“I Agree to Disagree”

Introduction

The planet is descending into chaos, yet society cannot agree on what that chaos is. With the overlapping of various cultures and ideologies, which have permeated throughout our world since the early 1000s, globalization and technology have rapidly developed, changing our planet’s political, economic, and social atmosphere. However, because of this rapid change, there is a lack of definition behind human identity: if we cannot understand the changing world around us, we fail to understand ourselves. Perspective, understood as the driving force of action through Iris Marion Young’s essay, Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model, is shaped by upbringing, community, family, genetics, culture, and pre-life history, heavily influencing identity by informing our understanding of the world, others, and ourselves. In turn, our perspective causes us to have certain behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and experiences, which from our understanding of the world and others, we use to understand ourselves. Our perspective is essentially a two-way mirror: we look out at the world to look inward, and look inward to look out at the world. But when the world keeps changing, and when we must keep changing with it, our identity becomes fragmented and ungrounded, leading to negative effects on our mental stability.

This ungroundedness, which is subliminal as most people don’t have awareness of it, is causing us to fight amongst ourselves, to blame each other, to attach fault to our actions, and to morally shun one another. As humans, we have always found conflict, but now, we are in a new phase of human life centered around computers and globalizing technology. We are no longer fighting solely because of the old religions, we are fighting because of the new religions: media and technology. However, the story is still the same, we shed blood to maintain power, control, and wealth over whatever institution rules the people – we fight to control whatever the people worship. So now, instead of solely God, the powerful have manufactured Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and other industries to promote unhealthy relationships between society and their products, forming addictions, harming communities, and becoming an indignant tumor growing in the heart of society, tearing people apart. Advertisement and consumerism have overcome Western society, and the people who created the industries did not prepare any way to fix the negative side-effects. The citizens who were not checked by the government have grown too powerful, and now the whole system is falling apart.

As humans, what we need to do is survive. We, before civilization, did that by sticking to different tribes. We formed packs to hunt, eat, drink, sleep, procreate, and battle off predators. We also battled against others of our same species and genus to try and keep ourselves alive: Homo sapiens became the main genus after killing off the others, and thousands of years later we developed into creatures that began to barter and trade. We developed agriculture, then civilizations and cities. We began to cooperate with each other to take over more territory, instead of becoming confined to singular villages and towns. However, our old animalistic, survivalist behavior still existed, and we saw the other tribes’ evolutions as threats. As Amy Chua explains in her book, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, even today, in a world connected by civilization and politics, the color of our skin, sex, gender, sexuality, and other grouping factors divide us, because it is hard for our species to be alive without belonging to a group. On top of our tribal nature, we have an individual ambition to survive, which we believe can only happen if we are the best – the fittest to survive. In many cultures, the development of less powerful members of a community was shunned by those at the top of the hierarchy, as seen in the Caste system and the modern class system. People want whatever or whoever they are associated with to thrive at the fullest capacity: they want to be the richest, the most powerful – whatever else makes them the best, specific to their culture. But in a world where we have access to many different technologies, we do not need to be the fittest anymore – we need to evolve past our existence as a creature still attached to animalistic hostilities and the negative aspects of tribalism.

Our tribal nature has divided us up into different local and global cultures, into even smaller separations such as what food we like, what we want, what we have, what language we speak, what family we belong to, and other such sub cultures. As humans, remaining so attached to this narrow perspective that drives us to be the best is hindering our progress. However, we can overcome our nature by simply being self-aware of ourselves. Yet, no matter how many of those in the West’s middle class, or lower class, gain an understanding of their natural instincts (whether ambitions to be the best or other such desires), if corporate billionaires and tech-conglomerats do not gain self-awareness, and stop hoarding the wealth that makes people powerful, then the world will not be a place for everyone, but instead only for those who have power. I am not proposing an abolishment of Capitalism for Western cultures, or an even harder lean into Communism for the East, I believe that every culture’s economical or government ideology should have space to flourish. I propose that we should find a way to exist with these different systems: instead of disagreeing with another person on what they are doing or how they are living, we have to agree that there is no one right way to function as a human. We have to have diplomacy to allow everyone to get what they want. We have to attach ourselves not just to one group, or even many, but any we encounter, not by joining necessarily, but by understanding that there is no one truth, so we can understand and accept each other. The solution concerns reforming the ideas taught to us at birth, or rather changing the ideas taught to future generations, to help them connect with each other. Right now, we are not achieving this connection because of our own inability to deal with how far we have already evolved. The overlapping cultures and the confusing, ever-changing world we live in leaves us uncertain of how to perceive, and how to think.

A natural human response to uncertainty of oneself is to lean further into one’s tribal nature, to attach one’s identity to a belief, a celebrity, a piece of media, or something else (that could potentially be used to control one’s actions). Through their attachment, people become stuck to rigid systems of belief, idolatry, culture, and various social constructs. There is a widespread variety of things people can attach themselves to: other humans like Taylor Swift and Stephen King; shows like Stranger Things; albums like Hit Me Hard and Soft; and ideologies that stem from culture, large military conflicts and arguments concerning worldly constructs. However, because in our modern day-and-age, where our attachments can be very polar, and there is no legislative punishment for disagreement within a community in the West, communities themselves become polarized, and blame, fault, and moral shaming can plague families, best friends, institutions, and people who should be connected. One’s identity might cause them to be attached to a group of people halfway across the world, while another’s identity might lead them to be attached to the other’s enemy, even if they live across the hall from each other. And so, the tribal aspect of human nature is changing, because the tribes have been smashed together to form a hot pot in which there are many rights, many wrongs, and seemingly no truth, and we are beginning to belong to tribes with contradicting ideologies. Moreover, if our tribes contradict themselves, we develop many polarizing attachments within ourselves that lead us to become even further ungrounded. For example, if one has a Western ideology ingrained within them, but also a potentially polarizing Eastern ideology, our identity is at risk of becoming shattered, and we are at risk of trying to find more things to attach our identity to to make ourselves whole. Once we find whatever makes us feel whole, no matter our intelligence or esteem, if we don’t have the self-awareness to understand our perspective, we might become hostile and aggressive towards ideologies we don’t agree with. We might intensely defend our beliefs (ourselves) against people who disagree with us, with words or violence, because of the emotion we possess attached to those very beliefs. So we connect ourselves to ideologies of our world so deeply that anything outside of one’s realm of belief might be met with intense disagreement, so one does not feel that their identity is fractured. It is a ruthless cycle: external disagreement creates disagreement within the self.

I argue that to disagree without aggression and conflict, we must separate belief from identity – what someone says, from who they are – and attempt to understand others’ perspectives with respect and empathy. Disagreement creates conflict because of the fault attached to it – fault that implies people might not be doing the best thing they can and should do in their society. People then believe that if they are wrong, especially about beliefs related to their core being, their identities and their perspective are flawed, which upsets their understanding of their place in the world. However, if we understand from the get-go that any understanding we have might have flaws to it, we can move forward through any conflict, together. We can believe in absolute things, we can believe in many moralities, we can believe in competition, supremacy, terrible things, beautiful things – but we don’t have to anchor them to our identity in the sense that we do negative things to protect our understanding of ourselves because of what we believe in. I am suggesting that there should be a separation made between how those act and what they feel. Evolutionarily, we have had tribes and beliefs associated with those tribes to survive, but without a need for tribalism anymore, we now need, instead of agreement, the ability to disagree, so we can move forward as a species, and understand the larger understanding that all understandings are valid. We should hold all perspectives in high regard. We do not have to agree, but we also do not have to fault others, until our survival is on the line. That becomes the tricky part, to understand the degrees to which we can disagree.

I propose to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study to try and figure out the answer, because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one deeply entrenched in disagreement and conflict. If we can figure out how to disagree on one of the most heatedly discussed conflicts today, we can disagree on anything, and overcome this hurdle in human evolution. I will interview different people connected to the conflict, read sources to understand history and the culture of the conflict, read different moral arguments and apply them to the conflict, and overall have a comprehensive understanding, so I can debunk and promote perspectives to show that each perspective is valid and that any individual has a truth to add to the world. To block out this essay, in Section 1, I will lay out my understanding of the war, through my own narrative, understanding of facts, and ideologies. I will show how I believe we can present ideas in a positive way, so that people can practice overcoming any attack they feel was made against their identity. I will then, in Section 2, after writing the perspective I developed from my own position related to the conflict, analyze specific individual’s understanding of the war and narratives I have read from books to elaborate on more perspectives. I will show how each idea can disagree with each other in a way that respects each opinion, by understanding why people possess them. In Section 3, I will transition to the philosophical aspect of the paper, and analyze government, perspective, truth, culture and identity to delve into the nuances of my proposition. Finally, in the conclusion I will restate how all of this back and forth shows that everyone disagrees about something, but we cannot let what it is we are disagreeing about fuel us to hate each other, with regard to some exceptions. I will talk about the meta aspects of my paper, including how my own perspective shifted, what I did incorrectly in the process of writing, and how one can have empathy for me, in case they disagree with my ideas, by analyzing the foundations of my perspective and understanding.

Conclusion

This essay is only one perspective. What is important about it, is that it acknowledges that it is just one point in a huge graph of idea and ideology, and it acknowledges the same about other perspectives as well. It looks in, while looking out, and then inside the outer perspectives as well. If each perspective could do that, it doesn’t matter how extreme, how “right” or “wrong,” it should be listened to. Because, if a person is circumspecting the issue, then they most likely will not be extreme. However, if a person, or group, does not look at all possible ways to see a perspective, then usually that perspective (while it should be looked at to understand the system proposing it, and while it can be educational) lacks the depth needed to make a real contribution to the overall knowledge of the world. Instead, perspectives that don’t look in the way I describe, and acknowledge the many other ways to look, are ignorant and do not take into account the whole picture. When the whole picture is not taken into account, or tried to be taken into account, that perspective becomes irrelevant. It is not a matter of “right” or “wrong,” blame or fault, or liability, but instead, whether or not a person is self-aware, and is aware of the impact they have on others. If they are not, one should not consider adopting their ideology. One should not be consumed by politics, religion, nation, or other aspects of their identity when making choices that influence others around them; they can allow those aspects of their identity to influence their perspective, but they should make actions knowing where their perspective is weak, so that the most harm is mitigated. Morality isn’t just what should happen, it is about removing the self from a decision, so what should happen isn’t what should happen just for you. And, as I said before, we can achieve this with empathy, a willingness to disagree, a willingness to lose an argument, a willingness to understand that just because something is right to you it is not right to others, and a willingness to change yourself for others. A willingness to evolve. That is inherently most of what I am saying; one other thing I can add is that the dynamic of a nation is what causes a lot of these conflicts and disagreements to spark to the level they do. If we just remained calm, and did not try to do things citizens and politicians should not do, the world would be much better. However, there is the final issue that we still do not know entirely what to do, when many of these cases I brought up become invalid, and when someone does, or does not, practice self-awareness. In conclusion, I will go over some of the points I made, criticize them, and dig into why I wrote as I did. If you do what I am about to do, you are set to be a proper, moral citizen, or, hopefully, a perfectly immoral politician who can control those citizens that create institutions that oppose the natural flow of government.

I would like to go over things I did not take into account, the fact that everyone doesn’t take something into account, and the fact of knowing how to know what applies to an argument, and what doesn’t – otherwise, analyzing what can break an argument down, and whether that thing should be taken into account. Should we look toward all-encompassing perspectives, or be aware of knowledge we may not provide? To start, I want to look at what I did not do correctly in the essay: any arguments I didn’t take into account, any information I could have included better, and any assumptions I made that stemmed from unclear definitions I had and anything in my original line of thinking and shifting thoughts that I clarified, or didn’t, after editing the essay. Then, I would like to connect it back to who I am, to let you know that knowing yourself is necessary to develop empathy. One also has to be humble and honest with themselves about their strengths and weaknesses, so they know when they overstep and need to rethink boundaries. Self-reflections and check-ins are very important to keep a system efficient and running.

There are many things I did not take into account, but for the purpose of the conclusion I am making, I would like to talk about things not directly related to the argument. For example, I did not think about animals when I wrote this essay, until it was too late. I was focused on human morality and suffering, instead of animals. As Korsgaard critiqued Kant for not taking animals into account, creating a new type of construct, speciesism, one might critique me, and say that we cannot enforce our own moralities on different types of animals, or institutions, for our own selfish desires of survival. Based on my argument, governments should be the ones who regulate farm and produce, and agriculture and farmers should be under direct command of the government. That honestly might work, though the idea is unfleshed out. However, it makes me wonder about how we can enforce a good government, if one ever is created. Should we listen to the police? Or farmers? I think, yes, as long as they bring about a direct rule of what the government says, the law: however, even here, because of my arguments about truth, this argument might fall apart if one claims that there could be a mix-up of interpretation. Well, we can go beyond what I wrote for this, to synthesize the idea of checks and balances, to resolve this issue. Or, we could attack the foundation of Democracy itself. Or any government that does not impose the will of one person over the will of the people. I do not want to propose a resolution to these questions, I just want to raise them to say I admit I could be wrong, it is actually one of my assertions. But still, taking what I wrote into account, and trying to dissect it and apply it to other cases is a good use of your time, because no matter what, it will still teach you something. Trust me, I would like that last sentence to be a promotion of why you should have read my paper, but even then, this is just one piece of literature among many. And it has no real backing apart from the shoulders of other philosophers who have said similar things. So, do with this as you may, but remember that now that I wrote this paper, it is still part of reality, so based on my own premises, you should care about it. That statement, in a way, answers the question of knowledge I proposed: we do not need to know everything, just know that we should try to know everything, and be okay where we fail, allow others to pick up the slack, while trying to uncover more, and reflect on the fact that we might never know anything for certain, depending on how you think. Inference also is quite important, not to mix up with assumptions, which I’ll talk about one second. Also, knowing when to let information go to preserve order, which may, or may not, be necessary, is important as well. That, I do not have an answer to. Well, I do. I probably shouldn’t include this in the essay, but I am to illustrate the point of what might not fit. This point does not make sense in the context of the paragraph, it is a blatant obtrusion to flow, and it feels quite random. Just know, there are many things under the surface of this text that I will have changed, or not answered properly, which means that other people and authors do it too. We are always playing a guessing game.

On the topic of knowledge, and included information, I did not include equal amounts of information on Palestine and Israel. As a Jew, I know more of Israel than Palestine, and frankly I was more inclined to talk about my own people – a point that relates to many other statements I have made about tribalism, and emotional attachment, in this essay. However, I feel quite ashamed I did not include more, or dig up more history, because it would have made the essay more whole. However, because of time constraints in writing this, and a lack of motivation, I did not include as much as I hoped. However, that does not make my argument less invalid, it just makes it less comprehensive, which means that its logic may falter slightly because of a lack of information I had that other people might. But in the end, the point of the essay was not about equality, it was about making the point that many people will do what I did in this essay, and not even point it out, or be self-aware. We have to be self-aware, and then adjust our mistakes. I sadly did not have time to, but when I edit this essay in the future, my knowledge of Palestine will be increased. Also, this does not go to say I didn’t study Palestine at all, or try to understand the region. I do know a lot. There is just a slight bias in my feelings toward both Palestine and Israel, because of who I connect to; there are also biases I know people feel toward me for my culture and religion, for what political classification they propose I am in, for the way my points don’t make a direct conclusion, or connection, always (though I try to fix that). I am aware of the many things I might do wrong – I am proposing that you do not criticize that aspect of my argument, or what I did not include (because other people have included what I have not, and many others have said things I have also said). The only thing different about this piece than other philosophers, is that I synthesized all the information differently, and in a different order, and had different foundations of understanding that are useful to uncover. Criticize (implying a negative connotation) when and where in my essay that I impose my belief on others. Don’t criticize my logic, just point out where I may not be correct by your standards to allow other readers and avid learners to understand how to look at what I wrote in a better way.

When I wrote this essay, I made many large assumptions. The first one being that I had no legitimacy to express these ideas in the first place, but I believe I already covered that assumption. In line with assumptions, I made some prejudices based on emotional attachment to my people, and tensions sown around the world; I believe I resolved those issues as well. But I’ll restate it: as long as I don’t force anyone to believe my ideas, none of which demeaned a people or hated them (which in itself forces ideas upon others because of the concepts attached to judgement), they are okay to have. I can go through my essay, and say that I made assumptions about how I used the word “aggressive,” that I did not define it; I can say that about many other words. And there are many things I did fix, and will fix later. So, most of my essay will be clear, but I have left some things unanswered. My lack of using a definition for aggressive (and some other words) could make the essay hard to follow, or leave some questions (on degree, or foundational understanding) unanswered. However, I leave many questions unanswered in this essay, for the very purpose I don’t want to enforce what I think too much on you, but allow you to infer what you think I may think, and come away with conclusions of what you think I may have thought – and conclusions of your own. Filling in the holes yourself will lead you to reach new levels of knowledge. At first, I did not even leave the word “aggressive” undefined on purpose, I actually made the concept up while writing this paragraph. That goes to show, there is a different ability to grasp depth, understanding, clarity, structure, and strength of an argument not necessarily related to time, but related to an ingraining of the idea in your soul, and how much you believe it. I believe what I wrote here to an extent, but I will change what I think, and continue to change it, because that is who I am. I am constantly evolving, devolving, and then surging past my own confined limits. I share this with you because I think if more people live this way, the better for everyone: of course, that is another assumption, but you know what I say about assumptions by now. You know what I think of criticism. You know that it is all for development, to overcome the religions that dominate our world (and it is okay to reuse their labels).

The reason I want to overcome these religions is because of the religions that have plagued me since birth. The religions that in turn taught me to overcome them. Those religions are the strict code of my parents. The strict code I had to learn to balance on like it was a thin wire stretched between the twin towers (rest in peace). My parents always disagreed on how to raise me. Both my parents had internal laws that conflicted. My dad exposed me to screens early on; at the same time, my dad wanted me to learn as much as possible, without falling victim to “loser-ism.” I thought his definitions contradicted each other, but then I realized he just thinks differently then me, and to him watching a show and then doing math homework can mean one is working hard, though I did not at once. Things can contradict, but they can also balance. I also learned that from the external laws of my mom and dad that conflicted. My mom yelled at my dad whenever he thought I should watch television; she made me think I had a neurodiversity, when he opposed it; she treated me tenderly, while he did not. All of these things, a lot of her predetermined understandings of the world opposed my dads, which left me wondering if there was anything absolute in this world, any rule I could hold on to, any morality to ground me. But there wasn’t, which left me ungrounded. But in the end, I realized that it wasn’t about truth, or which parent was right, but being able to balance how they different, and know that their foundational understandings varied, but that they still both loved me, and wanted me to evolve. One more concrete example of this complex dynamic, my dad and mom both thought differently about working hard, and maintaining structure, though they both agreed sleep, health, nutrition, academics, socialization, and exercise were all important to my growth. So, I tore myself apart for not working hard enough, or not doing things that fulfilled both standards. But I do not have to fulfill standards anymore, I just have to live growing myself in the way my parents intended me to grow. Both Israel and Palestine have to recognize what I did. They are mom and dad of warring people, paralleling the warring inner voices of my adolescent psyche. There people have to stop letting the government cause such chaos, oppression, and violence (and stop allowing their parents to influence what their friends think about them), and instead fulfill the promises of both of their people. To bring peace, and stability, which can not happen individually, just affecting one side of the people. Both peoples have to live in harmony, in a single unit as I said, because mom and dad, even if divorced, still deserved to both be loved. That is the only way a child can find peace. Do you agree, or disagree?