By: Jason Hansen, Guest Writer
My first job out of college was working as a community organizer for a small environmental group. We’d head out twelve deep in a beat-up old van and spend hours going door to door, canvassing for petition signatures and letters from entire communities to their elected officials about issues directly affecting them. I learned a lot on that job, but one of the most important things was that questions can sometimes be better than answers when trying to connect with people. If someone answered the door and I started telling them why I was there, it could turn into a standoff. If someone answered the door and I asked them what they thought about something, it might turn into a conversation. Sometimes, those conversations would blossom into a true exploration of an issue of importance. Rarer still, they might even change their mind.
Over time, I saw how our day-to-day work came together. Letters and petitions were sorted based on topic and district. People who received responses from their representatives sent them back to our office, allowing us to allocate resources based on legislative support. Lobbyists would use them in meetings with legislative staff to show support for an issue with their constituents. Towards the end of my time there, I got to sit in on of these meetings. I saw the effect that those letters can have first-hand, especially in mass. To a politician, a letter from a constituent doesn’t just represent the views of an individual in their district. It represents the views of someone motivated enough to write them, and certainly motivated enough to vote. When this is compounded, it gets their attention.
The last job I had before coming back to Regis was as a MI Systems Maintainer/Integrator in the Army. The position involved setting up and repairing different computer systems, and I had a lot of training on how they worked. One thing that was constant, regardless of the platform, was the way we were taught to fix problems. Figure out the logical flow of a fault, and then start at an end until you identify the issue. Particularly talented soldiers could even recognize which end to start on based on the symptoms. Applying this method saved hours of work, as another technician could trace through an entire system before ending up at the same place these soldiers were starting. Moreover, there were some problems that could only be fixed from one end. Simply put - if a computer is shooting sparks, it might be easier to start with the power cord than the keyboard.
Now, as I get ready to graduate again, I’ve been thinking these lessons and how they might be applied to the problems of the present. There is certainly no shortage of them. However, there is one that I would like to focus on, because you are uniquely suited to do something about it. Namely, the role of objective truth in our society, undermined by movements such as QAnon (If you have not heard of QAnon, I recently published a piece on it that can be found here). Considering one-in-three Americans believe at least some QAnon tenants[i], it may seem like an impossible task. However, I would argue that efforts may be better spent on the other end of the problem.
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