On polarizing view points

It is tempting to align ourselves with one side of the story because it fits our view point. It is convenient to see the world in a binary of good/bad. Getting to know the nuances of a problem is emotionally challenging because it forces us to abandon what we have been taught all our lives. This may come with abandoning a sense of community the people we have sided with up until now provide. This may come with disappointing others, maybe our closest friends and family. There is nothing about forming a critical opinion that is safe or brings joy. But we owe it to the victims of violence who we have silenced with our opinion in the past. We owe it to the victims of terror to look at conflict not through our biased eyes, but through theirs. 

Complex international issues should not be looked at through a binary perspective because the world does not function in that way. Nobody is entirely good or bad. And yet, people do things that perpetrate goodness or badness onto others. We must be able to investigate on a subject matter without wanting to find heroes and victims, but rather historical systemic oppressors and oppressed. This does not mean one side is pure and the other is evil, but a conversation of who holds power over others.

Each one of us, regardless of our privilege, has experienced some form of hatred or violence. We must silence the voice in our heads that says we are owed something because of that. We must silence the voice in our heads that says we are the victims and others are the antagonists. 

We may think that through preserving our side of the story we are safeguarding ourselves: we must abandon this colonialist way of thought. Only in this way will we open ourselves to the possibility of having been a perpetrator of violence to someone else. 

If we are not active victims of violence, maybe we can allow ourselves the possibility of letting our guard down to those who we have placed as evil in our minds and getting to know all of them, not just the parts that are convenient to us. 

Maybe through seeing the humanity in others we will understand what our past rhetoric has ripped them of.