The Times of Israel published my new article “It’s a Draw! Hash It Out!”
Whether Trump or Biden end up in the White House, neither will be the president of the United States. He will be the president of only the Americans who elected him. A president who is one hundred percent accepted by half the country, and one hundred percent rejected by the other half, cannot be regarded as POTUS. It leaves the American people with two options: hash it out or fight it out. I hope they choose the former.
America is a highly developed country, especially when it comes to politics. As with any developed nation, its people are very opinionated. And the more opinionated they become, the harder it is for them to budge from their opinions. They become less tolerant and more arrogant, less attentive and more assertive, until finally, the whole country explodes in riots, violence, and civil war ensues.
This is the natural way, and countries should watch carefully what is happening in America because it will also happen to them. It’s the natural evolution of human nature.
Despite the morose prognosis, humans have more than human nature going for them; they’ve got intellect. When a situation becomes an evident impasse, look for a bypass. There is no reason things should end in violence if we already see that this is where we’re going; we can reroute.
There is a lot of truth in Albert Einstein’s famous adage, “The problems we are dealing with cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” But there is more to it than that; we, that is our nature, created them so as to rise to a higher level.
Consider this: If everything had been alright while we were living in caves, would we ever have come out of them? If everything we did then succeeded, would we ever develop new tactics or tools to improve our lives and make them easier? Life keeps posing problems now as it always has, and always for the same purpose—to drive us forward, impel us to evolve. And today, evolution centers mainly on society.
Indeed, our society is lame. Human relations everywhere are plagued with suspicion, animosity, alienation, and hatred. Do we like feeling this way toward each other? If we did, we wouldn’t see the rates of depression, substance abuse, violence, homicide and suicide that we are seeing. We have become a society of sad, depressed, scared, and mainly hopeless people, and it’s all because there is a demon inside of us that makes us hate each other.
But it’s not a demon; it is human nature, the same engine that has developed us throughout the ages. Previously, it made us feel uncomfortable physically so we would develop easier and ways to live. Now it makes us feel uncomfortable emotionally so we will develop easier ways to live with one another.
This is why the Left and Right will never agree. Republicans will always think that Democrats are dead wrong, and Democrats will think the same about Republicans. But without the tension, there will be no impetus for growth, no realization that we must somehow establish unity or we will kill each other.
There is a funny thing about unsolvable conflicts. When you finally manage to reconcile, you often feel closer than before the conflict broke out. Moreover, you often realize that the problem doesn’t exist anymore even though you never touched it, but only focused on connecting with the other party. If it ever happened to you that you fought with your partner and after you made up you couldn’t remember what you fought about, then you know what I mean.
But it isn’t only on the personal level. The same idea is true for social, national, and international conflicts. When you work on unity, the problems aren’t solved, they disappear since they were only there as catalysts for connection.
America has been the leader of the free world since pretty much the end of World War II. Now it’s in a crisis that can send it soaring or sink it down. If Americans want, they can be the trailblazers they have always been and lead the whole world to a new era, where problems are promoters of connection, and conflicts are opportunities for deep concord. It’s been a political draw in America since 2016; it’s time to hash it out and rise together to a new level of solidarity and cohesion, and pave the trail away from friction and toward real and lasting peace.
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