We all identify ourselves with different identities, a part of some groups, followers of a certain ideology, supporters of a person or an idea, and opposers, too. And this behaviour is something that has helped us a lot so far in making progress on this planet. But now, as we see around us, it’s quite visible that this trait of our species to support certain beliefs and individuals or groups has become quite rigid.
We can observe that on various community or social media platforms, people clash on various issues and no one is ready to be flexible enough to listen to others’ opinions. We strongly identify ourselves with certain norms. Actually, this is a safe play as when we look at human evolution history, we will find that we always want to be a part of a group; we have made clans that fight among themselves to prove which one is superior. And this has continued for ages to genetically code us to become comfortable in groups and have this desire to feel superior.
And this trait is something that helped model the society we see today and the growth of civilisation. As long as this psychology is broad regarding political views, religious ideology or philosophy, it looks quite obvious. But the issue is that this is now spreading to major dimensions of our life such as sports, entertainment, food and whatnot.
On various platforms, we see people are arguing, disrespecting and bullying each other on various issues, trolling each other for supporting something or someone or expressing their views. We so strongly believe in our notions that we see everything and everyone around us with these lenses of our mental labels. Our mental coding is done in a way that forces us to draw conclusions on the basis of these preconceived notions.
It’s really interesting to ponder why this is happening and what I, as an individual with limited knowledge, think about this. We don’t want to be wrong; we don’t want someone else’s valid points to force us to rethink our beliefs. Actually, we have given ourselves some labels, and we judge everyone on the basis of those labels and become rigid about it.
This becomes a major issue when we start discriminating and hating on the basis of these labels —not only on social media platforms, but also in our day-to-day communication. It is becoming hard to reach out to people for conversations. We always have our guards up and we only want to hear what we think is right or that which suits our taste. We do leave any space for discussion and understanding.
Most of the time, I see people classify individuals on the basis of what they watch, which sport they follow, or what type of songs they like. Once, during a general discussion with a group of my friends, when I talked about some policy of a political party, I observed how their perception of me changed. I could see becoming orthodox and an extreme nationalist in their eyes. And then I realised this not the first time for such a thing to happen.
I, too, have this mentality whenever I come to know about someone’s liking or disliking. I would make preconceived notions about them, assign them labels, and talk to them accordingly. But this is something that hinders meaningful conversations to understand one another. Not only that, it also hinders us to catch up with the ones we think our likings and disliking do not go hand-in-hand with. This causes a lack of confidence, cooperation and a certain sense of discomfort.
We all are different; our thinking, liking or disliking for things has to be different, but this does not mean we should have our defensive guards up or get offended over these differences. These varieties of choices in the field of entertainment, sports, music, political views, religious beliefs etc. help us to explore, connect to people and expand our dimensions. But as we know, nothing is protected from drawbacks, and so is thinking of exclusiveness,
There are numerous examples in history and in the contemporary world to prove that the ones who are too rigid on their stand are also the most dangerous ones. Many societies, nations and philosophies grew with rigidity and dominated the rest for the greater part. We see many a time that we are taught to be rigid for our culture, our goals, our language and many more things. We think such extremist behaviour is important as we see that this planet has so many things happening at the same time that it becomes quite obvious to us that the notions we do develop will grow strong and strong.
So, it’s not even a perfect notion for me as well, but a general observation because all around us, we see our conversations are becoming constrained, we seek comfort in limits, and the level of arguments and disrespect is also disheartening. So, it’s sometimes okay to forget about these labels and preconceived notions and open up, understand each sometimes. Consider others’ suggestions because we never know when something or someone can inspire us to do good and become better.