Making Peace from the Bottom up

We've grown accustomed to looking at the world in a way that has the potential to create a variety of problems. These are deeply ingrained biases, some of which may have had their purposes back when the world was less connected and less abundant.

There are two major biases that most of us hold, that if we can manage to overcome will likely lead to a massive transformation in the world. Things will never be perfect, but they could be a lot better, and these biases are the weakest link in creating something better.

Of course everyone has their own perspective, and this is merely my perspective but I believe it should be of interest to most people, as I am straddled between many different worlds, East and West, Rich and Poor, Left and Right, Radical and Moderate. I have many feet, each standing in all of these different worlds, and none of them too firmly planted to feel overly invested in any of it.

I am not a centrist in the political sense, I would say I am a decentralist at the core. I believe we should be organizing based on ideology, and embrace a wide variety of different communities or nations under the tenant of non-aggression and some very very basic agreements on human rights. We should be able to accept that others want to live in different kinds of societies from us and learn to make peace with them. That means there is no reason everyone has to belong to the same kind of system. If we think a system is the right way, we join it, we contribute to it, we build it, we don't need to push to convert people, we try to show how it's better.

I am able to sit with people who have drastically different opinions and beliefs, and I can respect their right to want to live however they wish so long as it doesn't impede on the right of other people to do the same. Of course many people out there are not willing to do that, but rather than fight with them, I bite my tongue and look for people who can.

Those are my credentials.

The biases I see:

We are conditioned to identify patterns and this should be a good thing, but when we get locked into believing that our patterns are always accurate and absolute, it gets dangerous very quickly. We identify stereotypes as a representation of another nation or religion or ideology or tribe. Whether this is due to historical reasons or biological reasons, it's not always realistic way to go about all of interactions with individuals. This is not to say all stereotypes are invalid, some are identifiers of cultural realities, but if we fail to see the variety within any identifiable group, our oversimplifications will eventually lead to disputes getting out of hand.

I see this VERY CLEARLY with the right and left in America these days. The right thinks that if you are vegan or gay, you must be part of some agenda to end America or to brainwash children or destroy the family structure. The left sees the right as unhinged conspiracy theorist, ultra religious fanatics who cannot tolerate anything outside of their own dogma, racists, or unreasonable uneducated fools who don't know anything about the world.

Both characterizations are foolish to carry into all of interactions. Both characterizations also have some truth to them. The truth is that in the most extreme cases that social media algorithms push, there do seem to be people who fit these descriptions. If you look at the worst that ANY group has to offer, you will find pretty unreasonable, foolish, or dangerous ideas. This is inevitable.

But we have many people now who believe that the group they don't belong to is FULL of these ideas.

On the other hand there are agendas of powerful people who want to capitalize on the division, either knowingly or unknowingly. Some of these agendas are popularized in certain communities, some are tracked, and it would be reasonable to assume that there are other players whose cards are held much closer to the chest. The fact is that even these international organizations are not monoliths. They have different factions vying for control.

We try to simplify things in order to make judgement calls, forgetting that not everything needs judgement. We can condemn a certain action or policy without completely demonizing every single person who shares any semblance of similar values with whoever committed the offense.

And so we are constantly up in arms with people who speak a different political language than us.

Rather than focus on labels, if we learn to focus on individuals and behaviors, we can get closer to the core of what we see as a problem and help find common ground.

For example, I see many believers in capitalism speaking ill of anyone who sympathizes with socialism or communism. But within those groups of sympathizers, some are dogmatic believers and some just believe in certain policies (nationalized health insurance or education for example), some have studied political theory and many have not, most don't understand the financial system very well, and many have labelled themselves in ways that mean very different things to different people. People make different associations based on a label.

Both sides of any argument are really good at pointing at the weak points and contradiction of the side they disagree with and not as good at identifying the weaknesses and contradictions on their own side. Both sides are reactionary about how they approach any discussions on controversial issues.

Neither side wants to respect the Steelman arguments that their opponents can present. And if they did, we'd discover we have far more in common. Neither side wants to let the other have a few views they disagree with because they feel threatened, without realizing that fighting against those views will only make them stronger.

This only gets worse when we scoff at people who identify a certain way. You don't need to beat your opinion into everyone. If you disagree with them, find a softer way to present your view, without any expectation that they will change their mind. There is no amount of arguing that will convince them to change their views...but if you can build some kind of rapport and then share your perspective in a way that allows them to have their own opinions, they may start to be influenced.

It's hard when both sides feel demonized. Trust me, I know. I've lost work because of certain beliefs. It's easy to complain about it, but it's far more productive to be the bigger person and still try to build that rapport based around other things....music, sports, a desire to see the world or an interest in crypto, mutual friends, shared spaces, or other passions and interest.

We think that we need our candidate, or a new candidate to come along as save us, but we won't get better candidates until we've built a better floor for them to stand on. Corrupt parties and organizations can only get away with controlling us if we mistrust our neighbors and refuse to settle things with them directly and peacefully.

If we can create more space to have respectful, fun conversations with people we disagree with, we will see a change in the politics, it is absolutely inevitable. If we continue to demonize each other just for our worldviews, we will see things slip further and further out of our control until both sides suffer immensely.

No matter how much I dislike someone, I don't want to see their life taken, and even if I couldn't help but wish for such things, I would never ever express joy over such a thing because I would not want to stoke the flames of animosity towards anyone who is more sympathetic.

We will never find peace if we don't treat individuals as individuals. We can carry some stereotypes that help us to understand culture but if we want to have a realistic view of the world, we need to be flexible with out assumptions and always respect that people do not all fit labels perfectly, especially once you make a real connection with them so you can see what is underneath.

Let's take our eyes off politics a little more and realize that we have much more power in our ability to create more constructive conversations and more enjoyable interactions.

If anyone from the left or right wants to try and understand how anyone could believe in something so stupid as (insert idea here), please feel free to reach out to me. I can give a decent steelman argument for many different groups, because I have friends and people close to me in many many different situations and cultures.

Anyway, peace and love, always <3

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