I am others

Hibiscus Show

i have friends who are my polar opposite. We disagree about many things but find common ground in our pursuit of healthy living. We share time together and remain committed to participating in activities that we each view as mutually beneficial to our overall health.

All of us give back to the community in our own ways, all of us are hard workers and committed to our families. We all believe in our nation and want it to continue to be a guiding light for others but we see governments place in our lives through different lenses.

Squid

Why we disagree on how to move the nation forward continues to baffle me because at our base we are really extremely similar. We all want the same things and yet the road to get there is opposed to each other.

i've been reading a book called “The Anatomy of Peace” by the Arbinger Institute. They use as an example families dealing with young adults that have become drug addicts to show how all conflict is the same.

Can you see the Flounder?

One of the most salient sentences i read was one directed at a parent who maintained that he was right during a particular exercise. The moderator asked him if he had ever met anyone who thought he was wrong. Just think about that anytime you are in conflict with another person, have you ever considered that you could be wrong?

No conflict can ever be solved if both parties think they are right. The moderator used this to explain to parents that our way of being towards others might be at the heart of the conflict. Sometimes we just keep perpetuating the problem, we go around and around and provoke the very behaviors we want to eliminate because we can't change how we relate.

Round the island race

We all tend to demonize those we disagree with, we lump them into categories and dehumanize them. i do it myself. If you say the word Republican to me i lump them all into a group of angry, greedy, self indulgent, war mongering, climate denying bigoted people. But the reality of my real Republican friends doesn't compute. They are none of those things so am i wrong to think those thoughts?

Are they wrong to think of Democrats as wimps, takers, socialists, communists, judicial activists and baby killers. i think so. That is why we have to humanize all of us. Stop making demons out of the other party. If we want our country to move forward we have to first find a way out of our internal wars that poison most of the political discourse.

When Decartes stated Cognito ergo sum...I think therefore I am, Martin Heidegger hundreds of years later pondered it and asked where the language necessary to make that statement came from. Of course we all know the language came from others. When you think about this deeply you have to realize that being in the world with others is fundamental because we couldn't acquire language without others. We can't live without others.

In order to understand our nation we have to view each and every person as an individual as a real person who may contribute to our well being. Don't demonize anyone. Look at everyone you encounter over the next week. Look at them all carefully, notice them, really really notice them, notice what they are doing for a living, notice how you are interacting with them, even if they are in the cars ahead of you or behind you, they are all interacting with you. And remember we may be individuals but we are in the world with others.