It bothers me that we Americans don’t feel comfortable discussing things that we disagree about. Politics, religion, homosexuality, abortion, the list goes on and on. How can we expect our government to work in a bipartisan manner when our society as a whole avoids discussing the “issues”? We are split, the Left and the Right, the believers and nonbelievers, the Gay the Straight and on goes that list. It’s my opinion that it’s okay to be anywhere on all of those continuums. They ARE all ranges, no one is totally one sexual orientation, no one believes ALL of what their political party espouses, etc. We fall on a continuum. I am sure that no matter how different you are from another, the two of you believe the same about something. People tend to steer toward like minded people because they support and validate their beliefs. I teach REBT, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. One of the first things I say to my clients is that so many say that they don’t want to be like their parents when in fact they hold the same beliefs as their parents. A racist probably has a racist parent. A Republican was most likely raised by at least one Republican. Why? We learn and internalize our beliefs and views by the age of seven by copying our parents’ behavior. It’s really simple. How many people really know why they believe what they do? I asked the homophobic people why they believe it’s wrong for the same gender to love each other. Many times they will say, “I was raised that was or I don’t know, it’s just wrong”.
My beef about it all? We have turned into a split and adversarial society. One side AGAINST the other. I have good friends who have very different views on some issues. They don’t and won’t discuss those things however. It bothers me that we have to avoid issues because we disagree. It’s okay to disagree. You may be wrong, I may be wrong about an issue and perhaps discussion would shift one of us. What has happened is that we don’t discuss disagreeable issues and those beliefs become firmly entrenched. Then we are not even open to consider that we may be wrong. Being open to discussion, even about things you disagree about is not something our culture teaches us. After all, we are Capitalists and competition is the key to success? Right? No…. Things will not improve until we can be open to discussion of all issues without hate and retaliation.
