Just a quick one

I feel sort of lame and cowardly for posting this here, but I just didn't have the interest or energy for a facebook based soundbyte debate.  Today I posted a link to a story about income disparity in India (50 billionaires account for 20% of the country's GDP), and I got a mix of responses -- a few outraged by the fact itself, a few taking issue with my posting it.  So I'm not sure how I feel about it...I mean, I got some strong responses, so people are engaged and that's generally a good thing in my book, but I feel like they were responding to what they thought was my position on it, not my actual position (which I didn't actually share, other than to simply say "Wow").  It's got me thinking about how divisive the things that we care about can be.  I don't really expect facebook to be a good forum for dialogue, and maybe it's not really fair to post something without any personal context or opinion, but it was surprising to see how quickly the outrage on both sides of an issue can come out in a way that feels derisive of the "other side".  To me, the problem is one we are all more likely to agree on -- poverty and human suffering -- but who to blame and how to go about changing it are not things we have consensus on.  I do think there are some individuals to blame (and more than just 50 billionaires in India), but I think that more than blame, compassion is needed.  It seems so many problems are exacerbated by lack of communication, which is exacerbated by lack of knowledge of how to communicate and really connect and understand each other.  One facebook post is a small example, and probably not entirely illustrative of the thing I'm feeling at the moment, but because real attempts at understanding each other have been on my mind lately, it sent my brain in this direction.

And now, I will sleep.