What My Child has Taught Me

This week, we helped our eldest daughter, Abigail, move into her college dorm for the first time. I’m proud of her, I’ll miss her and I know she will make (mostly) good decisions, because she has proven herself to be a smart young woman who (mostly) listened to the lessons my husband Carlo and I tried to instill. I know she will do well because ever since she was a curious child, she practiced what academics call epistemic responsibility. In the age of partisan news and polarizing politics, we should take a page out of Abigail's playbook and learn what these two five dollar words actually mean.

Epistemic responsibility is a simple but essential concept. It is the notion that you have a moral obligation to society not to believe in something unless it is founded, evident and justified. Ideas, good or bad, spread in a viral manner. From paying-it-forward to the tide pod challenge, human beings see, remember and repeat information while applying the retained concepts. We use the opinions we form to justify actions and as reference material when considering ideas. This is why we owe it to not only our self, but to all of humanity to question, observe and research everything. If you allow yourself to be mislead, you inadvertently mislead others.

It’s no secret that much of our news is bias, presenting opinions as fact and intentionally misleading the reader. I believe the press learned this from our politicians who build careers on spin and rhetoric. With the catalysts of 24 hour news and social media, the human mind is constantly inundated voices battling for our intellectual soul. It’s a negative reality of our modern world.

A lot of things are different for Republicans than they are for Democrats and vice versa, but reality isn’t one of them. It's our job as voters to think through the agendas, question what we hear and check up on what we read. Instead of clicking ‘share’ on an online article or meme that supports our beliefs, it's important to determine if we really think something is true, or if we are simply participating in the national, bi-partisan wheel of propaganda. We must remember to think for ourselves and avoid parroting the ideas of others simply because we share a political party. Epistemic responsibility is the vaccination against the ugly partisanship that is crippling our nation... and we are the nurses who must administer it.

I am asking all of us to use this philosophy when judging the policies of our sitting lawmakers. Look at what our leaders have been doing and ask yourself if it has been working, issue by issue, town by town.

Do you believe we are solving the opioid crisis?

Why is our cost of living going up?

Has healthcare become affordable?

Where does prosperity come from?

Are politicians doing their jobs?

I’m Erin Calvo-Bacci and I am running for State Senate in the 5th Middlesex District.