How to escape the politics trap
By: Allison Camacho
Tags: Knowledge, Critical Thinking, Politics, Debate, Sociology

It’s often said that the biggest flaw among humanity’s relationships is intolerance; how one can’t seem to stand different, often polar opposite statements. Or, even worse, how one can’t wrap its head around the other’s ideas and therefore they don’t comprehend completely where that idea comes from.

Right there lies the biggest blind point in humanity that often ends up in human alienation and dissonance: ignoring the fact that we function as environmental beings. Our brain is designed to work according to our environment, to what we grew up around. Therefore every single opinion we have is inherently way more than just an opinion; it’s a result of our experience in life. This can help us to feel more close towards each other because at the end of the day, we can all relate to when we were all children once, whose experiences have all been condensed into different opinions.

Now, it is important to differentiate between respecting each others opinion to respecting each other. It is a lie to think every opinion is valid; if you consider racism, homophobia, misogyny or basically every single “opinion” that attacks a group’s free will or, to be more precise, attacks a group without a reason other than internalized hatred. However this should not stop us from reminding ourselves that their statements are a representation of a small or big part of our society, therefore we should aim to understand its roots and provide them arguments, evidence and specially meaning behind our statements.

Resistance and change always come together as a bundle, it is a natural response after all. That should motivate us even more to participate in debates, because when we take part in one we aren’t just learning about different ideas but learning about each others experience in life and our responses to those experiences that now have built who we are. We need to understand that our personalities are completely moldeable at all times, society basically shapes us. This means that we can “deconstruct” and build new knowledge based on what we’ve learned because no one is born knowing everything.

This is how politics have managed to show our true colors, they use our insecurities that come from our traumatic experiences, which explains why we are so passionate about it, to then make us feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and make us advocates to provide a solution to our insecurities. This may vary, it could go from providing minorities a safe public space to express who they are which is basically putting end to the social torture they have been exposed to due to social prejudices. And it could go as far as “putting and end to crime” by reinforcing immigration policies that only perpetuating the immigrant stigma that is rooted in racism. As you can see, this could be bad or good, however once again they portray how our society is conformed and it provides us the needed information to actually understand it.

At first glance it may seem imposible to empathize with these statements, but it is important to remember that what we know was once taught to us and therefore we shall exchange the lessons we’ve learned to categorize them in valuable lessons and gas-lighted lessons (basically lessons that are not based on facts but opinions). This will lead us to the conclusion that escaping the politics trap is all about having an appetite for knowledge, accepting that we don’t know it all as individuals and that taking a look at society will always shift our opinions.