The Role of Neutrality in Society

We're in a world of opinions that have made life into one gigantic game of truth or dare. We never know how somebody will react to our opinion. In many ways it has become scary to share opinions in public or on social media. Facts are more subjective than ever. If we don't like somebody's opinions we lose respect for them because morality has taken over where simple political discourse left off. Suddenly our political beliefs are a reflection of who we are as an individual instead of being just simple political beliefs. Political policy is now a moral debate, creating more division than ever.

To exist in a world as divided and hostile as ours currently is, we have to be able to find peace, not internal peace - although that definitely helps - but neutrality. Neutrality is where peaceful, respectful, logical, rational, courteous dialogue begins. It is something that we've lost sight of and need to go back to.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "To listen well is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation." 

Listening isn't about responding. Listening isn't about figuring out how to win. Listening is about truly listening without any intention of doing anything other than listening. We have lost this skill in our hostile political environment. We listen to win. We listen to correct. We listen to argue. We listen to judge, debate, and defend.  We listen to corrupt, demean, and insult.

If we dig deeper into this problem what we find is that we have lost our ability to be neutral.  Neutrality is a philosophical construct that helps us see the problem with rigid judgment and defensiveness. It is not about apathy nor is it about putting our heads in the sand. Neutrality offers a lack of judgment that allows us to listen to each other instead of argue with each other.  

"To be truly free, one must be able to see things as they are, without attachment or aversion."
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj 

I've often said that perception is filtered through colored glasses. How we see the world is determined by our pain, previous experience, judgments, morality, and opinions. Those things turn our perspective into a fun house mirror, distorting the reality in front of us. If we simply took the glasses off and looked around, we'd see the division and chaos we've created. We could learn to talk to each other and stop defending ourselves. 

Without neutrality, all we see is the problem in everything. We become stuck in ego-based judgment and ridicule, unable to free ourselves from the painful story we choose to tell about the people that don't agree with us. Judgment prevents us from seeing things clearly. We're so attached to our own viewpoint we can't even begin to imagine the other side of the argument or how one might get there.  

What's interesting is that we're bordering on burnout. We're tired of defending ourselves and our ideas. We're starting to give up out of sheer exhaustion. People have lost interest. They are shutting off social media and the television. They are tuning it all out - not because they don't care but because they don't have enough energy to care the way they've been taught they are supposed to.  Caring means fighting. That's a definition of caring that cannot be maintained. We cannot continually fight without burning out at some point.

How can neutrality help with the exhaustion and burnout that people are feeling?

Neutrality helps us drop the fight. It gives us the ability to step back from the seemingly powerful viewpoints we have in order to see what's really happening. It allows us to stop looking for conspiracy theories, problems, and reasons to defend ourselves. It allows us to just see the plain truth without all the interference and fear.

Neutrality just means we don't rush to judgment. We don't look for a reason to argue or try to change anybody's mind. We simply allow things to be as they are. It doesn't mean we can't work towards more balance and unity. It just means we aren't so quick to cut off entire segments of the population because due to our political beliefs, we no longer respect each other as human beings.

I'm not asking you to agree with anything. I'm just asking that you slow down and realize what you're creating. Stop being afraid of what the other side is doing long enough to notice what you're doing because that's more important right now. Our fear of what the other side is going to do is overshadowing our ability to communicate respectfully with each other. 

We're too afraid of what might happen to notice what is already happening.

Back down. Become more neutral. Start paying attention and not just reactively defending your viewpoint. I don't care what your viewpoint is or which side of the proverbial aisle you hang out on. I do care that we learn to respect each other again. Neutrality can help us do that. We need to remember that we don't need to agree to co-exist.

Love to all.

Della