American Evolution

Everyone or most of everyone is selfish. Most people as a whole only focus on themselves, rather than building off of each other. We only block ourselves off, making us lack communication on how to improve our society as a whole. With a lack of communication we no longer help each other.

Evidence lies simply in the streets of many states, and cities. Joe Maddon, the Chicago Cubs manager, stated in an interview for PBS, that when he and his wife visited Hazleton in Pennsylvania, that “The infrastructure was horrible, the sidewalks were broken. You could actually feel the fear among the folk." He also stated in the same interview, when he visited a daycare center he asked the people what do you need, to which they replied, “We need something for after school. We’re still working and these kids come home, and they’re stuck at home with no supervision." A broken neighborhood shouldn’t happen, nor should anyone be subjected to where no one feels safe, or feels ignored due to lack of funding, jobs, or houses that barely make health standards.

Those were pieces of evidence of lack of communication, and as Joan Blades, the creator of the Living Room Conversations website, in a Ted Talk with John Gable, founder and CEO of AllSides, stated that, “Living Room Conversations were designed to begin to heal political and personal differences. They're simple conversations where two friends with different viewpoints each invite two friends for structured conversation, where everyone's agreed to some simple ground rules: curiosity, listening, respect, taking turns -- everything we learned in kindergarten, right? Really easy. So by the time you're talking about the topic you've agreed to talk about, you actually have the sense that, "You know, I kind of like this person," and you listen to each other differently. That's kind of a human condition; we listen differently to people we care about. And then there's reflection and possibly next steps. This is a deep listening practice; it's never a debate. And that's incredibly powerful. These conversations in our own living rooms with people who have different viewpoints are an incredible adventure. We rediscover that we can respect and even love people that are different from us. And it's powerful." From this we can learn that communication between even a small amount of people has a strong impact on each person in that conversation. If that were to be on a large scale, the impact it would have on everyone would be tremendous.

If we were to build more communication amongst each other, we could greatly increase the voice of those in need. If a voice can be made louder, people will take more notice on what needs to change, and if change can be made even by the ordinary citizen, altogether we can build a better and safer community, where we are not divided by class, race, etc. We are one together with less restraints on ourselves.