One of the few things I like about social media is the chance to think things through. This was one of them.
In the wake of recent political events, I posted this along with the below photo: Please, please, please – for the love of whatever or whomever you find sacred – make this phrase part of your reality: “I agree to disagree with you, my friend.”
One of my sweet, amazing, long-time friends and I had an exchange where she asked how one could find common ground with half of an entire population. This was how I replied:
It isn’t half. I don’t think half of any population says “we don’t care about people.”: I think that at most, it’s between .3% and 5%, and that’s not a guess. It’s a bell curve. I think if you take an issue – like unhoused people – nearly everyone would say we need to solve this for those people. The people who say we should inflict harm upon anyone who is unhoused are probably in the .3% to 1% of the half referenced. The people who say “let’s put spikes on park benches so no one could sleep there” are probably 5-7%. The other 43% on the side of the bell curve that weighs toward this extreme are nowhere near the thought of harming anyone. They may not have an idea how to help, and that paralyzes them into inaction. They may donate to a shelter, or run for city council or start a GoFundMe because they happened upon a conversation with someone trying to sleep on a bench that’d been blocked and realized it’s another human being just trying to survive earth school.
I think the reasons humans choose a side is because our brains are wired to keep us safe. Not to grow, not to do big courageous things like stand up and fight. But “hey, go over there where the people look and think like you do. It’s safe there. You won’t have a threat to your existence over there.” So on either side of the bell curve, 40% go because it’s easier. For very little reason except that earth school is HARD. Why make it harder. Then, of the 50% on each side, that’s its own bell curve, and of that 100% of the half, there’s still only 5% who want to shout about opinions and beliefs, and the 95% of that half shoves those 5% to the microphone. The 5% who want the mic may or may not represent the total belief of that half, but hey, they like being on the mic. And they get followers and clicks and find out they can make money saying this shit, so they keep saying it louder and louder.
Then we let media into the conversation. The media galvanizes the entire half behind those few people who are louder because it’s in the media’s best interest to do so. The media doesn’t gain followers or get clicks on videos by not taking a polarizing view. They want the followers and the clicks because to them, it increases their value – not to the world in general, but to their shareholders. That’s a whole other discussion — monetizing humanity’s gravitation toward sides for the sake of making more money. But the media finds the 5% on the ends of the bell curve and those are the people representing 100% of humanity. There are some people that say that world war 3 has already begun because of this – that it’s the war for our minds and the media keeps polarizing us to keep the money coming in, because wars generate an incredible amount of cash.
All that to say this: I choose to be less judgmental and more curious. Because if I talked to the person who believed that unhoused people should be harmed, I might find out why, and even though I would never believe what they believe, I might understand more about them. Then maybe they would listen, too. I don’t listen when shouting starts. It’s not a match for my energy. I want to ask the quiet question of the person sitting next to me. Not “do you believe this?” but “what do you believe?”
