Why We Need the "Other Side"

You’d have to be willfully blind not to notice that people are separating more and more in our society, drawn ever more to the extreme left or right.  We’re losing focus on the fact that there are two sides to most arguments and that even the side we haven't chosen tends to have valid points to make. 

In the past, people tried to squash dissent by eliminating the dissenters, both real and imagined.  It doesn’t matter how far back in time you look:

“You and your people are happily independent, but according to ancient doctrine your land should be ours, so we’re going to annex you.”

“These Jews are the source of all of our problems.  Let’s eradicate them.” 

“I think the world would be a better place if everyone did things my way, so I’m going to conquer it all.”

“This hairy preacher says there’s only one god, and - get this - that it’s his father.  This is dangerous since everybody knows there are many gods for many things.  He and his followers must go.”

“Mrs. Caveman looks funny at Grog, Me smash Grog with club.”

I’m as guilty of this as everyone else.  We often forget that people have always had their differences - this isn’t some new phenomenon.  

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We tend to view the differences of the present - at whatever point in time that happens to be - as being comparatively worse than those that preceded them.  This is hubris, of course.  Besides ignoring the degrees to which life in general has improved over time, it also presumes that contemporary people are more intelligent, observant, and enlightened than their ancestors.  

People back then just couldn’t understand…

This - along with the persistence of human nature’s innate attraction to conflict - is why, despite the evolution of learning, we continue to repeat the same mistakes generation over generation.  We still think if only everyone saw things my way, the world would be a better place.

This concept loses sight of the universal need for balance since too much of anything is never beneficial to anyone.  Everyone picks a team to root for and forgets that there are living, breathing people on the other team.  We have mostly lost the ability to listen to what the other side is saying.

It doesn’t make you a fence-sitter to contemplate opposing points of view; it makes you rational.  You might be swayed, or you might continue to disagree, but you will be drawing those conclusions based upon more, not less, information.  How can that be bad?

We also conclude - falsely - that getting our way would result in some sort of utopia.  But such extremism, once again, ignores human nature.  We need that balance to keep us in check.  Without fail, every time one side develops too much power, they forget their original goals (which have already been achieved) and reset the bar even further.  Nothing is ever good enough.

We see this with Republicans.  I’ve generally been a DeSantis supporter and an admirer of how Florida has run itself in recent years.  Nobody’s perfect, but in general, the state is well governed and has flourished.  

But now that Republicans have established a stronghold, they’re moving the chains.  There’s a push for new bills that would hamper the free press with overreaching mandates to excessively punish any falsehoods, even from anonymous sources, which deprives the public of access and, subsequently, from reaching their own conclusions.  

Should we strive to hold our news sources accountable for providing accurate information?  Sure, by spreading the word about media bias and unsubscribing from outlets that are flippant about the truth.  But limiting speech is not the way.  Legislating ways to stifle our opponents can only come back to haunt us when the tables eventually turn.

We see this with Democrats too.  Every virtuous civil rights victory has not been followed by a proud afterglow, but with a new metric that suggests we’re worse off than we were before.  It wasn’t enough that we achieved black equality, now we have to vilify whites for being white.  It wasn’t enough that we achieved gay rights, now we have to ignore biology.  It wasn’t enough that we provided safe haven for foreign asylum seekers, now we should let everyone in and provide free food, shelter, and medical care for them as well.

Should we continue to strive for improvement?  Sure, by spreading the word about how the revamping of our laws has made life better for most Americans.  But divisive, over-the-top activism is not the way.  Alienation and unification cannot coexist.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  When human beings always get their way, they become spoiled children who feel entitled to it and will throw similar tantrums when they do not.  It’s why the brilliant Founding Fathers built as many checks and balances into their new system as they could think of, and why Washington rejected a third term at the height of his popularity.  They understood human nature, even as it applied to themselves.  

We can argue with the other side, but we need to recognize its importance as well.

Zephareth Ledbetter is the author of “A White Man’s Perspectives on Race and Racism”, available as an ebook at smashwords.com/books/view/1184004, and can be reached on Facebook and Twitter

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.