We humans spend a lot of time wondering about why other people like certain things. Who could possibly like the color of that sweater? Why would someone buy that car? Does anyone actually classify those sounds as music? That person is the worst actor I’ve ever seen; that actress is the best. I’ve been guilty of thinking thoughts like these more times than I can count.
Every time I think a thought like that, I bring a bit of conflict into my life. I create abrasion, a resistance to the way that things are. I separate myself from others; I elevate my own opinion as being objectively right and classify other opinions as objectively wrong. I push back instead of pull toward.
Thinking in this way has made me a less happy human, but the consequences of that type of reactivity don’t end there. Constantly judging others for having different preferences can lead to judging others for having different ideas or thoughts. Instead of traveling down that path, we should encourage different ways of thinking, as that’s how we’ll iterate, how we’ll invent new things, how we’ll be able to improve—or dismantle, if necessary—existing systems in place. If we don’t celebrate people running with their perspective, creative and iterative processes will suffer.
Besides those losses, a closed mind misses the opportunity to appreciate our uniqueness. We all came from the same, evolutionarily, so why wouldn’t we celebrate the things that make us different? How many new types of writing have you discovered, how many new types of music have you heard at some point in your life? Maybe you love modern rock but dislike the blues; where do you think that rock came from? It certainly wasn’t just an invention someone made up out of the blue—it came from the blues! Our differences aren’t just something to be tolerated, or tolerated for the sake of advancement; they are something to be championed. They make us stronger, and they bring us more happiness, if we only open our hearts to let them.
Championing Imperfection
I’m a dog person, and though I prefer certain specific dogs to other dogs, I celebrate all types of dogs. I might not celebrate the way that breeds have been developed over the years, but I do appreciate each breed’s respective overall differences as well as every single dog’s individual unique differences. And so for me, I have no desire to seek out a purebred dog, and in fact I sometimes wonder what is the point of doing so in the first place. Not to overgeneralize, as there are valid reasons one might seek a specific breed—perhaps you are looking for a type of dog that thrives in the company of people so that you can work with her as a therapy dog— but I guess it’s because we humans tend to prefer control, and so some people want perfect dogs that always act as expected.
The desire for an expected response also extends to training dogs. I can see why it’s important to train a dog to listen to you when needed in certain situations. For example, if a dog is wandering into the street, you need him or her to come back to you when you call them, for their own safety (though hopefully you are protecting them from the street in the first place). And I would agree that some dogs genuinely enjoy training and interacting with their partner humans. However, the majority of dogs just follow commands in order to get whatever treat they’ve been conditioned to expect, and to that I say bah! That’s not for me. If I bring my dog to the dog beach, yes, again I’d like him or her to come if I really need them to. But otherwise I want them to be themselves, with all their differences on display. I want them to be the dog that they want to be, not the one that I’ve conditioned them to be. At some point, a highly trained dog seems like a programmed machine to me, and it feels like we’ve robbed them of their own personality. Of course this is just my view; others may develop deep relationships through extensive training. And I do my best not to judge them as being “bad” or “wrong” for not accepting my views as facts!
Communicating With Humility
If we constantly pick apart our differences and categorize other people as good or bad, we are causing ourselves to suffer, and we are causing society to suffer. This holds true for our internal dialogue, but it also holds true for our external dialogue. I am reminded of a quote that I recently read in a semi-biography called “Ask Iwata” where Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo, discussed how he views failures in communication. He talked about how, in programming, a program runs on logic; if it is programmed correctly, then it will work, but if a program doesn’t run well, it’s because whoever programmed it made a mistake. Similarly, he says “When communication isn’t going well, blaming others never helps. Instead, I tell myself, ‘They’re not getting my message or seeing eye to eye with me because I’m not expressing myself as well as I could’ [. . .] So when a conversation isn’t going well, before I tell myself ‘They just don’t get it,’ I’ll assume I was at fault. If things aren’t going well, it’s up to me to make a change. If I can find a way of doing things that works for them, I know that I can get my point across and win them over. To this day, when communication isn’t working out, I ask myself where I went wrong.” I really appreciate this approach, because it questions the fundamental tendency to assume that what we say and do is true and that what others say and do is not.
And this is where I’m at these days. I try to watch for my tendency to judge others purely on the basis that they like different things than me, or because they’d do something in a different way than I would. I don’t always succeed—these are lifelong habits we’re talking about, after all—but the only way forward is to build new habits where we accept other people’s preferences and views without viewing our own ways as being necessarily “correct.”
Listening When You Know You’re Right
Although, I will note that it may really, really seem like you’re correct at times. For example, I think exploitation of animals—both humans and non-humans—is obviously wrong. And I know I’m right. Now, that means I am predisposed to harshly judge others who do exploit living beings. But even in those situations, what if I’m not “right enough?” After all, all I need to do is reflect on my past decisions to come up with all kinds of ways that my previous views were either wrong or misguided, from views on race to views on using animals for food. Heck I remember a time in college when I made fun of the one vegetarian I knew, asking why he’d ever deprive himself of so many tasty foods and proclaiming that I could never do it! You might argue that I didn’t realize what went on in factory farms at the time, and yes that would be true. And yes, I did change when I learned the truth. And so you might then in turn say that well, how are we to view those people who know the truth about the abuses of animals used for food, but still continue to consume them. Do we just say that’s ok, because Jon said we should value our differences?
No, I’m not saying that. I do wish we were all on the same page on that issue. With this post, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to convince people to change their actions when we believe that they are causing suffering. Rather, in situations where people’s differences cause harm, we should seek to understand and appreciate why they have the views that they have, and try to meet them from those perspectives to avoid outright condemning them. In other words, we need to open up to others instead of shutting them down. This is even more important when we’re dealing with issues where we’re convinced we’re in the right, because it’s those times where we’re most likely to have tunnel-vision around our world view. With regard to eating animals, I went from being a heavy meat eater, to Meatless Mondays, to vegetarian, to “ethical” vegetarian (buying eggs and dairy from local farms) to vegan. Each step along the way, I thought I was doing what was right. Looking back, if I truly consider my upbringing and perspective, I can come to understand why I thought I was right each step of the path. By embracing our differences and coming to understand people’s own respective journeys, we can come to accept the current situation no matter how much we disagree with it. And it’s only through accepting the reality of every person being on a different step in their path that we can begin to bring about the changes we wish to see, anyway.
Bringing It Home
Maybe this all sounds too “peace and love” to you, to try not to judge and to reflect on another person’s experience. If that’s your read on this, I totally get it. I do. But even if that’s your view, if nothing else, you can come to the table with a baseline of love and compassion, with respect for your fellow human; do that, and you will have taken an important stride toward acceptance of our differences. Make that sort of reactivity your habit, rather than one of judgment and segmentation. It will help you and your neighbors make the world a better place.
We are taught that there are seven continents, somewhere around 200 countries, and goodness knows how many cities and towns and districts. We are taught that there are this many races, this many plant species, this many animal species. But while we were born in different places, with different bodies, with different bodily abilities, with different chemical structures in our brains, those differences don’t change the indisputable facts that we are all influenced by our body chemistry and our living conditions, and that we are all here together. None of us were born perfect, and we all have had either inaccurate or improper beliefs of varying degrees throughout our lives. So rather than tear each other apart for being at a different stage in our respective paths, we can celebrate our differences in the knowledge that at the end of the day, we are all imperfect living beings, and we are all one entity, in this together. And it is that shared life force that makes our differences so special.