“The Deepening Rift Between Left And Right Is Here to Stay, And So It Should” (Medium)

 Medium published my new article “The Deepening Rift between Left and Right Is Here to Stay, and so It Should”

We need to realize that the deepening rift between Left and Right is here to stay, and grow. The sooner we do, the better our chances of dealing with it correctly, before it explodes into an all-out war.

People are different. There are different genders, races, colors, and body structures. These are biological differences that cannot be changed without gross interference with nature, and even then with questionable results.

We must also remember that we are dependent on each other, and without seeing that all of us are healthy and contributing our share to the well-being of humanity, we, too, will have no future.

What we are less aware of is the fact that our views, faiths, and the way we think are also, to a great extent, dictated by nature. As such, they are often unchangeable. When was the last time someone managed to totally reverse your opinion about something that really mattered to you? When was the last time you managed to do this with someone else? Leaning left or leaning right is carved within us almost as deeply as the color of our skin. That is not to say that there is no way to change one’s mind through brainwashing or some aggressive reeducation program, or even by planting someone in a totally new environment, but if we’re speaking about changing the views of millions of people simply by appealing to their reason, it’ll never work. Their reason works differently, as do their minds, and they will never agree.

Think of your own body. Within you, there are organs that function very differently from one another. They share the same DNA, but if you put a cell from the heart in the liver, it wouldn’t become a liver cell; it would probably die. Even though it’s created from the same hereditary material, its nature and mode of work are so different that it wouldn’t be able to survive in any environment outside the heart, where it belongs.

Now think of your body without any of its organs. How would it survive without even one of them? If you pulled out even one organ, you would kill or seriously maim yourself. Every organ, however small or insignificant, is vital for our well-being and often our survival. We wouldn’t want the pancreas, for instance, to be like the heart since we would not have a pancreas and would have one heart too many.

Human society is just like our body, but on a macro level. Take out even one of its organs and you have maimed the entire system. The rifts we see between people are not the problem; they only point to people being more aware of their function in society, which is actually good. The problem is that we cannot work as a single system the way our body works with all its organs. We aren’t aware of our interdependence in society the way we are aware of the interdependence of our organs on each other.

Dealing with the rifts between us correctly means seeing the big picture — that everyone is vital, everyone contributes, and humanity will not be what it is without each and every one of us. In the arguments between us, we must never forget that we are all one entity. It’s fine to disagree; it helps us grow, understand ourselves and others better, and do our duty for humanity more successfully. But we must also remember that we are dependent on each other, and without seeing that all of us are healthy and contributing our share to the well-being of humanity, we, too, will have no future.