when we’re with a group of friends or family members who may not agree. I learned the hard way that keeping quiet about one’s opinions and allowing other people to think for me does long term harm to myself. I’ve been very interested in learning about the dynamics of groupthink, the tendency of a group to limit independent thinking and questioning in the quest for consensus and group cohesiveness. The dangers of groupthink are numerous, from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, China during the Cultural Revolution or in the McCarthy era in America in the 1950s. While it is good to find a community where one can find love and acceptance, it’s also important to be able to speak for oneself and to be able to think independently.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) gives this definition of groupthink:

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-three

"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.

The slaves of the householder came to him and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up? He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.

Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'" Matthew 13:24-30

On June 27, 2008 the Vatican announced that St. Louis, Missouri's Archbishop Raymond Burke was promoted to Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura -- a position that except for the Pope is considered the highest judicial position within the Catholic Church. It is essentially being the Chief Justice of the Church's Supreme Court.

Sunnyvale is a mid sized city in the San Francisco Bay Area, about 50 miles from San Francisco. We have our high tech firms and a diverse ethnic population that has worked hard and achieved a lot of things in many fields, but “The City”, as we call San Franscisco, still holds a large place in our hearts. Last week, at my work in the Sunnyvale Public Library, all the talk was about the Olympic relay event in San Francisco and the protests that accompanied the relays. On Thursday, coworkers would stop each other to see the latest news and to pipe in on their opinions of the rightness or wrongness of the demonstrations. The consensus of the opinions that I heard was that my coworkers had mixed feelings about the protests. On the one hand, they felt that the Tibetans had every right to protest. On the other hand, they felt that the protesters shouldn’t be physically manhandling the Olympic relay runners, who had nothing to do with China’s record of human rights abuses, and that the Olympics in general should stay away from politics.

From reading these blogs, it seems like most of us admire Bobby Kennedy. Here is an excerpt of one of my favorite speeches of Kennedy's. He said this speech in Berkeley on October 22, 1966.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike,  timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.  Rather it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason, and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American society.  It will belong to those who see that wisdom can only emerge from the clash of contending views, the passionate expression of deep and hostile beliefs.  Plato said:  "A life without criticism is not worth living."

This is the seminal spirit of American democracy.  It is this spirit which can be found among many of you.  It is this which is the hope of our nation.

For it is not enough to allow dissent.  We must demand it.  For there is much to dissent from.

We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich.

We dissent from the conditions and hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin.