Purple River

This sketch is another example of the negative impacts of overinvestment in ideology. While ideologies bind us to a group that provides acceptance and a sense of belonging, they also blind us to other perspectives. They create a space where we are right and others are wrong.

In 1967, Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote:

From the place where we are right

Flowers will never grow

In the spring.

Our country is more divided than ever. From my point of view, both political sides claim to defend the truth; they simply define it differently. Conservatives tend to anchor truth in tradition, hierarchy, and order, while progressives ground it in equality, harm reduction, and inclusion. Each side sees itself as protecting something sacred, so censorship often looks justified from within its own moral logic. Look at the graph by Social Psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, in his book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, illustrating the difference in moral perspectives. 

Both sides are misrepresenting the other. Both sides present caricatures or straw men of the major issues. Both sides stand on moral or ideological high grounds, separated by a valley of humility and curiosity where true understanding can take place. Very few traverse here. Very few look at both mountain ranges simultaneously. Despite the shared bedrock of humanity, biology, and the evolutionary foundations that bind us, most sit on their mountain side, declaring superiority.

To face one another would require descent, vulnerability, and loss of certainty. Each side attempts to climb higher into the altitude until they suffocate. However, true change will occur when humans can meet in the valley and drink from the river of understanding. When blue and red flow purple.

Maybe we are all part mountain and part river: grounded in our beliefs, yet shaped by what passes through us. And perhaps the work isn’t to climb higher than the other side, but to listen to the current that runs between us.