My grandpa once told me I should never decide out of anger because “anger is a bad adviser.”
These days I feel like I am living in two worlds: The real world with mostly friendly people around me, with smiles and nice words of concern. Then I enter Twitter, and all I see is malice and anger. A significant rift is going through the world it seems. It’s far beyond just America. I can’t even describe the sides because I feel I am on neither.
The most straightforward description I can think of is that one side, I call them “The Utopians” assume that people are always good and nothing is a concern, while the other site “The Dystopians” assume that everyone is evil and wants to destroy everything that they consider good.
Don’t try to match these to current political movements. It won’t work because they seem to swap sites depending on the issue. Just compare immigration vs. gun control. There is a lot of anger between the two sites at any given time.
My very personal opinion is that we should always judge by what is the best for the majority of people. Depending on the question that majority can extend to include the global community. For example regarding topics of environmental protection.
And I admit that it is often not easy to find out what the best solution is. In many cases, we could only say what option is better if we had a good comparison between the outcomes of both options. A luxury that we just don’t have.
We also rarely have all facts needed to make good decisions. But that has rarely kept the masses from having strong opinions.
And so it’s no wonder when people are so adamant in their views even when (or maybe just because) they have only partial or made up facts. Most troubling for me is that no one ever gives their own sources even half the scrutiny they apply to the other site’s sources.
As I wrote earlier, I firmly believe that more than 99.99% of people only mean well and want to live their lives in peace. I think that is a great place to start any discussion.