As a child on Saturday mornings a short segment would play called Conjunction Junction. The focus of the segment was to teach the principle of how different ideas, people, places could be joined together with a simple conjunction. The music track was annoying and catchy. The graphics were basic at best.
But forty years on, the message is need more than ever. As a society we are moving away from the idea of joining anything together. The idea of building bridges in politics, communities, academia, etc. is becoming less and less the norm. Democrats are fighting issues they was supported to score political points. Republicans are looking the other way at immoral and unethical behavior that they would chastised the Obama administration for doing. Media outlets that used to have general respect for each other and the news have generally become holier then thou in their attitude to each other and their opinions of what the news means. In our local communities we have moved away from supporting our neighbors, churches, civic organizations and businesses.
Generally, we have forgotten the conjunctions and replaced it with dysfunction. We are not looking for ways to accomplish peace and prosperity. We are looking for ways to be right. We are not looking for ways to eliminate racism and poverty. We are striving to show that its our way or the highway. We are not looking to accept responsibility, but rather find anyway to deflect that responsibility to another.
If societies across the world are to survive and even better, thrive, we have to return to a world where we work together. We have to be less worried about does everyone understand and agree with my point of view and more worried about showing compassion, love and kindness. We have to be willing to respectfully disagree at times. We have to use conjunctions like “and” to bring inclusion to our communities. We have to be responsible for our actions and their consequences.
We have to leave dysfunction junction…