1. ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” – To Kill A Mockingbird

Lately, I’ve been feeling deflated, I’ve been seeing a lot of hostility between social media users who get increasingly hostile towards one another when they see an opinion or perspective that differs from their own?

Have we forgotten how to respect other peoples opinions, encourage dialogue, instead of shaming one another?

These disagreements create a “spiral of conflict” seeking to win an argument rather than cooperation, much of this comes from a place of feeling attacked with thus leads to aggression. However, I don’t think this is the right way of going about it at all.

What we need to learn here is:

People usually aren’t disagreeing with you simply for the sake of arguing or to infuriate you, we need to stop reacting so strongly. 

 Life is complicated and abstract and there is definitely more than a single way of looking at what’s going on around us. We need to be respecting other peoples opinions and encouraging dialogue, not hostility and shame. 

When you allow a different perspective into your thought process, you broaden your scope of understanding, regardless of the perspective is built on knowledge or ignorance. it’s important to see a situation from another point of view because that person brings a different conversation.
Thus putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes will greatly broaden your world view.

I was so surprised to learn that so many writers, public speakers, and activists of opposing beliefs from left to right are often rallied against and shutdown for speaking. 

We owe it those around us to truly understand where they’re coming from, this is a sign of respect. We must acknowledge their right to speak and think differently and recognise that we might have something valuable to learn from them. After all that’s the first step to forming stronger bonds within our communities and in society.

So often we want to go out in self-righteousness, Each side is focused more on proving “rightness” than on resolving the problem,  rather than listening or having an open mind. What we often don’t realise that being open is the key. We have to keep challenging ourselves, and seeing the world through different lenses, we need to keep growing, we can’t afford to be constrained by our past convictions. We have to let go and move on.

How about we as a society try for couple weeks try to truly understand others’ opinions and positions without defending our own.

It doesn’t hurt you to show an interest in others’ opinions and it may give you a greater understanding of why they believe the way they do. Sometimes it can solve a problem or improve a relationship. And, if nothing else, you may learn something.