Creating Dialogue: Jeremiah Mudge, Maryland

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Maryland Voices initiative at Maryland Humanities, specifically to supplement the "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America" traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program. This collection, made up of stories of first-time voters between the ages of 18 and 24, showcases the experiences of young people as they wrestled with the 2020 presidential election, issues around social justice, the environment, immigration, and the pandemic. 

Jeremiah Mudge (00:00): Hello, I'm Jeremiah Mudge. I am a student at Allegany Community College in Maryland, but I think that the major thing that people need to do to have good discourse is to find the common ground, the things that you agree on, before you get to your solutions, because that's where things get divisive.

Jeremiah Mudge (00:21): I see a lot of times people just voicing their opinions on what's happening and then people will reply to that and usually, even if they're not attacking you, it's always just perceived as an attack, and then you immediately reply back with that standpoint, kind of defending yourself, and it just is a bloodbath. I, a lot of times, have tried to debate people and I try to debate people but then they're always like, "Well, why are you trying to argue you with me?" And social media, it just removes the emotional standpoint of a conversation.

Jeremiah Mudge (00:59): So, there's a lot more of a personal implication and things that so you misread. So I think social media has definitely had a big detrimental factor to our discourse. One of my best friends actually completely disagrees with almost all of my politics, and we've been friends for a long time before we ever got into politics, but we have a really good understanding of each other and our politics, and I think the biggest difference between him and I, and what happens between me and other people on social media, is we know why we have our solutions.

Jeremiah Mudge (01:39): Like we understand about our thought process, and we also understand that we have the same issue with the topic. It's just we have different solutions. So when we have discussions about politics, it goes really well.

Asset ID: 2021.03.10.a
Themes: Dialogue, civil discourse, social media, debate, friendship, politics, solutions
Date recorded: January 29, 2021
Length of recording: 01:55m
Related traveling exhibition: Voices and Votes: Democracy in America
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Allegany Museum, in partnership with Maryland Humanities
More information: https://www.mdhumanities.org/programs/museum-on-main-street/2021-2022-tour/