Splitting the World into Good and Evil - and Making Decisions We Regret
By Amanda Ripley
The Washington Post
January 4, 2024
"Humans carve the world cleanly in two when they feel threatened…
"Splitting is deeply comforting, down in your gut. It promises an escape hatch from chaos…
"But many things can be true at once. People usually don’t fit into convenient categories, try as we might to sort them that way.
"For example, about 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab. Where do those 2 million people fit in a split universe? Last month, 70 percent of these Arab citizens said they felt part of Israel — up from just 48 percent in June. Meanwhile, among Jewish Israelis, less than 4 percent said they trust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the most reliable source of information on the war against Hamas, according to another poll. How do we make sense of this? Splitting is a broken compass in a byzantine world…
"The lesson here is to always assume that humans reside along a spectrum of behavior — if they fit anywhere at all. Journalists, in particular, must help us see this — by interviewing people who have changed their minds or who are unsure and don’t fit neatly into one camp. Amplify their voices; they are a lot like most of us…
"One of the most helpful things I’ve read since the war in Gaza began was Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s interview with Israeli writer Etgar Keret for the New York Times. In the days after Hamas’s attacks, he felt the urge to split — and he was actively fighting it, working to see the fuller catastrophe, so to speak: ‘I think that in our souls, or our minds, or whatever you call it, there is something very complex, some ability to contain ambiguity, not to be swept with only one emotion. To be able to inhale the complexity of existing,’ he said…
"That may be the best advice for living in a time like this: ‘Inhale the complexity.’ See the pain.
"Beware black-and-white thinking — and rest your tired eyes on the gray. That’s where all the action is."
About Heart of a Nation
Heart of a Nation is working to empower emerging American, Israeli and Palestinian changemakers to improve their political cultures.
אנחנו מכנסים הוגים מובילים, פעילים חברתיים, ומחוללי שינוי לעתיד, אמריקאים, ישראלים ופלסטינאים, המחויבים לשיפור החברות שלהם.
نحن أمريكيون وإسرائيليون وفلسطينيون نبني ونكوّن روابط من أجل التعلم والتفكير والمشاركة معًا حتى نشجع الحلول التقدمية بشأن القضايا التي تهمنا جميعًا.