Opposing Views and the Human Condition

In our current society, we all place ourselves in groups.  Are you white or black or now Latin?  Are you male or female?  Are you LGBTQ or straight?  Are you a Republican or Democrat?  These categories, while informative about our beliefs, are superficial.  These categories separate and segregate us.  We believe that our group has the truth, while the other group doesn't.  As Jonathan Haidt, a noted social scientist says, we can hardly ever bring someone to our point of view.  When we speak to someone from the other group, we are speaking as a "press secretary."  A press secretary, by definition, is someone who tries to place his views in the best light, regardless of the truth. Only when we go to the profundity of what it is to be human can we actually see our commonality and perhaps see the truth in the other group's views.

What is it to be a human?  As Paul Zahl says, we truly know the human condition when we awake at 3 a.m. full of anxiety, fear, and stress.  This is what it means to be human.  We all want freedom from these negative emotions.  We all want to experience, instead, love, acceptance, and happiness.  When you realize this, you realize that that is what each group is seeking--love, acceptance, and happiness.  It's just that each group has a different view of how to get there.  Going to Jonathan Haidt again, he says that each group is the bearer of some truth, and it is the juxtaposition of the beliefs of the opposing groups that leads to the truth.  He is so right.  In order for me to be able to listen to, and hear from, the other group, I have to go to our common human experience--sinners, sufferers seeking love and grace.

In one of Jonathan Haidt's recent interviews, he said that he started as a liberal and has now come out of the closet as a centrist.  Well, I need to do the same.  For years, I have said that I was a Republican who could vote for the right Democrat.  Now, I'm coming out of the closet--I'm a centrist.  As we live longer and experience more fully the human condition (suffering, setbacks, etc.), we experience empathy and see more clearly the truth held by both political parties, the truth held by opposing groups, as well as their flaws.