Mandela's Lesson

It might be good for us to pause a moment and think about the life of Nelson Mandela and the 27 years he spent in prison for the cause of freedom. We can never imagine how those years felt, understand how the man endured them, or fathom how he came out of it all as he did.

But it should tell us something.

Patrick Chappatte, an editorial cartoonist for The International New York Times, put it well in a recent cartoon entitled: “The world comes to a moral crossroads.” Picture anger, bitterness and conflict in one direction and the “Mandela way” in the other. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/opinion/chappatte-after-mandela.html?ref=international

The Mandela way, as explained by New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, involved “magnanimity, warmth and absolute lack of vindictiveness,” as when Mandela invited one of his white jailers to his inauguration as South Africa’s president.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/mandela-lives/

So, what should we make of this man? Is there a lesson in Mandela’s life for us in America or even in Minnesota? Could we learn something about how we view the world? How we tackle the great issues of the day? Or how we conduct political discourse about these issues?

An astonishing December 9 Washington Post editorial, “Why Machiavelli Still Matters,” offers the Machiavellian view that “in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good … and to act toward (your) enemies, using force and fraud.” Sadly, this has become the norm of civic discourse today.

In the battle, hype and hyperbole shove aside reason and reality. And, often, we do not even question it.

What if Mandela’s “magnanimity, warmth and absolute lack of vindictiveness” instead became society’s weapons of choice in collaboration? How would they fare against the hysteria of hype and hyperbole?

Think climate change. Could Mandela’s magnanimity move the conversation to a place where reason and science inform rather than threaten? Cap and trade, a carbon tax, green subsidies instead of brown, and new regulations make for a complex and politically difficult mix of possible solutions. The risk of designing an inefficient or incomplete package would only be exceeded by the risks of inaction and denial. Could a new way to converse and a new collaboration be the remedy?

Now think health care. Immigration reform. Minimum wage. Unemployment insurance. Food stamps. Iran. War and peace. We have so much to consider. So much to do.

As President Obama summed in his eulogy of Mandela: “He speaks to what is best inside us.”

Maybe it is time we start listening.