Cut It Out!

Just because you disagree with me does not make you stupid or heard-hearted or uninformed, or even wrong.

Just because I disagree with you does not make me stupid or heard-hearted or uninformed or wrong either.

Because you are across the aisle from me doesn't make you bad.

Please remember the same is true for me when you see my face on the 'other side'.

I don't know if, in the United States, we have ever known how to disagree.  But if we did, we have forgotten what we knew. 

We in these United States could stand to learn some things from other cultures:

(1)  If we're going to be insulting, we could be more creative, like the British.  Or maybe we just need better accents (we Americans are quite smitten with all the speech patterns of the UK - I know - the Irish aren't British and the Scots don't want to be, but you take my light-hearted point, I hope).

(2)  Eastern cultures could teach us to have greater respect for the other simply because they are the other.

(3)  Iraqi culture could teach us that the freedom of speech is not the same as the freedom to insult, denigrate, and dismiss.

(4)  And we could learn from many cultures about the importance of social compact.  And how to argue.  And that arguing is not the end of anything, it's simply part of the on-going conversation; the world will not end simply because we disagree.  And how to listen to others, especially others whose views are different than our own, on the off chance that we might actually learn something.

In the Christian tradition, Paul writes in Galatians that followers of Christ are no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.  He is, of course, not speaking literally.  He is making the point that previous differences that divided no longer apply, as we are all one within the body of Christ.  

Yet within that one-ness, there is a great range of humanity and possibility.  And so an American gal like me can learn from a Taiwanese friend that negotiation can look like friendship and does not have to be a competitive sport; from Iraqi friends that even violently heated political arguments can end in laughter and the sharing of a meal; from Scots friends that teetotallers and those who enjoy a wee dram can dance together, each without judging the other.  

These are but a few of my own lessons; I wonder, what lessons have you learned from those so different than you that you can scarce understand them?

If only we would stop talking at each other, we might be able to actually listen to each other.  

What a wonderful thing that would be.