Right and Wrong

Our willingness to speak out against things we don't like, rather than to speak up for things that we do like, is a symptom of a bigger cultural shift in the world in which we are living. 

You may have noticed that for all of our bravado, we actually have a very limited tolerance for diversity in our world today than we did even just a couple of generations ago. When I say "diversity," I'm not talking about gender or sexual diversity or racial diversity or educational or economic diversity. I'm talking about true diversity - the diversity of ideas. 

Simply put, you can't be on the "wrong" side of culture these days, whatever that culture happens to be in the region of the country you're located in. 

If you're left-leaning in a right-leaning region, you're wrong. If you like Coke in a region where they serve Pepsi, you're wrong. If you think they should still teach cursive writing in an area where they consider education more "progressive," you're wrong. If you're on Facebook in an Instagram culture, you're wrong. 

If you believe red candies are objectively the best in a group that prefers pink (and is willing to argue that pink is not even remotely a shade of red and therefore, doesn't count in the same taxonomy), you're wrong. (Okay, so just to be fair, my friends very clearly told me I was wrong, but they didn't seem to be judging me for it...too much.) 

The point is - our world is more black and white than it has ever been. We are less tolerant for shades of grey than we have ever been. We have very little patience for differences of opinion. In fact, we have almost completely given up on the idea that there is any such thing as an opinion...unless, of course, you're wrong, and then, we're willing to conceded that that's your "opinion," where we will use opinion as an opposition to fact. So there are facts - things that are absolutely completely true - and there are opinions - anything that disagrees with the facts. 

The problem is, of course, that facts aren't really facts. They are dominant opinions. They are the opinions held by those who feel like they have the power to hold the opinions, and then they use that power to try to escalate their opinions to fact, thus making anyone who disagrees with them not merely different with a different experience and a different perspective, but wrong. 

And of course, if someone is wrong, then it's only your duty to correct them and tell them how wrong they are. And, of course, we have completely lost our ability to do this in a civil manner - mostly because we know we are not dealing with actual facts, but with opinions - so we have devolved into hatred and condemnation, which is a reflection of the same use of power that we were just talking about. 

If it's power that makes our opinions into facts, then we must use power (force) to shut down other opinions so that they don't ever come close to looking like fact. 

Thus, we have it. Hatred and condemnation. To protect our fragile "facts" from being exposed for what they really are - opinion - and forcing us to live in a world where we disagree with one another, very earnestly, about very important things and where we would have to actually tolerate a real diversity of thought and experience and perspective. 

Are you seeing how we got here? Are you seeing how this whole dynamic shapes up?