“Do not Judge a Man Until You Have
Walked a Mile in his Moccasins.”
– Native American proverb
Principles
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Commitments
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Voting
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Childhood
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Adolescence
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Adulthood
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To understand your civic self you must understand the
origins of your thoughts. Are your principles rooted in feelings or experiences
that go back to your early childhood? Or to adolescence? Have they evolved?
When? Why?
Are they rooted in examples set by your mother or father or
older siblings? Or by teachers or other mentors? Or by reading? Or life
experiences? By community service? Or by a film? Or by religion? Or are they
based on an acute sense of your own or your family’s economic interest? (Whether
a higher minimum wage or lower taxes, for example).
A second dimension of your political past is party or group
affiliation or civic action.
A third dimension is remembering past voting decisions. What
did you decide in the past? Why? Giving honest answers to these questions may
be harder than you think.
Human capacity for self-deception is infinite. The tendency
is to think that we are motivated by high principles and others motivated by
interests or unfortunate influences. We tend to forget past decisions that may
look like poor ones in retrospect. We may sugar coat the rationale behind them.
Honest analytical introspection is not easy. But it is
indispensable.
As you will see ultimately, these matrices will be exchanged
in Thinking Citizen Conversations (aka Matrix Exchanges).
Premise: The greater each of us understands where the other
is coming from, the greater the odds of empathy, trust. The greater the empathy
and trust, the greater the odds of learning from each other.