Condemn, Don't Hate

I am a progressive person. I do love a good debate with someone who has opposing views, I do like being challenged, I also do have some close friends that I don’t really see eye to eye with on a lot of issues. But despite it all, most of my inner circle has been filled with other progressives for years. And this has made me notice a huge flaw that I often see among people like us– the immediate assumption of negative intent at the smallest disagreement. The second someone disagrees with our opinion, we stop empathizing with them. We start viewing them as some kind of an irredeemable monster. We become convinced that this person must be operating from a place of maliciousness. 

Never attribute to malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection of ignorance. (Hanlon’s Razor)

I understand politics is a serious matter. An opinion isn’t just an opinion when each citizen has the right to make decisions based on those very opinions on who will run the country. This has an impact on each one of us. But I think we get so lost in this idea of politics being serious that we forget the fact that we cannot simplify something as complex the human psyche or morality into something as black and white as good or evil. Attempting to do so can lead to major blunders. I think this can explain a lot of what we are seeing now. People’s identities get fused with their “side” which leads to constant back and forth bickering, cancelation of people and even killing, but never any real problem solving. 

A person might vote for a specific individual, pick the perpetrator’s side in a war or even just be a bigot for various reasons. They could:

• Lack knowledge

• Be brainwashed by peers, family, social and news media

• Be influenced by their own negative experiences

• Lack context

• Be suffering from various kinds of biases

None of this means that these individuals’ opinions and actions don’t cause real harm to vulnerable populations. Of course they do and they are indeed complicit, at least indirectly. As I mentioned before, politics is deeply ingrained in everything. It is more serious than most people realize. Democracy is fragile and if we get to psychoanalyzing everyone, keep excusing people with harmful views, and never hold anyone accountable, it can do major damage. When I initially came across people whom I fundamentally disagreed with on major topics, I was left deeply confused. On one hand, I knew enough about politics to know that their beliefs were harmful and had the potential to cause damage. But on the other, I knew enough about psychology to know that in most cases, people like them aren’t evil. Just misguided or unaware. I wanted a balance where I could remain politically and morally responsible, while also being able to act in line with what I knew about my fellow human beings. That’s when I realized that condemnation and empathy can go hand in hand.

Condemning only means that you actively acknowledge and assertively state that someone’s opinion is wrong or harmful so that more people do not get influenced by similar ideas. It doesn’t have to mean lacking empathy, giving up hope on people with opposing views, or viewing them as evil. It doesn’t have to go beyond that. Hatred is both a waste of your own energy as well as incredibly counter-productive. A progressive creates positive change not by berating individuals with different views than them, they do so by being patient and educating them. After all, why would anyone want to listen to someone that doesn’t show them basic respect or views them negatively? If anything, it will only increase their outgroup bias and reinstate the belief that their views are right. Hence, condemnation without hate is the only way to remain reduce damage while also being morally or politically responsible. In this way you get to call out as well as correct people instead of push them further into the same epistemic bubbles.