Why We Should Discuss Politics and Religion at the Dinner Table
Why We Should Discuss Politics and Religion at the Dinner Table
Stop canceling people and start promoting varying ideas
The School of Athens by Raphael is one of my personal all-time favorite art pieces.
It depicts a time when people had a love for wisdom, also known as philosophy (the word “philosophy” comes from the Greek “Philosophia” which literally translates to “love of wisdom”).
Wisdom is something that only comes from difficult discussions, failures, trying new things, and talking to people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives than your own.
Nowadays, we have all the KNOWLEDGE of the world at our fingertips. Quite literally actually. Think about it - You can pull out the very smartphone or laptop you are reading this from, from anywhere in the world, and look up facts on any topic known to mankind. We have all of this knowledge, but very little wisdom.
I believe it is because most people in our society take the easy path. It is much easier to quickly look up a topic or listen to someone else speak on a topic and mold our opinion to match theirs because that takes less effort than actually going through the process of learning ourselves. It also doesn’t require us to look in the mirror to really discover how we feel towards any specific thing. Instead, we look to what is popular at the time or what the “influencers” are doing so that they can tell us what to think.
We do this over and over again, with as many topics as we can, so that we feel like we are contributing to broader discussions that are occurring in 15-minute news cycles on social media. We do this so that we can virtue signal every chance that we get and show the world that we are good people too by falling in line with what everyone else is doing.
This surface-level knowledge and virtue signaling doesn’t make anything in the world better - in fact, it makes things worse. As the old saying goes, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
So why do we do this?
Being Married To Your Ideas
Everyone is married to their ideas nowadays - I’m not sure why this is but my best guess is that we are filled with so much pride that we can’t possibly admit that we were wrong about our thoughts on a topic. My other theory and this is more likely, is that we spend so much of our time building up and curating these fake personas of ourselves on social media in an attempt to fit it and mold ourselves into who we think the world wants us to be.
If you go to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or any other social media, what you will find is parrots - parrots in their echo chambers of people they follow who all think the same things they do. Then, they ONLY follow more of those people and when they post something agreeable to their tribe of parrots, they receive the positive reinforcement that what they’re doing is righteous. This has a compounding effect and before you know it, you are so deep into sniffing your own (and your echo chambers’) farts that you lose the thinking that “hey, maybe I should question the things that I read and hear”.
Think about that for a second - Do all your friends have the same thoughts on politics and religion as you do? If they do, you aren’t growing and you should probably get new friends, or at least add some that will challenge you.
I also think this happens because of their emotional fragility. It seems more and more that people have not been taught to accept “no” or “you’re wrong” as a response - Maybe this is the outcome of the “everyone gets a trophy” and being told we’re all special generation - Whatever it is, people really can NOT handle adversity or hearing things that they don’t want to hear, even if they are true. In fact, telling someone with emotional fragility something they don’t want to hear most often results in them retreating into their echo chamber to be reassured they are right by their particular parrot tribe.
It is the mark of a mature adult to believe one thing and if/when presented with information to the contrary to step up and admit “I never saw it like that”, “I’ve been wrong about this, and my views have changed” or simply, “I was wrong”. Whatever the reason, whether it’s pride or the fear of cognitive dissonance, or the fear have having to adjust the persona you’ve created in front of your echo chamber - too often, we are married to our ideas.
Being married to your ideas is central to why our society lives in rabid “tribes” and we try to stamp out any other “tribe” that has opposing ideas. This can be related to politics, race, religion, to even the food people eat!
A Decline of Purpose In Our Lives
Why do we need these tribes to begin with? Why do we need approval from thousands of people we don’t know? I attribute this to a loss of purpose in the lives of our youth. Suicide is on the rise among young people, and we have more nihilism and negative mindsets than ever before. This leads to people retreating to the perceived safety of “the group”. “The group”, or “group identity”, is insidious - Most often it is either race, religion, class, or political leanings. When we enter into a “group identity”, we are taught one of two things.
The “others” seek to oppress you
The “others” seek to enslave you
The “others” seek to kill you
Group Identities literally have our communities, our countries, and our world at war with each other.
How do we solve this?
Let’s Discuss Politics at the Dinner Table
I think at most family gatherings, it’s common table manners to not bring up politics, religion, race, or class at the dinner table… Or at work… Or at school… Or when among friends, or literally anytime where it would actually be important. I say the hell with that!
We NEED to discuss these topics more often. I believe the reason we have so many issues is that the very topics that people have differing opinions on, we are told not to talk about. How are we ever to understand another person if they are told not to talk about their viewpoints? This leads to misunderstandings over another person’s race, religion, politics, etc. And people ALWAYS fear what they don’t understand.
As Master Yoda once said, “fear is the path to the dark side … fear leads to anger … anger leads to hate … hate leads to suffering”. Fear of others has led to all the world’s suffering.
Yes it could be uncomfortable - But the world isn’t meant to be a comfortable space and the sooner we accept that fact, the sooner we can get on about solving our issues.
Seek out people and spaces where you can speak freely. Spaces where ANY (yes ANY, read that again if you need to) idea can be presented and discussed. Let REASON and PHILOSOPHY guide your discussion. If your position is truly righteous, you can prove this through reason.
Do this with good intentions, not with the intention to “cancel” somebody. Attempting to silence others’ beliefs and ideas leads to more harm than good - if anything, it’s more dangerous to silence an idea than to let it spread. A very stupid idea will put itself out because if it is truly foolish, natural selection will run its course. The attempts to silence ideas further divide people into their echo chambers where they become emboldened by others who think like them. This is the tinder to a potential wildfire.
Take action: Make it a point to have a conversation with someone of a different viewpoint (in person). Seek to LEARN their perspective and SHARE your own, not to silence and cancel. Use questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation to achieve your goals and seek others who can do the same.
The pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit worth undertaking. Let’s discuss politics and religion at the dinner table.
Until next time…
Sebastian