Truth Bomb Tuesday: If we can do this, the sky’s the limit.
I know I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl. (That’s not an accident. That’s a choice. But that’s a topic for another blog.)
So I know I’m a glass half full kinda girl, but I get a sense that humanity is taking a big step forward right now.
And we’ve got the Coronavirus to thank for it.
And I’m not talking about the way it’s messing with our DNA and forcing us to evolve – some people reckon we have a lot to thank viruses for, for a lot of our evolution.
No, I’m talking about the death of otherness.
The vaccine debate is hot and it’s epic. It’s tearing a lot of good relationships apart.
That’s a bad thing.
But one of the things I’m noticing is how confused people are about why other people believe what they believe.
I hear things like, “I don’t know what happened to her. She used to be so sensible. She used to believe everything I believed. Now she just sounds crazy.”
I’m hearing things like that a lot. And I think it’s one of the unique things about the vaccination question.
It doesn’t divide up along our normal tribal lines. It’s not a left vs right thing. It’s not a Labor vs Liberal thing. It’s not a fascist vs socialist thing. It’s not a city vs country thing.
It’s a question that cuts through all of those.
And people are watching as people they used to think were part of their tribe are now obviously not part of their tribe because they don’t believe what they believe any more.
But it’s so confusing. “She dresses like my tribe. She talks like my tribe. And apart from the Vax question, she believes everything my tribe believes.”
“Geez, I don’t even know what my tribe is anymore.”
This is painful. For a lot of us we build an identity and a sense of place around our tribe. It’s an anchor in a crazy world.
So when the tribe is compromised, we feel set adrift.
But what I think this is asking us to realise and appreciate is that the ‘tribe’ isn’t real, and there are no ‘others’.
The thing about a tribe is that it creates a sense of ‘other’. Other people with other ideas and other values, all of which are wrong.
And if we could just get rid of the others or put the others in their place, then the world would be ok.
This is never true.
The other is not real. There are no others. There are just people, exactly the same as you, who just happen to have arrived at different conclusions because they have had different thoughts and experiences and have spent time in different media thought bubbles.
There are no others.
When you get down to it, we’re all the same.
And that’s the step that I feel like humanity is being asked to make.
To see that difference doesn’t come from fundamental difference and otherness. Difference is just different.
There are no others.
There is just us.
This is a painful journey, make no mistake about it.
But if we can do it… oh boy, imagine what we’d be capable of then!
DB.