Polarity & Flourishing

This week, I want to discuss polarity. It has been bothering me for a while, and I see it everywhere in our society. It has the potential to undo any attempts for humanity to flourish, and is causing endless strife and conflict in our world today. You don't have to look far to find it.

By polarity, I mean taking sides to the detriment of listening, learning, and understanding.

Whether it is the traditional polarity of the political left and right, or our inability to see something from another angle, it lurks everywhere in our lives. Humanity has lost the ability to hold two opposing points of view.

Back when I was in school, we were taught to debate. When you went into a debate, you never knew whether you would be pro or con to a topic but, regardless, you had to be able to argue the contrarian view. In this day and age, though, we take a stand, stick to it, and lock into our beliefs and opinions without even exploring or seeking to understand the other side.

People are becoming entrenched in their viewpoints to the extent that they are euphemistically willing to go to war for their stance. Rational thought has given way to passionate beliefs. In this battle of opinions, the truth is the real victim. It may be fuelled by the reality that truth is seen as fleeting, and that facts are manipulated through conjecture or possibility.

In the past, I have written missives about the loss of truth in favour of what we believe is right. What may have been a "truth" in the past is questioned because I couldn't experience, or haven’t experienced, it myself, so it can't be true. I may believe that man didn't land on the moon because I didn't see it or because I don't see the earth's curvature on the prairie, so the world must be flat.

The proliferation of information has muddied the waters. I can seemingly find a fact to prove my point from anywhere. Social media is also a culprit, as confirmation bias via algorithms reinforces what I like and presents seemingly supportive and affirming information back to me. When this happens, the polarity of what I like leads me to hate the other side, and the proliferation of hate has become the byproduct of it.

By sticking to our beliefs, we choose an easy way out of not thinking and challenging our thoughts and those of others. By choosing not to select one pole over another, our neutrality sets the stage for hate to grow.

In the age of inclusion, there is a paradox when we allow ourselves to fall into one camp or another. We do not include others' views when we entrench on one side. We become exclusionary, which reinforces hate.

For our world to flourish, we need to address this polarity. To address it, we need to open ourselves up to possibility. We must move from judgement to exploration. We must remember that there are always two sides to an argument, and there is never only one cause for an event.?

We also need to stop listening to those who would divide us and, instead, find those who will heal us by showing us that there are other ways to see things. This is done by questioning and challenging what we see daily and asking, "How else might this be seen?" It requires moving from the emotional state to the cognitive state.

This shift in thinking takes work, but the cost of locking into a polarity will be far more costly than the effort to see other ways. Yes, you won't get likes on social media for taking a contrarian or middle-road view, but you will have lived a better life.

So, try it: explore the contrarian view of your own beliefs and see if that helps you better understand others.