You May Be Wrong but You May Be Right!

This past Tuesday were the midterm elections in the US. It was difficult to miss with all the signs, ads, and people yelling about it everywhere. You couldn’t take a piss without seeing something about voting or the elections.

Now, I don’t care whether you voted or not or your political party. It’s not what I’ll be discussing here. The point here is to talk about something, I believe, is the root cause of many of our problems in the US right now. The issue is empathy.

America has an empathy problem. As a country, we pride ourselves on being superior to other countries in the world. It’s been like this for decades. When an individual has a superiority complex it’s difficult for them to have empathy for other “lesser” people. They are apathetic to other people’s plights and focus on a “me first” mentality.

“Cool story, Joe, but what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?” First, you said it wrong. It’s “Jina!” Second, I’ll be happy to explain. Much of what is focused on during election years revolves around hot-button topics: healthcare, gun control, global warming, technology, etc. You name it and we’ll find a way to fight about it. The problem is these fights usually don’t lead to any productive resolutions. Two people argue about a particular topic until they are blue in the face and go home. Nothing was solved. Nothing productive happens. Just two people pissing in the wind.

We are emotional creatures and many times we will ignore the facts right in front of us for what we chose to believe. The smarter we are and the more we care about a topic the more likely we are to seek out information backing our point of view. The more information we have to support our side of an issue, the more we dig in. We don’t want to hear differing points of view because we KNOW we are right. If we’re right, everyone with differing opinions must be wrong.

In the book Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, they dedicated an entire chapter towards making persuasive arguments. One of my favorite points they make is acknowledging the others point of view. Even though the other person’s opinion is different doesn’t mean there isn’t any value to their point of view. Listening, understanding, and accepting the other side of the issue is a big step in making a better argument.

To illustrate my point, I’m going to use a topic near and dear to my heart: Cheerleading as a sport. At some point in high school, I decided cheerleading was not a sport and shared it with others. The reason for this has been lost to time but needless to say, it didn’t make me popular with the cheerleaders of our school. Since high school, I continued to double down on this argument and for years enjoyed standing on my soapbox debating this topic. (Let me say, I consider cheerleading extremely athletic and couldn’t do half the things they can. Honestly, when I think about it, my beef isn’t with cheerleading at all, but any athletic activity which decides to call it a sport).

As I look back on the cheerleading hill I decided to die on, I realized something important. I had zero empathy for the cheerleaders at my school. I KNEW I was right and they were clearly wrong. Who cares if there are cheerleading competitions? The only reason to have competitions is because of the activity of cheerleading. No cheerleaders, no cheerleading competitions. Period!

Though it’s taken longer than I care to admit, I was verbally attacking these women. Whether I meant to or not, I was telling these women what they care about didn’t matter. Their skills and talents didn’t matter. They were wrong and I was right. They were dumb and I was smart. I didn’t give two shits about their “opinion” because I had truth on my side.

While this might seem like a silly example, this is something we tend to do others every day with bigger and more important topics. Issues with education, climate change, gun control, and health care aren’t going away any time soon. If we are not willing to look within ourselves to at least acknowledge the validity of our oppositions’ arguments, we won’t be able to make any progress towards real change. You can accept their positions have merit and not be a sellout.

Life is filled with shades of grey and almost no topic out there is completely black and white. So why do we treat life this way? Why not embrace the grey to work on making things better?

I want to leave you with this Ted Talk by Cassie Jaye called Meeting the Enemy. Enjoy!