No matter where you look, so long as you’re not sheltered from it, you’ll see evidence of people behaving from divided states of being, and thinking through divisive languages. They usually seek to separate themselves by denouncing others for all sorts of reasons; wrong politics, wrong joke, not as enlightened as they are, racist, going against the conventional wisdom or acceptable social standards, etc.
With divisive belief systems, it’s easy to fall into that tribal “us and them” framework of interpretation. In fact, in many cases, it can be considered a requirement to join the group.
Perhaps it’s just what I’ve been seeing, but this seems so much more prevalent today than it’s ever been in my life that I’m concerned it’s reaching some kind of danger point. And what gets me the most about it is not necessarily the behaviour itself — it’s the philosophical implications of it. Those are the things that remain silently active within people and rarely acknowledged.
For example, if you denounce someone you disagree with as misled or maliciously wrong for evil intentions, you might rightfully decide not to take any lectures from that person. But if you publicly insult this person and push them aside, refusing to engage under the rationale of not giving a platform to problematic voices, or even going so far as to call for censorship or violence against this person, you are going some ways to create a permanent divide there.
