Election-Time Weirdness: Is Caring the Opposite of Weird?

In yesterday’s DM, we considered VP nominee Tim Walz’s naming of weirdness as characterizing much of his opponents’ positions and proposals. 

Today’s we offer a few more prime examples and then move on to an important question arising from this discussion.

Is it weird to be a Roman Catholic vice-presidential candidate but ignore the pope’s teachings about saving Mother Earth from climate change?

Is it weird to call all women without biological children “cat ladies”?

Is it weird to propose that people with more children should have more votes in an election than those without children?

Is it weird to be a Roman Catholic vice-presidential candidate but call nuns and religious sisters “cat ladies” (because this is what you are doing if you say women without children are such)?  AND, that they should have fewer votes than women with their own biological children?

Is it weird to propose that an education system not tell the facts about slavery and oppression?

Is it weird to propose that an education system not tell young people about the varieties of human (and others species’) sexuality?

What are synonyms for “weird?” Following are some: strange, odd, bizarre, peculiar, uncanny, eerie, creepy, unusual, uncanny, unearthly, abnormal.

What happens when one applies these terms to presidential candidates and their speeches and proposals?  Do they come out as strange, odd, bizarre, peculiar, uncanny, eerie, creepy, unusual, uncanny unearthly, abnormal?

Now let us turn to the opposite–What is the opposite of weird?

Is it normal, every-day, usual, standard, regular, ordinary, typical, customary, common, average, natural, habitual, routine, conventional?  What happens when one applies these terms to presidential candidates, their speeches and proposals?

I frankly find these terms quite flat and boring when it comes to politics.  So let’s look for another opposite of weird.

I propose that maybe caring should be the opposite of weird in the political sphere. Caring about the common good.  And individuals.  And policies that promote both. 

Caring about survival and the wellbeing of Mother Earth in a time of climate change and the destruction it wages. 

Caring about how we bring forward the “better angels” of ourselves and safeguard against the worst that humans are capable of. 

Caring about justice and compassion and the weakest among us and fashioning laws that curb our worst instincts. 

Maybe compassion is as unweird as we can get. 

See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.

Banner Image: Democratic Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you recognize Caring and Compassion to be the opposite of weird in the political sphere?  What follows from that?

Recommended Reading

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Selected with an Introduction by Charles Burack

To encapsulate the life and work of Matthew Fox would be a daunting task for any save his colleague Dr. Charles Burack, who had the full cooperation of his subject. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship.  His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Essential Writings begins by exploring the influences on Fox’s life and spirituality, then presents selections from all Fox’s major works in 10 sections.
“The critical insights, the creative connections, the centrality of Matthew Fox’s writings and teaching are second to none for the radical renewal of Christianity.” ~~ Richard Rohr, OFM.