Sunday, December 31, 2017

Year-End Thoughts

One year ends and another begins. See ya, 2017, and pull up a chair, 2018. On a multitude of personal and professional layers I have a number of thoughts when it comes to the past 12 months.  In our my own limited corner of the world, 2017 was largely positive. This blog, for instance, was recognized as being one of the top 30 on communication on the entire Internet. That's pretty cool. I started "Why Communication Matters" in 2008. Just a few days ago, I put forward entry number 1,000. I feel proud of both milestones even though to this day I still do not know how many people other than me actually read this thing.

Stepping outside my own "space," particularly as it applies to communication, I am not all that sure 2017 was all that good. At the very least, it sure seemed like a great deal of work, not unlike pushing a heavy object up a steep hillside. Lots of folks struggled to be heard, in large part I suspect out of frustration. In a more perfect world, people would be encouraged to speak out. These days, however, they seemed to be criticized and verbally attacked for it. As a result, my sense is people responded by either pulling back or raising their voices. Too much of that escalation seemed to be in the form of personal attacks and cries for censorship.

One would be hard-pressed, for example, to identify a time in our nation's history when the free press has been under such heavy and constant attack by the government. And, to be fair, much of the press is not pulling many punches when it comes to its commentary on the government. Yet here we are: the general public - perhaps ironically - holds both the media and the government in low esteem. My take-away from such a state is that we as individuals along with various entities such as the media and government should not so much pull-back from critiquing everything and everyone we wish. Rather, we all need to do it in a more respectful, even-handed way.     

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