Different Opinions, Self-Definition and Mutual Existence

I think everyone would probably agree that the world is becoming more and more separated. It seems that all people have lost their patience, and don't want to agree with each other anymore. They quarrel on the Internet all day long, and the different opinions in a country slowly piled up and fermented into conflicts between different groups of people. People all want a strong party taking control in the parliament and shut their opponents up, so that the voter get whatever they want.

That's really a disappointing trend of development. In my opinion, the goodness in the development of civilization is that it always moves into the direction where more and more people can eventually find themselves and realize themselves.

That's why the tyrants were spurned and democracy welcomed. That's why the privileges for the nobility are revoked and equality is being introduced. That's why the women stepped out of the role as birth machines, baby sitters and house cleaners and slowly taking over half of the society. That's why we want all people, no matter of the skin color, religion and background to have equal chances. That's why we want LGBTQ+ people to also enjoy their lives with their significant other.

But nowadays, it seems that this goodness is being treated as something stupid, irrational and dull. Everyone wants to take the absolute control at the cost of the happiness of other people, and the society is moving, IMHO, backwards.

And my question is, why?

Although I won't claim, or rather, I don't even think that I have got the answer of my own question, it is still worth writing it down, maybe someone else will find my immature thoughts inspiring.

Opinions, Geography and Telecommunication

People are different. It is normal for different people to have different opinions. But my assumption here is, the more information shared between a group of people, the more similar their opinions should be.

Previously, the spread of the information was highly dependent on the geolocation and language. But nowadays, the development of telecommunication and internationalization has brought all of us into a "world village", knowing a foreign language is becoming popular and considered as a useful skill. The spread of the information is not dependent on the geolocation and language anymore.

In the past, our neighbors or our friends in town shared the same opinions as we do, because we talk with them most often. But now, we prefer stay at home and share opinions with the people on the other side of the world. This caused the distribution of the opinions not related to the geolocation anymore. Thus, our neighbors and our friends in town start to have different opinions than we do, and we quarrel about who is right, and the conflicts start to grow.

Does it mean, we should simply shut down the Internet and finally live our own lives? My answer here is a clear no. I think it is exactly the conflict of the thoughts bringing new ideas to us, and the quarrel making us wiser and unbiased.

But does it mean there is no solution, and we have to suffer the dark side of sharing the opinion online? I don't think so either. Since the relocation of the opinions won't necessarily cause the conflict. There is more to dig.

The Lack of Self-consciousness

The difference of opinions solely has never been the cause of the conflict. Instead, conflicts come from fear, panic, anxiety, threat, the feeling of losing one's dignity and so on. Without these feelings, different opinions are just like you like apples and I like oranges. Ok, then you will buy apples and I will buy oranges. Problem solved.

But sometimes, the different opinions make me feel that my interests are being threatened, then I would be triggered. I have to protect my interests. But conflicts of interest have been there since the very first day of human society, it isn't different compared to 2 decades ago. Is it really the main cause why the situation is becoming worse?

I think the new problem here is that we are not yet used to the variety of the different opinions, and we lost ourselves.

It is normal that if I'm not being agreed with, I would feel angry, frustrated and useless, because although I don't do much socializing, there is still a social part living inside me. But what if I have a clear definition of myself, if I know clearly who I am, and I am completely separated from any groups, communities and country that I am in, and I am completely separated from my ego, feeling, thoughts, opinions and beliefs, would it still be a problem?

I don't think so.

My opinion is MY opinion, I have this opinion because I drew the conclusion according to my own observation, own experiences and own thoughts. If there is another opinion, maybe I should listen to the details of how the other people have drawn this conclusion. Maybe there is unbalanced information? Maybe there are some mistakes in my thoughts? Or maybe it is the other people who have missed something? This ability to separate oneself from the outside comments and focus on the content itself is in my opinion part of self-consciousness. It is the ability to know someone's true self as a clearly defined whole, instead of drawing the equal symbol between a restricted part of one's emotional feelings and one's true self, or drawing the equal symbol between the external identities and one's true self.

In this way, facing the different opinions, there will be a good discussion instead of trying to convince the other party at any cost.

Unfortunately, we haven't yet built a strong self-consciousness in front of different opinions yet. We are always drawing the equal sign between ourselves with something which is completely unnecessary, for example, our dignity, ego, or the family, group, community and country that we are in, or our beliefs. We thought we are our ego, or we are our family, or we are our country, or we are our beliefs.

In this case, losing a debate is equal to losing ourselves. If I was equivalent to my ego, then being proved to be wrong means losing my ego, which means losing myself, so I feel uncomfortable to lose an argument and I want to make other people agree with me. If I was equivalent to my religion, then seeing someone disagree with my religion is equal to losing myself, so I feel uncomfortable to see people doing that, thus I want to solve the problem by forcing other people to believe the same religion. If I was my country, then anybody who tries to ruin MY DEFINITION of my country means a personal offence to me, so I feel uncomfortable to see people doing that, thus I want to solve the problem by either drive those people away from my country, or bend their will to fit my will.

There is a saying which I have heard from one of my university classmates – "people don't apply chemicals on apples without worms". I find it very philosophical. The one who shows muscle the most, is not actually the one who is the most brave. Instead, they want to do that to protect their soft side by scaring other people off. Similarly, it is usually the one who is the most unconfident who wants others to agree with them at any cost. They are unconfident, because they don't know who they are. They thought they are the one who is personally being attacked. They thought if they lose the argument, then they will die. That's why they are forcing other people to agree with them so that they can win the argument. That's why we are forcing other people to agree with us.

First Aid from the Crowd

But still, even if we feel very uncomfortable to lose our identities, losing the argument will only cause conflict between the people who are in an argument, just like the poor Tycho Brahe who lost his nose in a duel after a quarrel with his cousin. But it will never develop a conflict in a bigger scope. Unless we notice that we could find ourselves back, in a crowd. And unfortunately this is half true – we often find the illusion of ourselves in a crowd.

Long time ago, I was reading Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. When I noticed that whatever he wrote in the book is mostly a summary of his observations, instead of saying anything about why people are like that, I was shouting in my head loudly – isn't it mostly caused by the fears of people!? We have fear, that's why we look for more power. If we accidentally get the power from a crowd, then we throw our self-consciousness away and follow the crowd blindly.

Talking about seeking for agreement, it is the same. Once we have the illusion that we are losing ourselves because of losing an argument, the first reaction is always to force others to agree with us. But if we are not able to do that, we would try to seek "first-aid". And usually we find it from a crowd, imagine one was defeated in an argument and gets back to his friend telling him everything about the argument. His friend would say he was actually the right one. What a heart-warming feeling would that be? He would be so happy that there was someone who always stood by his side.

What if this is not one friend but a crowd of people who have similar opinions? This will be a strong confirmation of our opinions. We would think, "oh yes! We are actually the right one, because there are so many people standing behind my back. Now who is the winner?"

The crowd is nothing but an illusion of power for covering our fear of losing ourselves. No matter how wrong our opinion is, if there are enough people backing us, we think we are right. No matter how correct our opinion is, if there is no one believing us, we think we are wrong. Because of our fear of losing our ego, community or belief, which we thought they were equivalent to ourselves, we are craving for a crowd behind us, so that we can eliminate our fear.

This kind of nature divides the human-beings. Thinking about the war between Troy and Sparta, how could people fight for their king who only lost his wife? Helen is not even a girl-friend for the soldiers fighting the war.

But how about the king wanting to claim his dignity, because he thought himself was equal to his dignity. Losing his wife meant he didn't exist anymore.

Thus he went to his heroes, asking, "do you think she should be my wife? "

"Hell yeah!" said the heroes.

"Losing my wife means I lose my dignity. If I lose my dignity, the kingdom loses its dignity. You are the people of the kingdom. If the kingdom loses its dignity, you lose your dignity too. And who are you other than your dignity? You are nothing!" said the King.

"Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!" shouted the heroes.

And then there will be war.

It is also like that in modern society. Maybe it is not the only cause, but it could be one of the causes of thousands of conflicts in a big scope.

And it is really sad to see that this trick is even used by political parties to try to gain their political achievements by sacrificing the goodness of the people. They create the fear artificially, they exaggerate the problem, causing even more fear. And finally they say, I have the solution, I can unite all of you who are in fear, and we fight our way through whatever obstacles that we are facing, even if it is the other half of the people in our country! Or maybe even worse – even if the obstacle is the other countries in the world!

In this kind of party, it is always the one who shouts the loudest being the leader. Because the louder the voice, the more comforting it is, the more confirming it is. And people will always vote for the one who shouts louder, because that's the reason why they are supporting this party in the first place.

I have to admit, if one is in great fear, this kind of mechanism to search for a crowd to find confirmation, and this kind of propaganda of creating the fear and claiming to have the solution is really effective. But after the conflict, after the fighting is over, what is left? I think there will be only pain and regrets.

Mutual Existence

I think I have complained too much. It won't solve any problem, if there is no constructive opinion.

I have thought about what is the perfect way of facing this trend of society. And at last, I have found a term called "mutual existence". I think this is why we were building society in the first place.

There are two words to talk about, "mutual" and "existence". But the order should be the opposite, it should be "existence" and "mutual", or probably better "to exist in a mutual way".

I think the prerequisite for the discussion is that everyone should be an independent individual. Firstly one should exist as an independent individual, or "to be", or to set the boundary between oneself and everything else, which means one must have a clear definition of oneself. What makes an individual different from the other people? What is the ultimate goal of one's life? What is necessary for someone, and what is unnecessary? Only so, the individuals can separate themselves from the family, group, community and society which they are in, and separate themselves from the ego, feeling, thoughts and beliefs which they have. The reason why we should separate ourselves from these aspects is because we are NOT them. We are not other people, we are not our family, we are not our group, community or society, and we are not our ego, thoughts and beliefs. None of them can represent ourselves, and we can represent none of them either. And only so we could make our decision and act as an independent individual, as a self-contained whole, instead of trying to enlarge our existence to a group of people, or reduce our existence to some of our aspects.

The disagreement won't get personally, only if one can clearly define their existence, without a certain group who grants them some external identities, or the influence of a certain aspects which they hold strongly. If people are not equal to their opinions anymore, why there is conflict at the first place?

Only after everyone has become an individual, we can talk about the "mutual" part. I believe people live together, and work together, because our ancestors found that in this way they can survive easily. And I believe, because everyone wants to exist, if people live together, the only goal should be realize themselves easily. We need other people to respect our boundaries, our self-definitions and our interests, and help us achieve our life goals, but in the meanwhile it is also fair to respect others' existence, others' boundaries, others' self-definitions and others' interests and also help the others to achieve their goals. A community would never exist long if people have built this community only to protect their opinions, or to force other people agree with them, or even harm other people. Even if so, after the conflict, the new internal conflict will immediately occur within this twisted community itself, and tear the community down. Only the community which is built because all the individuals want to live in, contribute and work for will last for a long time.

And if no one treats the group as a shelter for their weaknesses, or a weapon to harm the other people, but rather as a booster for what they want to achieve. Then even if there is the conflict, the conflict will stay in a scope where they should rationally be, and it can also be solved easily, instead of developing into a holy war between crowds of people.