I enjoy the essays of David Foster Wallace, the books and short stories of Kurt Vonnegut, and the stand-up comedy of Jon Oliver. I am nearly as ideologically dissimilar from these people as it is possible to be and disagree frequently with aspects of their work, but that doesn’t matter a whit.
Increasingly, people close in around the things that they like and agree with, to the exclusion of all else. This is a trend that we should be wary of. Ideas need to be tested, and questioned, and an unwillingness to enjoy things written or performed because they may be ideologically flawed in some way is dangerous. It leads to willful ignorance.
When it comes to our politics we often become tribal, and separatist. We form ourselves into clubs and are convinced that if someone deviates from the world view to which we subscribe they must be somehow fundamentally wrongheaded or bad. That listening to their insights will do nothing for us. This way of viewing the world is harmful. It makes us bad learners. The best way to misunderstand the conversation is to only listen to your own side. And, when we reject the politics adjacent pop culture that disagrees with our own narrative, we divide ourselves. We separate ourselves unnecessarily from other people, and make it harder, not easier to bridge ideological divides both in our politics and in the other areas of life
It is tempting to tune out, turn off, and put down any media that contains something that goes against our point of view. But, watching or reading something that contains multitudes, that has good and bad elements, some aspects with which we agree and some with which we vehemently disagree, trains the brain. It builds up critical thinking skills in a way that purely agreeable media cannot. If you shut out anything you don’t like, you end up in a bubble, and it’s impossible to achieve intellectual growth when one is intentionally separated from any form of challenge.
This starts with not taking the political personally. It is a good thing to be able to watch a stand-up comedy special that makes fun of your favorite politician and laugh at the jokes if they are well written and clever. There will, of course, be jokes that are just bad, but it is important to recognize why you think a joke is bad. If you think that it is bad because it makes fun of something you like, that alone isn’t a good reason. The joke could be in poor taste, or be poorly delivered, or just not be very funny, all of these are good reasons to dislike a joke. But, if it’s only flaw is that it stings, that it strikes at something that you’d rather leave untouched, it might be showing you something worth looking at.
We can all benefit from a willingness to laugh at our own point of view. Seeing our own perspective from someone else’s, and watching it be the butt of a joke, or the bearer of intense satirical or journalistic scrutiny is beneficial. If there’s an expose done on someone you admire, it’s worth reading with a critical eye. If there is a stand up special you’ve heard like-minded friends fuming over, while most other people seem to think it’s hilarious, maybe put your ego away for a bit and check it out.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote lovingly, almost familially of Eugene Debs, the 20th-century union leader and socialist presidential candidate, but he had just as much to say about life, about war, and about humanity. He said it all with humor, charm, and wit, and to ignore his writing simply because much of his politics was decidedly leftist would be a serious mistake for any discerning reader.
Something similar can be said for David Foster Wallace, whose politics were certainly not the same as mine are, and whose ideas about such things often colored his work. Despite this, his work has been some of the most transformative I’ve found this year. His skilled introspection in within narrative is a skill any writer could do to learn from, and every reader should experience. To forgo his work over ideology would be an error.
These are only a few examples, but there is a wealth of experience to be had, of introspection to be done, and of things to be learned if we are willing to go outside of our comfort zones and embrace that which offends us on first glance.
The Monkey's Typewriter 