Hi there, lurker. It’s been over a year since I posted anything so I thought I should amuse you with a rant. So much has changed since I wrote my last blog. I moved out of my country and completed a master’s degree. Yup, I’m wiser now. I also survived a global pandemic using my life-long training of self-isolation. It feels like I was made for this very movement. Since you’re reading this, I assume you survived too. Congrats on staying alive! Vaccines are almost here, and if what I read on all the conspiracy forums were legit, Bill Gates chan can finally know how I feel. Hopefully, we will all get microchipped before the end of this year and go back to regular life.

Onto the actual thing I wanted to discuss — Politics. I was bombarded with controversial news almost every single week throughout the pandemic. I’m not sure if my sudden abundance of free time made me notice this or the world has gotten more contentious these days. I have never seen so much political divide in my entire lifetime. Now, almost everyone has an opinion on everything, and people are so stubborn that they don’t even want to have a conversation with the other side. Not because they have analyzed the issue from different perspectives and came up with that opinion. Not because the other side doesn’t have a valid argument. But that if anyone even dares to believe that the other side might have a reasonable point, they are vile. People label them even before they listen. And this happens on both sides.

We pay too much attention to the negatives on the other side while conveniently pushing ours inside the closet. This makes it easier to get polarized. Every time someone pulls something out of this closet during a discourse, I realized I take it so personally that I support it for the sake of argument even though it doesn’t fit into my moral framework. So how do we clean out our closets? By listening to the other side.

Recently, I was collecting all the sources I followed into a list to help someone get into the news cycle and realized how much I have started avoiding the other side. They were in my subscriptions list, but every time I watch them, the voice inside my head keeps screaming which facts they are conveniently missing. However, I don’t have the same issue with my side. Even though I know my side too leaves out details to suit their narrative, I realized I have learned to overlook it.

The message here is to embrace the argument from both sides before making a judgment. Even if you disagree with the other side, it is crucial to see why they stand where they stand. If you notice yourself getting sucked into cheering for one set of ideas, try pulling yourself out. And here I end my rant. So long!