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We live in a world that has multiple dimensions, however, too often we are forced to reduce everything to a single one. A simple straight line with opposite ends is used to define reality in all its complexity. Pro or anti. Black or white. Woke or conservative. Democrat or Republican. 1 or 0.

People force themselves, others, and the whole world into those simplified categories and then fight the opposite side. Usually, with no other result than strengthening the division and radicalizing the extremes.

Take Covid, for instance. “How can they be so stupid?” was a typical exclamation. But without the context you’d never know who’s speaking: those who advocate for the lockdowns and vaccine mandates or those who don’t. It didn’t matter if you had a health condition that made you weary of injecting an experimental drug with unknown side effects and it also did not matter if you had an elderly relative who you wanted to protect. You were just an ignorant, stupid, antisocial freak.

Or Israel and Palestine. You’ve traveled to Israel to see your parents? You are a zionist. You feel pain because innocent people are hurt? You are a Hamas supporter. You don’t think that “Palestine should be free”, exactly in those terms and in the most radical way possible? You are an occupier complicit in genocide. You are criticizing the use of military force? You are an antisemite.

Labels get thrown around and people get locked up into generalized simplified categories that don’t allow any nuance. In the best-case scenario, you belong somewhere in a spectrum along a one-dimensional line. In the worst case, you’re pegged to an opposite and have to remain there until you redeem yourself by shifting to the “right” side. The methods and tools to get you there vary from blackmailing and coercion to censorship and outright oppression. It doesn’t seem like people are just trying to have a discussion to understand where they are really coming from.

Why would you want to talk when you can convince and persuade? And if that doesn’t work — cancel somebody or simply lock them up?

It seems like it would be interesting to try a different strategy. Not only because we all know that increasing polarisation leads to a more extreme political landscape and violence. But also because taking a side and trying to prove to the opposite side that they are “on the wrong side of history” fails to bring a change. The world is full of nuance and details that make it beautifully complex and interesting. Most people just want to feel good and to have comfortable lives — both for themselves and the people around them. It’s the “how” that causes a disagreement.

That’s where it also gets complicated because for some reason there is a widespread belief that it’s enough to express a position to effectuate change. It can be easy to signal virtue and to fall into the comforting embrace of agreeable groupthink, but it’s much more difficult to actually do something about disrupting the current patterns and fighting the power structures that shape the current events.

An easy way to begin is to draw another line. When we have two lines, we have two dimensions. A third line adds another one. It’s not anymore about the side but the quadrant, a sector that is defined by at least 3 different parameters, which makes it harder to categorize it as something as simplistic as “good” or “bad”.

We have to start searching for more complex adjectives to describe the condition and that is already the beginning of a conversation, at least with oneself.

Talking and listening are other ways how this dichotomy can be resolved. Giving a chance to somebody to express themselves means to also give time and space for them to explain where they are coming from. A simple line turns into a complex network of relationships that run through space and time.

A good example is the problem of substance abuse. We can label people as junkies and try to remove them from the streets or give them a coin to help them get by (and continue to live the same way they are living). Or we can look at the stats and see that in many cases substance abuse is correlated with childhood abuse. In fact, an adult who has had adverse experiences as a child is 200% to 400% more likely to abuse alcohol later in life [1]. Help kids grow up in a better environment and they’ll be 2 to 4 times less likely to become alcoholics later in life. But it’s much harder to do that than to simply make a claim that something is wrong and donate to some charity that helps check the drugs’ quality.

Another example is the military conflicts around the world. We can talk all we want about who started what each year, but that doesn’t change anything, because there is always an earlier date and an alternative narrative that can turn perpetrators into victims and vice versa. Instead, we could look for recurring patterns and address those. For example, the situation in the Middle East is full of instances where a small military formation was given resources to stir insurrection against a political regime that was threatening the US interests in the region. One can go on the streets and shout about one thing or another, even try to boycott the companies who did not make a public claim that is expected from them. But what about campaigning against military and financial interference abroad and electing the politicians who would pledge to never do that again?

That’s where the laziness and inertia come in. It’s very easy to repost a prefabricated claim or a shocking photo with a caption that makes one seem like a good person who’s “on the right side of history”. It’s much more difficult to go, queue, and vote, to engage in political debate and look for a compromise, to stop paying taxes unless they finance the causes that you agree with, or to get into child care and education. Instead, label somebody as an idiot, use a big word to attract attention, and then move on to the next piece of news as if it were a fashion trend. This may make it easier to express oneself, but it does not change anything about the root causes of the problem we’re dealing with.

Human intelligence is evident in the ability to forgo easy solutions with immediate rewards in favor of complex ones that may involve initial hardship but promise greater rewards in the future. It is easy to say “Don’t you believe the science?” if you’ve never done science yourself and you don’t know that it is based on contradiction, not on belief. Taking the opposing points of view and doing research in an attempt to harmonize them (or to have to let go of a preferred one) is a much more difficult task, but the results are beneficial for everyone, not only for somebody who wants to be right. It may also be easy to throw around the word “genocide”, but it has almost zero practical value. Big generalizations like that tend to obfuscate the underlying processes and practices which are much more complex than an alleged drive of one nation to eradicate the other.

It may also be interesting to explore where this drive to generalize, categorize, and divide comes from. On the one side, categorization is an important feature of Western philosophy from the times of the ancient Greeks. This is not all the case in Eastern philosophy and languages, where generalizations are much rarer. Instead, various phenomena and events are described using the context around bringing about a complex network of relations that define the subject matter. [2] Another strong influence is the marketing practices, which categorize consumers into distinct groups to target them better. These practices become particularly controversial in the case of political campaigns, where the main thing that is sold is not a lifestyle but an ideology. And while most people tend not to impose their lifestyle on others, ideology tends to be correlated with violence.

There is suddenly “us vs. them”, “the other”, which pose an existential threat and foster aggressive xenophobic behavior. The first step to counter this divisive mentality is to avoid playing into it in the first place.

1. Dube et al 2002. “Adverse childhood experiences and personal alcohol abuse as an adult.” Addictive Behaviors

2. Nisbett, R. E. (2003). “The geography of thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently … and why.” Free Press.