Two weeks ago, I killed a rat. My entire family congratulated me for ridding the household of a pest’ and for ‘finally getting over my fear of rodents’. Sadly, I wasn’t as happy about it as they were. I felt bad, and finding out that she was pregnant didn’t help either. According to my parents, I’d done humanity a favor by killing a pest. However,to me, I’d just killed an innocent being who was just trying to fend for herself and feed her children. We couldn’t reach an agreement. It seemed as though there was no middle ground. This got me thinking about polarization.
Polarization is defined as the division into two extreme opposites. When dealing with facts and natural phenomena, it’s easy to classify things as such but human interactions are different. Not everything is black and white. Sometimes there is a gray area.
In a world where competition reigns supreme, seeing eye to eye on anything is near impossible. People find themselves in situations where they disagree with each other on an almost daily basis. However, it is rare to find conversations that end with one having learned from the other because both individuals are trying to prove they are better than the other. As such, they refuse to step into the gray area: compromise.
Because of this attitude, compromise is something that is being forgotten. People seem to forget that not everything is black and white. Sometimes these two colors mix and give us gray. The gray area is an area of understanding. It is an area where people from radically different cultures can meet to exchange their ideas without the fear of being judged or shot down. It is the place where we learn, grow and thrive rather than just survive. I’ll end by saying, discussion is always better than argument. In an argument, we’re trying to decide who is right but in a discussion, we’re deciding what is right.
Amen Getahun