“Do not be on the wrong side of history.”
I see this phrase all the time on social media from people and communities calling for support of a certain cause. Support Black Lives Matter or you are on the wrong side of history. The insurrectionists of Jan. 6 were on the wrong side of history. Pick the right side or you will forever be labeled as a bigot and a coward. But history is subjective and ever-changing. When I was 13, growing up in North Carolina, I was taught that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights. My peers in New York were taught it was about slavery. Neither of us was taught that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved people in the rebelling states, or about the United States’ involvement in the creation of Liberia. Every day a new level of nuance is added to history, layers of power and oppression in unequal measure. Yet we steamroll people into activism because of how history will remember us. Here is the thing: I do not care about how I am remembered in history because history will not remember me. I am not the future president of a nation. I will not be inventing the cure for cancer and I will not have any other major accomplishment destined for the history books. I am good with being an average person in the world trying to do more good than bad. However, what I am not good with is being told my voice or my “truths” are not doing enough because they do not match a person’s perspective of me.
Let us talk seriously about the truth. The world is a nightmare. Children are being killed and trafficked all over the world. Conflicts between nations are increasingly in the collective consciousness, forcing conversations about war and the cost of violence. Cities around the world are sinking into the sea as the effects of climate change continue to increase, according to National Geographic. Everything has become a zero-sum game; either you agree with a person or you become the enemy. I know, I have already written about the cost of conflict this semester, but now it is time to talk about the cost of the truth. Everyone has their own truth, and their own perspective of reality. When I was in the Army, my First Sergeant liked to say, “Perception is reality. How people perceive you is reality regardless of if it’s true.” It did not matter how good you were at your job if people perceived you as bad at it. In a perfect world, everyone’s truth would line up in perfect harmony, and people would be perceived as they truly are. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. Instead, every truth is created by an individual experience of society. As a community, we understand that; it is why we have social sciences like sociology, international studies, STS (science, technology and society), psychology, even economics and philosophy: entire disciplines dedicated to understanding how other people think, on both the individual level and within a community. As individuals, however, we become extremely judgmental of people who do not think like us.
There are consequences when you tell your truths. Sometimes, those consequences are great: people respect your voice, they agree with you. Other times, you speak up expecting people to hear you and instead your voice gets distorted by other people’s realities. Your call for peace becomes someone else’s act of cowardice. It makes people afraid to speak out, afraid to lift their voices up. What if people do not understand? What if they are told they are on the wrong side of history? We have made consequences so great for people we do not agree with that we have inadvertently silenced people. Maybe some of those people who are not speaking up have less-than-stellar takes on the world, but why do they think that way? Is it better for them to not say anything and let those ideas fester into fanaticism or violence? Or should we be more willing to talk, to find common ground so that issues do not become black-and-white, binary issues? After all, life is not a binary system, so conversations should not be, either. Talk to each other: in person, outside of class. Talk about your lives, about the hard topics of the world. Talk without judgment or a prepared argument. Listen to what people are saying, ask them why they believe something, not because you want to change their mind but because you want to understand. You do not have to agree or have conversations that are bad for you on an emotional, mental, spiritual or physical level, but it is okay to be uncomfortable. Just talk, and maybe the consequences will be worth it.
Well written and thought of article.
Loved reading it.
Juan Carlos