I used to think that I had no real political or ideological opinions. The more time I spend with myself, though, the more I realize that this is not the case. Recently, I’ve begun to think that maybe, just maybe, I thought that I had no opinions, because they were simply not as strong as the opinions as the people around me. People who are opinionated should feel some sort of emotion about the opinions, right? But whenever something happens in my country, such as a presidential election, I didn’t seem to really have any opinions about it, except to be annoyed at how much fighting and arguing was going on as a result of this election.

Even more recently, I’ve begun to fine-tune my perspective on myself: it’ isn’t that my opinions on politics and ideologies aren’t as strong as the people around me, it’s simply that they’re a bit out of phase. My opinions are definitely held as strongly as those around me. It isn’t that I don’t care, it’s just that I care differently. I’ve always appreciated knowledge above all, and I love puzzles, logic, and math. I love getting to the bottom of things (my favorite book genre as a kid was Mystery), and I get annoyed at people who don’t understand what they’re talking about, specifically if they act like they do. With all of this in mind, in hindsight, it doesn’t surprise me at all for me to realize that my opinions considering politics and ideology are not actually about the politics or the ideologies themselves, but about people’s belief systems regarding these politics and ideologies.

There’s a wonderful book I started reading forever ago titled The Wisdom of Insecurity, by famed philosopher Alan Watts. Thanks to my rampant and undiagnosed ADHD, I never actually finished this very short book, but I did get far enough to find something that really struck a chord with me. About a third of the way through the book, Alan Watts declares that, even though he is a staunch atheist, he is attempting to write this particular book in an unbiased way, so that the philosophy he is imparting can be deliberated easily by both atheistic and religious peoples. To quote:

“Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.”

Again, it should be of no surprise to me that this registers well with how I think. I love science, and the scientific method. At a base level, science is all about wanting to be proven wrong: you posit a hypothesis, and then you attempt to disprove it. With the scientific method, you are not proven right through trial, you are simply not proven wrong through trial. With science, there are very few mathematically or scientifically “proven” theories – hence why they are forever called “theories.” (I’ll note that, as a young religious zealot, I would commonly use that against science. I would say things like “It’s the Theory of Evolution. If it’s correct, why is it a theory? I would then be summarily well-argued against, and I would respond with “nuh uh” *sticks out tongue, effectively. Maybe it’s my background as someone entirely stuck within an echo chamber – homeschooled, Christian, Young Earth Creationist – that developed my dislike for people who do not know what they believe. Anyway.)

So, knowing myself, as someone who always knew they liked science – even as a young earth creationist Christian, believe it or not – and as someone who always appreciated knowledge above all else, it should come as no surprise to me that that quote from Alan Watts resonates so deeply within me. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In the end, it’s about believing what you believe, not because you were told to believe it, or because you wish for it to be true, but because you know it to be true. In this case, I say the word “know” but I mean “theorize,” to use the term from the Scientific Method.

In my mind, there is no trait more desirable than the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and there is no act more admirable than to analyze one’s findings, find it to be against one’s current beliefs, and to alter said belief to fit the truth.

That last step is the hardest. It is the path I see least taken, and that makes me incredibly, deeply sad.

So how does this relate to politics? If that isn’t clear then let me help: politics, in my mind, has become a bit of a religion, at least in American culture. It has its god-like figureheads, it has wars fought in His or Her name (albeit, most of which take place online using text) and it even seems to have prophets at this point. To me, there isn’t a lot of distinction between strongly organized religion, cult mentality, and our current game of Red V. Blue. In the same way that I have a hard time talking to my very Christian family about my beliefs, listed here, I have a very hard time talking about my very political spouse about, again, my beliefs, listed here. It’s bad enough that I won’t even mention which side of the political spectrum my wife is on, for fear of sounding too much like I take an opposing side.

But that is sort of my point – to both sides, I’m on the wrong side. To someone on the left, my stance is too uncaring and conservative. To someone on the right, my stance is too humanistic and liberal. I cannot win. And it does not help that, like I said before, my emotional stance is somewhat phase-shifted from everyone else, so to them, I appear not only to be on the wrong side, but as if I couldn’t even care to hold that belief strongly either. But while one or both sides are busy arguing about the bad deeds of the other side, my stance is not that either side is good or bad, but moreso that they are good and bad, and why are we fighting, and can we please just sit and actually discuss this like adults? The issue I have with politics, as they stand, is the blindness that people in my life and everywhere I look seem to have for their side’s wrongdoings. It’s very easy to point at the other side and say things like “look, they want to kill unborn children,” or “look, they’re holding immigrant children in cages.” It’s very difficult, however, to have someone of the opposite team point at your team and say “it’s not okay to stop someone from cohabitating with another someone they love, how would you feel if someone stopped you from loving someone you love?” or “regardless of immigration ideology, it’s not okay to tear families apart and criminalize someone for wanting a better life for their children.” The most blatant difference that I can see between these two sets of opinions is that the first set is easy to deal with (“Wow, they are all horrible people and I hate them!”) while the second set requires actual nuanced introspection into your own ideology (“Thinking of the other team as human makes me uncomfortable.”). Anger, sadness, and happiness are easy emotions to feel, and it feels good to feel these feelings, especially when you feel them with others. When everyone feels angry about something, it builds camaradarie. Nuanced introspection is hard, and runs the risk of one having to face the fact that the opposing team is just like them.

Historically, we don’t like facing the fact that our opposing team is just like us. Just look at actual wars in the past, especially World War I and II. A lot of rifles had bayonettes. It makes for good stabbing of your opponent, so you can kill them up close and see them die. Wait a minute, is that a good thing? No, it turns out bayonettes were not used very often. Believe it or not, soldiers preferred to shoot their enemies from a distance, where they could internally justify it as “shooting a little grey blur” instead of “stabbing Stefan from Munich.” During World War II, it seemed like every faction was spreading anti-opposing-faction propoganda in an attempt to dehumanize the opposing side. If you are a father, killing a fellow father is going to be hard, but deciding to kill a blood thirsty soviet militiaman who wants nothing more than to kill, rape, and eat your children (in that order, if you’re lucky) is probably one of the easiest choices you can make that day. To help counteract the negative sides of this point I’m making, we can find at least one positive point by looking at the short truce between German and British soldiers during Christmas of 1914, during World War I, when the soldiers put down their guns and pick up Christmas trees, musical instruments, and soccer balls. A few days after the merriment, they were once again reluctantly killing each other.

To my eyes, there’s not a whole lot of difference between that and our current state of affairs. I think that, deep down, people don’t really want to attack others, verbally, online. Or maybe they do, maybe we have learned to enjoy it, since we don’t actually have the issue of seeing someone’s hurt emotions in person and having to strategically kill our empathy. Online, we don’t need empathy. That line of text isn’t a human. Bang. Heck, it’s probably just a bot. Bang, bang.

In the same way, though, that I think (hope) that people don’t really want to intrude on others, they also especially don’t like having their opinions trampled. This makes sense, though if you think about it simply as “everyone wants to be heard.” Not everyone wants to be rich, or well read, or important, but everyone wants to be heard. It’s a human need to be recognized and secure. It’s such a base human need, that a human newborn will die if left without any secure attachment (while still being fed).

So if this is a need that we all share, then why do we fight so much against giving each other that need? Consider this experiment that I’m coming up with off the top of my head. Have yourself and several friends sit around in a circle. Ask them all to think of “apple.” Then, have them all describe what that means to them. It should not surprise you to find out that each and every person in that circle has a different perspective. Maybe one person sees a large red apple with a worm sticking out of it, like a cartoon. Maybe another sees a realistic green apple. Maybe someone else just pictures the word “apple.” Whatever the case, everyone can likely agree that, while everyone’s perspectives are different, nobody is inherently wrong.

Now try this. Have everyone think of “orange.” Have them tell you what they see. Maybe someone sees a fruit, maybe another person sees a color. Now you describe your perspective of orange: a tall tower with rotating fan blades that spin in the wind and pump water. Hopefully, someone will counter you: that is not an orange, that is a windmill. And they’ll be right.

What is the difference here? Where does one’s difference of perspective stop being acceptable to a group? In my mind, the line is crossed once it stops being true. All of the aforementioned perspectives on apples were true in some way. Calling a windmill an orange is very much not true, unless maybe you thought of an orange windmill. Even in that case, people would agree that it’s a bit of a stretch. Maybe someone would call you out on being wrong and attempt to educate you on their perspective of an orange. Maybe people wouldn’t speak up, but they would definitely look at you like you’re crazy. So clearly, we have a need a society to agree that, whatever our perspective, it needs to be true.

Now here’s a fun, lighthearted, third thought experiment: “when does a fetus become a human?” Madness ensues. The question is too high of stakes. Not only do people’s opinions vary wildly, but many of them are based on pure emotions as opposed to any scientific method, and even the opinions based on scientific method become emotional because others won’t listen to the scientific method and continue to base their opinions on emotions even when you’ve tried to show them that they shouldn’t. And it isn’t okay to even have different opinions in the first place, because, unlike two people with different images of apples in their heads, with a fetus conundrum, one person might actually believe the other one to be endorsing murder and that is not okay.

So here we are now, with different, very strongly held opinions. Even not holding an opinion is a strong opinion (“How could you not side with me, when that person is clearly wrong?”). And what’s worse, our opinions are so strongly tied to our personal emotions on the matter, that as soon as someone disagrees, it’s now a personal matter: “if you were actually listening to how I feel, you would change your opinion.” If you think this way, please stop. You’re only hurting yourself (and whomever you are talking to). I can steadfastly say that this reason, this hypothetical quote I just wrote, is the reason I do not like to talk about politics.

Add into the mix that most of the internet is bots or botfarms, and you’ve got yourself a real hum-dinger of a situation. How do you even begin to approach discussing a controversial topic with someone if you can’t convince them that a large portion of their team is made up of bad actors with bad intentions, and even worse, that your team isn’t? Heck, try being in the middle with me, where you have to try to convince both sides that both sides are equally bad. Fortunately (?) for me, my desire to not argue is stronger than my desire to help people “see the light.” So I just smile and wave, and say things in conversation that is vaguely in line with whatever emotional ideology the person I’m with is spewing. To me, it’s more important that the person gets their base need of feeling heard. Once that’s met, maybe then we can start actually talking.

I still haven’t figured out if I have a responsibility to convince you of my own ideology or not, and at the end of the day, that’s all this is: my own perspective, which I feel strongly about. If you feel differently, I ask that you at the very least sit with yourself and try to figure out why you disagree, and then we can start from there. It could very well be that I’m totally off base.

But I strongly doubt it.