I found all of this post by Barbara Jo Shipka to be really helpful. I’m excerpting here, with gratitude. The photo. The quotes from Gaiman and Krishnamurti. The attention to how beliefs and assumptions create worlds and behaviors in them. The “enemy making” that can happen when humans lock into othering. The chasms in contemporary life, particularly in the USA, that I find escalating to gut punch and sick in the stomach toxicity.
Here’s a bit. Go read the rest of Barbara to get more of the detail. And some really helpful sense-making.
I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true
and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
~ Neil Gaiman
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else,
you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
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I am more aware than ever of the powerful role beliefs and assumptions play in our lives and where they take us – especially when we come to think of them as ‘the truth’. Sometimes when we become convinced that we have a better line on ‘the truth’ than others have, we can slip into some level of intolerance toward those who see ‘the truth’ differently.
