Our ability to live together, and to collaborate and cooperate as we attempt to do that, often depends upon our willingness to give others the "benefit of the doubt." Our ability to work with others is often dependent upon our willingness and ability to "forgive" others for things that they have done, and that have impacted us in some negative way. We need to be able to forgive others for what, all too often, were their very significant and very consequential "mistakes."
My recent blog postings about "political polarization" have been intended to point out that the current polarization of our politics, typified by a lack of anyone's willingness to "forgive" those on the "other side," is profoundly destructive of our ability to achieve a "successful" politics.
What do I mean by a "successful" politics? Well, those who have read any significant sample of my daily blog postings know that I think that "politics" is the way we actually "create" the world in which we most immediately live. As the title of my blog proclaims, "We Live In A Political World." A "successful" politics is a politics that creates a world that is decent, fair, and uplifting, and that confronts and overcomes the challenges we face in common.
A "successful" politics, in other words, is a politics that is helping us to move towards a "world" that is "fair," and that engages with and overcomes the major challenges that we currently confront. Today, I think that means a politics that is on the road to overcoming Global Warming, which threatens to make our planet uninhabitable for those of us - and those other creatures - who are living here now. It is a politics that is on the road to eliminating the threat of nuclear anhiliation. It is a politics that is working to provide good things for everyone in the world.
If our politics is not, at this moment, "successful," in those terms - and it certainly is not - then we need to find ways to make it successful. There really isn't any satisfactory alternative. Continuing on our current path will lead to massively negative impacts, everywhere, and will never achieve the kind of positive transformations of the human condition that must be our constant ambition.
A letter to the editor that appeared in the July 22, 2025, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle made me think about how to make our politics more "successful," and how being sentitive to the difference between a person's or a nation's "intention," and the actual "effect" that the person or nation might actually have produced, by something they have done in the past, is key to the effort. Here is the letter (emphasis added):
Solving Bay Area's Housing "Doom Loop"
Regarding “This is the real doom loop. It will change everything about life in the Bay Area” (The Graying Bay, SFChronicle.com, July 14): The Chronicle’s series discusses related housing issues — those growing older in their large single-family homes that, when sold, are unaffordable to the great majority, especially to families with school-age children.Part of the housing problem stems from two big mistakes:Single-family zoning (ironically, invented in Berkeley) was designed to make housing more expensive and make neighborhoods more exclusive for white residents.
Proposition 13 lowered property taxes for those who stay put in their homes, thus shouldering more local government operating costs on newer residents and newer homes.I live in a townhome community, where an aging population is staying in their homes — perhaps longer than necessary for their housing needs. But because townhomes are less expensive than single-family homes, we are seeing an influx of young families with children move in — a delight to see.We need cities to encourage townhomes and other “missing middle” housing, and the state should make smart changes to our property tax system to equitably apportion costs while focusing housing relief on lower-income populations.Gary Farber, Walnut Creek
Mr. Farber, it seems to me, has identified one of those challenges that our "politics" should be addressing and overcoming. The final paragraph of his letter (which I have highlighted) is a fair statement about changes in land use and housing policies that can, arguably, help us to be "successful" in dealing with issues related to housing.
Note, however, how Mr. Farber, begins his discussion. He says that single-family zoning was DESIGNED to make housing more expensive, and to create exclusive "whites only" neighborhoods. This assertion mirrors what so-called "YIMBY" advocates say about so-called "NIMBYS." Click right here to see my discussion of the use of that "NIMBY" label. Here's another link, to an even earlier blog posting on the topic. Think carefully, and consider the claim that single-family neighborhoods were "designed to make housing more expensive."
If it was the "intention" of those who established single-family zoning to raise housing prices and keep out poorer people, and especially to keep out black people, it is a lot harder to "forgive" them than if the "result" was not "intended."
I have a suggestion, stimulated by Gary Farber's letter. It bears on the kind of "politics" that might help us do what we so desperately need to do, to change the world we currently confront. IF we would like move ahead, from where we find ourselves with respect to all of the challenges that we face in common, I think that it is counterproductive to seek to affix "blame" for the problems we are now experiencing.
Instead of assigning blame, let's elevate possible solutions, instead. "Blame" divides. Possible "solutions" can unite. We are "in this together" in terms of the challenges we face. We need to make common cause to solve the problems. Blaming and shaming is not the best way to do that.
My opinion!
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