Emily Henderson: How do we overcome the division?

Remember your neighbour is your neighbour and refuse to allow them to be demonised by someone after your vote, or your money, or power of any kind. Photo / 123rf

Opinion

Today I got caught in the middle of an argument between two good people who have very different views. There’s been a bit of a culture clash, they’re both hurt and embarrassed, and they’re both handing out the labels and mentally consigning each other to the Bad Place in a handbasket.

I might be less bothered by their inability to find common ground, but it’s Monday afternoon as I write this and soon the flights will be full of politicians of every persuasion flying back to Wellington for the Parliamentary week. For about an hour, they will literally be “he waka eke noa” – all in the same boat – but by Tuesday everyone will be facing off in the debate chamber again, and some of what “they” say will no doubt have me judging them pretty harshly, too, and vice versa.

It’s so easy to divide the world into “us” and “them”. Complexity is hard to tolerate. Everyone, me included, loves to rush to judgment. And it doesn’t take much for writing off an idea to turn into writing off the person. There are studies that show people from different political perspectives often see political differences not as disagreements among basically decent people, but as evidence that the “other side” is actually less moral or actually immoral.

It’s a problem I can’t stop picking at, because it’s also the basis for the easiest and oldest political trick in the book - convincing your audience everyone who disagrees is not just misguided but dangerously immoral has been the go-to for every warmonger ever. It becomes even easier when people are already scared, and people right now are often very scared. So much has happened to unsettle our old certainties in the last three years, and many of us have lost long-term friends and family to corrosive conspiracy theories which claim to explain (and blame) what’s happened.

It is not easy to relinquish an anger and contempt that has become a kind of fortress against an uncertain world.

It takes courage to admit we’ve gone too far in our rush to judgment, and courage to reach out to reconcile with “them” on the other side. But the reality is there are no simple solutions. We are all complex. Things are changing and (whether in a plane or anywhere else) he waka eke noa. We are all in this together. Yet all around I see increasing attempts to divide us and convince us that the “other” is a threat rather than the neighbour they were just a few days back.

My hope comes from knowing that whether it’s students or the RSA, and however scared people are by whatever the latest bogeyman is, people’s questions to me aren’t just about crime or the economy, they are about how we overcome these divisions - how we keep doors open, maintain civility, not rush to judgment?

And I guess the only way is simply to swallow the anger and do it. Stay civil whatever the provocation. Resist easy answers. Remember your neighbour is your neighbour and refuse to allow them to be demonised by someone after your vote, or your money, or power of any kind. If easy answers are often wrong, doing the simple thing is often the most difficult. But we have to try nonetheless.