The Opposition

I’ve previously explored the binary way in which we are taught to view life. We are taught very black and white frameworks to view life through and this is socially ingrained in us as we progress further and further into our lives. 

One side effect of this is that we begin to hate opposing views. This is especially prevalent with social media. 

Algorithms now enable us to reduce friction by only seeing content that we want to see, content that validates our views. When contrary opinions come up, it triggers a rage within us. While our responses ultimately differ person to person - it is insanely hard for us to want to look at these contrary views. 

We simply view the other party as blatantly wrong while they would think the same way about us. 

With all of the happenings right now in the United States, it seems like we have leaned further into this ideology more than ever before. 

Instead of focusing on areas of common grounds, we vilify those with ideas that are contrary to ours. This creates an enemy and instead of unifying our people on a grand scale, it creates unified opposition. 

While I don’t expect us to live in a utopia where everything is perfect and we all hold hands and skip into the sunset - it is asinine that we are unable to recognize that fundamentally we are all people seeking to live some semblance of a good life. 

The people that we vilify have a background, a history, a life that they are playing the main character in. Just like you. 

We are each trying to do what is best for us. 

This is another inherent flaw within our society. 

We are trying to do right by us. The individual. 

When you focus on doing right by yourself, you neglect other humans. Every single one of us deserves to have food, water, shelter, and access to medicine. The ability to choose if you want to make something of yourself and try to contribute to society. 

But we unite against enemies. Democrats. Republicans. Straights. Gays. Blacks. Whites. What benefit does this serve? What end does this serve? The more we distract ourselves by fighting over fundamental differences, the more solutions we close the world off from.

The more we unintentionally oppress people while playing selfish games. 

We fail to look for the common threads that unite each of us and instead look for the divisive characteristics. 

I’m not perfect. This happens to me as well. 

I get pissed off when I see views that are stupid - I mean, contrary to what I believe. 

Or when I buy a book on Audible and I’m listening and find myself disagreeing with the author - wondering what possessed me to buy the book in the first place. 

Life is not meant for you to sit there wasting your time by exposing yourself to ideas that you agree with all of the time. 

There is value in exploring the ideas that you vehemently disagree with. 

That doesn’t mean that you will find value in the idea - but it will help you gain empathy for the contrarian perspective, ultimately making you a more well-rounded person. 

This is easier said than done. I struggle with this constantly. I am currently listening to the book Antifragile and some of the ways the author positions his ideas don’t resonate with me. 

He refers to people he disagrees with as “fragilistas” with which you can feel an incredibly sharp, condescending undertone. I don’t care for condescension and have found that when people use it to try to make a point, it often serves to minimize their ideas rather than encouraging people to listen. 

This is true of his work and my experience with it. While I believe that there are fundamentally interesting thought processes presented through this book, his harsh critiques of others doesn’t serve his argument. 

I understand the literary reason for doing this along with why authors do this in general. It is meant to clearly demonstrate their strong view on an issue while serving to minimize contrarian ideologies. 

That is great if you are right but, as I have mentioned, the world is rarely black and white. While we see full color, we operate in a grayscale. There are innumerous pendulums of thought and ideology swinging back and forth - with society leaning into certain ways of thinking before swinging to the opposite way of thinking. 

The irony in this, is he effectively is arguing to operate in the grayscale. He argues against the nature of our bipartisan government and their starkly opposing views but if I solely listened to people that I resonate with, I wouldn’t have caught on to this. I would have moved onto another book within an hour of starting this one. 

Despite my personal views of how to effectively present information, there is value to his line of thinking and some merit to his ideas. This doesn’t mean that I have to resonate with his value system or even like him as a person (I know nothing of him except for the ideas expressed within the book) for me to gain value from some of his perspectives. Some of his ideas may shift the way that I look at the world. Others may make me more staunch in the way I view certain topics. But when I experience the temptation to turn off Audible because I don’t like the way he has chosen to write, I instead listen to what is being communicated and take what I can. 

If we are to simply close our minds to every person that we disagree with, we miss out on perspectives that can help us.

As I have previously mentioned, this is a struggle for me. While I am encouraging you to try listening to people you wouldn’t normally - my thumb swipes a little faster for some people than others.

Some topics, I don’t care to hear the opposing viewpoints on. 

This makes this an ongoing and arduous process. You have to be intentional in exposing yourself to conflicting ideologies and willing to listen. Again, you don’t have to act on their messaging or agree with it but you may experience a takeaway that ends up adding value to your life and allowing you to share that value with others.