I’m Alan Tyson, CEO of DATABASICS. We are a software-as-a-service provider of time tracking and expense reporting software. The DATABASICS Marketing team recently asked me to write a new blog post—they suggested I take a vertical slant, maybe something about nonprofits, federal contractors or the international development community. I’ll do that, but not right now.
Now, what’s on my mind is not branding or lead generation. I’m worried about us, the American People. I’m not young. I’ve lived through many of our country’s challenges and catastrophes: polio, the Cold War with its atmospheric nuclear testing and classroom duck-and-cover drills, the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Vietnam War, Watergate and the outbreak of AIDS. And in my lifetime, I don’t recall ever actually fearing for our commitment to democracy as I do now. Ironically, about the only thing we agree upon is that our way of life is under threat. Each side, however, sees the other as the menace. There are clearly people of bad faith and selfish, malicious intent at work here. The rest of us, the vast majority, are being sucked into opposing whirlpools of suspicion and increasingly irreconcilable enmity.
What’s on my mind is not branding or lead generation. I’m worried about us, the American People.
It is looking as if we might not even be able to hold an election anymore. We need to step back and recognize the catastrophe that is unfolding. To come to our senses and see where fear, anger, cynicism, greed and contempt are leading us. Can one faction actually be victorious, trampling the other and still call this America? At our best, we are compromising and mutually respectful, but what about when we are not at our best? We cannot call this America unless these values remain in our hearts at all times. There is a bar that we cannot fall beneath, and I am afraid we are now looking up at it.
There are people who thrive on this environment. Most of us don’t and find ourselves suddenly walled off and disoriented. It sounds quaint to recall we used to be exhorted to love one another. Here, love doesn’t mean we have to even like a particular person. What it does mean—which may be more difficult—is that we need to acknowledge the humanity of that person as being fully equivalent to our own. Another word for that is empathy. From empathy flows understanding, if not agreement; respect, if not friendship. The poet W.H. Auden, at the outset of WWII, wrote, “We must love one another or die.” The choice is every bit as stark today and we are running out of time. Love one another— we all now need to come together and give it our best try.