A Case for Clarity

I have a three-year-old at home. He’s in the stage of development when the imagination is at the steering wheel, which is both magical and incredibly frustrating for us as parents. Bedtime is particularly difficult because as the sun goes down, his little brain lights up, and if he can’t tell what something is through the darkness of his bedroom, well—it must be a monster.

I’m sure we can all relate to this—either because you have children in your life or because you were, at some point, a child yourself. This imagination is an inherent part of our human experience, and believe it or not, we never grow out of it. As children, we use it to explore our world, entertain ourselves, and attempt to understand the numerous things we haven’t grasped yet. As adults, our brains retain this skill and use it to fill in the blanks created by missing information, so that we can move forward in any situation we’re faced with. As adults, this is more often known as “confabulation.”

At its most simple, confabulation is a daily tool we use to get by—so simple that we don’t even realize it. It lets us see the whole picture when part of it is blocked from view. It lets us think “well, I wasn’t there to see it, but my spouse leaves for work every day at 9am, so that must be true today.” It’s basic mental algebra. We can know the answer without having every piece of the equation.

Sometimes, confabulation can become a bit problematic when it’s allowed to overpower the other pieces of our thought process. When a person has cognitive impairment or a brain injury, for example, when there are so many missing pieces that the brain must work much harder to make sense of the world it’s seeing. This is why Great-Aunt Millie, who is 97 and has a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, will hear the oven timer go off and automatically pop up to answer the call bell from her nursing unit in 1951. Her brain is using the information it has available to complete the puzzle.

Politics are ripe for confabulation because often only fragments of the whole story are made available—or only fragments of the whole story get passed around through media and word of mouth. So, we have large gaps of information in which conspiracy theories are born.

There is absolutely a reason to keep some government information confidential. Sometimes it is a matter of safety or infringement upon the privacy rights of others. However, especially in the case of local government, clarity and transparency in things like day-to-day operations and budgeting is key to quelling any unnecessary and distracting confabulation. When information is openly available to the public eye, in a format that is clear, concise, and easy to understand, there are less questions, less guess work, and less room for assumptions to be made. It also allows citizens to start discussions on the same ground, having all received the same information. This does wonders for limiting argument and division.

Many residents of Parkside feel that clear communication is painfully lacking in our town. We often find ourselves resorting to Facebook, a less than reliable medium, for our information instead of being able to trust the primary source. After so long of being ignored, diverted, or even insulted when we ask for clarity, it’s understandable that we feel that asking for communication through the standard channels feels useless. We hear it said that the goal is civil communication on all sides, but we have not seen this in practice. Parkside Citizens, the only way to clearly and transparently communicate what you want, is to vote for those you can trust to give it to you—your democratic candidates for Mayor, Council, and Tax Collector.

Just think of it this way: for my toddler, the monsters go away when we turn on the light and he can see clearly what surrounds him. The same can be said for governmental transparency. The conspiracy, the confabulations…the proverbial monsters go away when you clarify things with a bit of light.

Ashley Roberts

Ashley has a Master's Degree in Social Work from Rutgers University and has worked investigating and mitigating the impacts of Elder Abuse. Ashley now works full time as a Social Worker in the criminal justice system in a correctional setting.

Ashley is an active participant in fundraising efforts for the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley Chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation. She is a member of the United Methodist Church and attends Swarthmore UMC.

Ashley hopes to create a culture of community unity, where every resident feels seen, heard, and valued. She looks forward to speaking to and truly getting to know more of her neighbors, because it is the people of this town that make us strong.

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