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Sep 24
2008
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Politics and ActingPosted by Allen Barton in Untagged |
Just a thought. It being election season, I’m finding myself embroiled in many conversations about politics. I’ll ‘fess up and admit that I consider myself a right-leaning centrist, and yeah I generally vote Republican. This makes me like much of America, but in Los Angeles it puts me next to Genghis Khan in the eyes of many.
So being in the minority, surrounded by opponents to the left who are wanting to rip my jugular out, I need to be VERY attentive to my communication. I personally love the debate, when it is in fact a debate. Often it devolves into my leftward-leaning debate partner issuing angry monologues without consideration of anything else. Everyone is just preaching to their chosen choir. The only question I actually get about my views is the unintentionally insulting… “How could a guy as smart as you……?” Well yes. How could I? No, but really!
So what is lacking is INTEREST. When I get it – it’s so rewarding! I’ve had a couple hour-long, dignified, courteous, humorous conversations with a couple VERY liberal people in the past couple weeks. Not only did we have a good time, and a couple drinks and/or smokes, we found that there was much we had in common in terms of world view. And that made me think about acting.
Interest. In real communication. In finding out what makes the other person tick. Why do they act this way? Why do they think this way? Why are they doing _______ to me, or to themselves? The real interest in discovering the answers to questions posed by the story in front of us, by the PERSON in front of us.
So as you unload endlessly delicious invective upon your Red or Blue friends in the next weeks, think about real communication, real interest, real dialogue. We might end up with a better country, but short of that we’ll at least move towards better acting!