Listen, can you hear it? The sound of ears shutting to any idea other than their own. Have you seen it? The silent picture of people turning away from any idea that doesn’t fit their world view.

I’ve heard it. I’ve seen it. Heck, I’ve done both.

More than once.

I’ve been thinking about our collective closed mind for what seems like years, but is likely only months. My head is starting to hurt from the cognitive dissidence of a world in which we label people before we take the time to get to know them or, at least, give them a chance to explain themselves.

We seem to explain the great divide as political deep divisions between hard left and hard right. Democrat and Republican. Do-gooder, pinky socialist who wants to take our money and give it to undeserving people and selfish, greedy capitalists who won’t help their mother if they can’t extract a profit from it.

Notice the extremes: According to certain erudite views, moderates are going the way of the dodo bird. I don’t happen to believe in the extinction of moderate views; I know too many people, young and old, who continually moderate their views given new information and time. We moderates are a mixed bag of philosophy, life experience, work, education and geography. No one size fits all.

Could it be more a matter of the current environment being intolerant of opposing views? So, hey, why step out there to be trampled by either extreme?

With me or agin’ me?

A friend of mine and his wife attended a community meeting on homelessness. They went because they had a recent experience in which the system of helping homeless people used them to bag another home and left them holding the bag.

They had apartment houses that were due to be demolished to make room for Sound Transit in their county. Given that there were a few months left before the demolition would occur, people looking for permanent residences did not apply. They had vacancies and contacted several agencies that helped homeless people find places to live.

Clearly, it was temporary housing, but the agencies seemed pleased with the offer and arrangements were made for rentals subsidized by both the agency program and a reduced rent by the couple. Seemed like a win-win for all three and soon, formerly homeless people became tenants.

Problems began when the tenants did not pay their rent and apparently spent the money elsewhere. The couple contacted the agencies, who had told them they would intervene if there were problems. The agencies didn’t intervene and the couple was stuck with new tenants who went on to break other rules like turning the smoke-free apartment houses to areas of smoking things that could be smoked.

At the community meeting, my friend rose twice to tell them their story and point out how the programs enabled irresponsible behavior instead of uplifting the homeless.

He told me that his first comment was greeted with unfriendly faces turned toward him and no response. Following his second try in which he explained that the people needed more than housing, he was acknowledged as making good points and that there should be more money for the programs. That was all.

Now, I don’t know how he came across in relaying his experience. He probably sounded judgmental; I doubt he was feeling magnanimous in that the experience cost the couple money and goodwill. Still, they went to the community meeting with a message that they thought was important to any planning related to homelessness.

The issue about which I write is not the homeless problem, it is the virtual wall that rises in an instant and blocks any opportunity for building common understanding and action toward solving a problem together.

Listening in three dimensions

Life today is we either win or we lose and until that changes, we will be looking at some people as “others” and some people as “us.” Often, assumptions are made and moderates are mistaken for one or the other.

How did we get stuck in the extremes when we are neither? We are going to have a lot of trouble facing our problems, let alone solving them, until we can look at each other as more than one-dimensional figures.

We need to develop the political will and become the people who will do the dynamic problem-solving necessary to achieve sustainable solutions. Homelessness is but one of, although often related to other problems, such as opioid addiction that’s crippling our youth, lack of job training for displaced workers and crumbling infrastructure. Surely, we can rip ourselves out of the territorial divide to save our future and that of our children.

This would be a great time to resuscitate the voice of moderates and bring them back into the discussion. Most of us hold a variety of positions in a variety of areas.

Our choices are not binary, a term added to our election vocabulary by the media in describing the presidential campaign and cutting deeper into the divide. I won’t even try to address the distortion behind the term. We are complex, multi-faceted, diverse people living in a complex, multi-faceted, diverse nation.

Moderation is not weakness. We know we can eat too little or too much food. At this moment, we have a President who is moderating some of his campaign promises.

That last statement is a bit of a Rorschach test. What does your response tell you?

Meanwhile, think about the cases of mistaken identity that have led us into one-way streets and blind alleys. Or count the positive opportunities missed when we ignore the idea we mistakenly identify as coming from a socialist or fascist.

Check the box “none of the above” and start a conversation.

Bertha D. Cooper is retired from a 40-plus year career as a health care administrator focusing on the delivery system as a whole. She still does occasional consulting. She is a featured columnist at the Sequim Gazette. Reach her at columnists@sequimgazette.com.