If you can get people to shrug off their labels long enough to have an open conversation, you’ll find that almost without fail, we share commonalities in what we want for ourselves, our families, our communities, our nation, even the world. While you may encounter a psychopath or sociopath here and there who really don’t care about the well-being of anyone but themselves, the great majority of people harbor no real ill will toward others.
On most things, we all agree. We all want things like clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, a home and a way to keep it warm in the winter, sufficient food, honest work, a safe place to raise our children, help when we need it (when we’re sick, or old, or weak, or poor). Unless we fear that our access to those things is threatened, we tend to agree that all humans are worthy of these things simply by virtue of being human. When we feel threatened, or deprived, we demonize others. We see a lot of that happening these days.
So if it’s not the ‘what’ we disagree on, it must be the ‘how.’ We disagree about how things should be done, how money should be spent, how people should be treated, how justice and fairness should be applied, how to balance personal liberty with community responsibility, how resources should be shared or saved, etc.
When we can’t agree on the ‘how’ a thing should be handled, we devolve to asking ‘who’? Who is worthy, who is deserving, who has earned benefits and who has not, who is guilty, who is valuable, who has respect, who can be discounted. The ‘who’ question gets us in all kinds of difficulties.
If we can agree on what and stop debating who, I think we can figure out almost any how.
Something to think about.