Moving beyond political polarisation
Most people will agree with me if I say that today’s political world is highly polarised. We can see it across the largest world democracies, most notable for me being US and India, given my background. In US, this has taken the form of Trump vs an anti-Trump stand. And in India, it’s the Modi vs anti-Modi stance.
What we are increasingly seeing are people picking, or made to pick one of two sides. And both sides then decide to stick to their ground of what is right and what is wrong. Come what may. It’s led to an impasse, as both sides refuse to even acknowledge the other point of view. And there is no way out of it, really.
Honestly, both sides are to be blamed for this. Both sides feel like they are absolutely right and the other side is absolutely wrong. And this arrogance prevents open and humble dialogues between the two. You can see it when you have discussions with your friends. We continue discussions if the others agree with our viewpoints, but stop listening when they have opposing views. Then we find engaging with the other side too exhausting and frustrating, and just shut our minds down.
I saw it in the Hillary campaign against Trump where she refused to even accept the pull Trump had. She did not engage or even try to hear what the other side had to say. Because in her mind, she was absolutely right! Because the other side was wrong. They were the uneducated, stupid people whose views didn’t count. And they could never have won.
And this stance doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Hillary for sure.
The only way out of this impasse is for both sides to hear, hear what the other side has to say. And accept the right points they may have (and for sure they do!). Even the intellectuals (which are the anti-Trump in US and anti-Modi in India), including me, need to all come out of our current stance, of branding the other side, uneducated, stupid and so on. And start listening to them.
We have to be open to understanding what lies behind the opposing viewpoint. We need to accept, that they may have some, if not all, valid points. And if we don’t understand and appreciate those, we will end up just like the other side. Too closed and set in our views. And we may be wrong too, in some of our biases and hypothesis of the world. Even if we think we are not 😬.
We also need to start building our viewpoints on facts, not on emotions. Yes, we know the other side has done lot of wrongs. But assuming they are wrong all the time and stating that as a fact is not right either. When something happens, both sides need to stop emotionally making assumptions and deciding who is right based on what they know already. We need to always look at the facts before deciding for ourselves what is the truth. Because the truth is always somewhere in the middle…
What we are increasingly seeing are people picking, or made to pick one of two sides. And both sides then decide to stick to their ground of what is right and what is wrong. Come what may. It’s led to an impasse, as both sides refuse to even acknowledge the other point of view. And there is no way out of it, really.
Honestly, both sides are to be blamed for this. Both sides feel like they are absolutely right and the other side is absolutely wrong. And this arrogance prevents open and humble dialogues between the two. You can see it when you have discussions with your friends. We continue discussions if the others agree with our viewpoints, but stop listening when they have opposing views. Then we find engaging with the other side too exhausting and frustrating, and just shut our minds down.
I saw it in the Hillary campaign against Trump where she refused to even accept the pull Trump had. She did not engage or even try to hear what the other side had to say. Because in her mind, she was absolutely right! Because the other side was wrong. They were the uneducated, stupid people whose views didn’t count. And they could never have won.
And this stance doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Hillary for sure.
The only way out of this impasse is for both sides to hear, hear what the other side has to say. And accept the right points they may have (and for sure they do!). Even the intellectuals (which are the anti-Trump in US and anti-Modi in India), including me, need to all come out of our current stance, of branding the other side, uneducated, stupid and so on. And start listening to them.
We have to be open to understanding what lies behind the opposing viewpoint. We need to accept, that they may have some, if not all, valid points. And if we don’t understand and appreciate those, we will end up just like the other side. Too closed and set in our views. And we may be wrong too, in some of our biases and hypothesis of the world. Even if we think we are not 😬.
We also need to start building our viewpoints on facts, not on emotions. Yes, we know the other side has done lot of wrongs. But assuming they are wrong all the time and stating that as a fact is not right either. When something happens, both sides need to stop emotionally making assumptions and deciding who is right based on what they know already. We need to always look at the facts before deciding for ourselves what is the truth. Because the truth is always somewhere in the middle…
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