When did we become A or B, white or black, red or blue? When we insisted on hearing only what we agree with and stopped building rich, lively, vibrant dialogues that lead to entirely new conclusions.
There is no shortage of algorithms ready to feed our desire to be validated all the time. If we only like dogs, only watch dog content, and only visit pages about dogs, everything we see in our feeds will be dogs. And heaven forbid a kitten shows up: it is quickly pushed out of the way.
This constant urge to stay in a safe zone of acceptance leaves us poorer when it comes to richer, more innovative results. It shows up at work, in our personal lives, in politics, and in social life. The complexity of individual opinions and ideas goes far beyond a political party or a personal interest, and no truly meaningful change will ever come from sameness.
The new comes from mixing shades and creating new colors from them; it is what comes together into a more vibrant whole through dialogue. And why do I say dialogue? Because dialogue is different from arguing or debating: it means building a conversation that is not about discrediting the other person or reducing the subject to a single point of view.
When a dialogue happens, the conversation revolves around empathy, around understanding, as equals, the subjective grounds of the person speaking, while you also share how you see the situation. And the most important part? You reach a conclusion.
A conclusion shaped by the results of that dialogue, one that can be tested and examined over time: a new, rich, potentially transformative conclusion. We want profound change, but we do not allow ourselves to be profoundly changed by connecting with the humanity of others. Isn’t that what we are missing?
