Uvalde: Time for Brave Healers and Courageous Risk-Takers

The latest horrible child massacre – Uvalde, Texas. The latest act of rage, revenge, blame, or what – directed to innocent victims who did nothing to the perpetrator other than just show up for school Tuesday. Just the latest of countless, senseless acts of mass violence.

How are we to respond this time? If anger and blame worked, we would have resolved this repeated problem long ago. Yet aside from compassion, the most visible response to date is one side blaming the other for doing something, or nothing, or for politicizing the issue.

At the core, our inability to act constructively to stem violence is not a gun problem, or a mental health problem, or a lenient judge problem, or even a legislative problem. It is first and foremost a relationship problem. Stakeholders have lacked the collaborative relational capability to pool their expertise and to work through their differences to develop a comprehensive set of constructive actions.  

Differences of opinion are not new; we have always had those. But why have we been unable to muster the relational lubricant to get past the friction, and the relational glue (to use Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam’s terms) to stick together?

Psychologist John Gottman considers contempt to be the most defining factor in killing relationships. Contempt toward other concerned citizens who see it differently than you – no matter how noble your intention – is a form of violence and destruction for getting to constructive action. Relational violence precludes corrective action for addressing physical violence.

The most salient question is not who is right or how to win the argument or get the other side to do what my side thinks is right. We have proven that does not work. The better question is what can me and my side do, or offer-up, that will enable both sides to take action.

Just as dysfunctional violence kills our kids, dysfunctional relationships and hatred toward each other kills any hope to fix the problems. Contempt leads to placing more value on stopping the other side than taking small constructive steps together.

We are all hopeful that laws and regulations can make us a safer, more caring society. Yet research shows that most proposed solutions have proven individually to produce relatively limited results. The reality is that it is our culture that is most broken and in need of repair. So much of our response of name calling, accusing and blaming the other side only contributes to the cultural warfare. 

But what if the groups on either side were to say, ‘I really don’t think what the other group wants will make any difference, but my heart is so broken by what has happened that I am willing to concede a couple or three issues that might help a little.’ What if they were to be willing to do this, not because they think it is the best right answer, but because by giving some ground here they can enlist the other side so that combined they can get to the best right action.

Seeking to work with the other side takes courage, because often those addicted to the fight in your own tribe will seek to isolate or even expel you from the tribe.  Today in politics and in ideology it is the courageous fighter that gets so much media attention and adulation. But these times cry out for something different: the courageous healer, the brave problem-solver, the risk-taking collaborator who will fight for our kids. We need citizens, voters, political leaders and cultural warriors who are willing to run toward – not away from – the danger of political or social exclusion and rejection, in the name of this worthy purpose.

A fuller version of this article can be found here.