One practical test of ourselves is this. When a data point or someone’s story is different from my own, when in fact it challenges and confronts my own perspective or view of reality—do I look for ways to discount it? Or do I look for ways to integrate it?
When my own bias is pointed out by a study, or a story, or an experience—do I let it help me reexamine what I see and believe? Or do I move on the offensive and attack the other as biased?
So often I’m seeing people move to the attack. “Maybe the police did act that way, but look how violent BLM protesters are being!” “Maybe X politician did lie, but look at how that one lies just as much.” The assumption is that the bias is in the other person’s rose colored glasses. “If they just did their research, they would see the world as I do.” And we make this a self-fulfilling prophesy by “researching” only with the goal of collecting evidence propping up our side, proving our view and our story, not to actually come to a richer view of truth and reality and the world in which we live.
We all are colored by the time and place in which we live, by the things that have happened to us, by the way we have been socialized, by the language we speak…there are infinite ways we are shaped culturally and particularly. We can’t stand on some universal, generic foundation.
But we do have to find a place to stand. We must do work to create it. We must work to connect our beliefs and values consistently and coherently with each other. And, we must work to connect them to the world we see and touch. We must allow ourselves to be shaped and challenged by real world data.
It’s a lot of work that can feel scary, especially when a good part of our web is flapping in the wind, unmoored from what kept it anchored before.
But just because we can’t stand in a pure universal place, just because we all stand in particular places, doesn’t mean that there aren’t healthier and unhealthier places to stand.
Let’s create healthier ones. Let’s have humility. Let’s see and name our blinders and our privilege, see and name how our perspectives have hurt others. Let’s be willing to tear apart sections of the web that aren’t working, and rebuild—attaching to new fence posts as the evidence arises.
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