Polarized

The phone call may have been a political ad.

It may have been an opinion survey (as claimed).

Perhaps it was meant to be both.

The voice was a recorded one, but designed to lead something of a conversation. In a way, this was a nice change: rather than instructing me how to think, the caller wanted to engage me in a discussion of sorts.

“[Other politician] plans to [do this]. Blah blah blah, do you support this?” the voice asked.

I had answered half a dozen of these yes-or-no questions with more confidence than perhaps I felt when I was asked one I really couldn’t answer that way. I paused.

“If the listener does not say, ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘repeat,’ this survey will come to an end,” the voice threatened. Still I hesitated, and the pollster – a well-known politician whom I am inclined to respect – dropped the call. Apparently he was no longer interested in my opinion.

The topic was one about which many have very strong, entrenched opinions. I consider it a gray area, myself – a matter about which ethical and intelligent people may disagree. And even if they identify the same things as problems, they may disagree about what should be done, particularly by a specific entity such as the federal government. But not to take a polarized position was apparently seen as choosing not to be part of the conversation.

I found myself in a similar situation when a religious leader whom I respect wrote asking what I might know about the doctrinal contents of a recent book by a somewhat controversial author on a topic of some significance to us both. I have the book; I went out of my way to have a copy given to me so I could read it. I did not run it through the same grid as my correspondent did, however, and did not know how to answer his question. In fact, I have not answered. I feel caught in the middle.

In both situations – the political one and the religious one – I recognized that I know people who are willing to lay down their lives for these issues. But to me they are not central issues. I found myself unwilling to be dogmatic, reluctant to claim or promote a strong opinion or to give allegiance to one “side” or another in these areas of contention.

Yet I recognize other matters that I =do= hold as more central or essential than other people do. Maybe we all have certain areas about which we have strong opinions. Others may not understand why we think that issue is so important or why our opinion is so strong.

So, we all know what it feels like to be the one with the opinion, and the one without one, or to be in the middle: a moderate. But what do we do with the result, the fact that what's important to me is not as important to you, and vice versa? I don’t want to be ignorant, or cowardly, or ineffective. But I do find the pressure to have an opinion about everything – to take sides – awfully oppressive at times.