It is rather a binary way of doing ethics and politics, Gentle Reader. If you believe strongly in social and economic equality and respect human rights and social diversity; if you uphold marriage equality, freedom of choice and a secular agora then you are left wing. A lefty, so to speak. It means you are anti-religion, anti-family, anti-capitalism, anti-military. You are at best a socialist, at worst, an old school Maoist.
If you are right wing, then you believe in small government, you're pro-life, anti-gay, pro-capitalist, and strongly religious. You are also less than likely to care about people living in poverty and you are going to tell them it's their fault for not working hard.
People who strongly identify themselves as left or right often seem to hate each other without mercy. They don't appear to consider each other as human. The vitriol that gets flung between them can be quite unnerving though I will admit one thing here. People who strongly identify with the right are more likely to vilify and demonize their alleged opponents on the left, who generally respond with mockery and sarcasm and a certain self-righteousness that even I, a lefty and proud of it, find embarrassing at times.
Before I go on writing let me "make one thing perfectly clear" (in the words of that very infamously famous rightwing president of the USA, Richard Nixon). I reject this binary. To me it isn't left or right that matters, but that we are all essentially human. I have found that almost all my other friends on the left wholeheartedly agree with me on this. I have seldom encountered similar courtesy among those right-wingers I have known.
So, here we already have a disadvantage. If we recognize the innate humanity and value in each person and dedicate our lives to honouring and upholding this, to many on the right, this places us squarely on the left. If our preference is to engage others who disagree with us or who would pose a threat to us in meaningful and respectful dialogue that can foster reconciliation and healing then we are weak bleeding heart liberals. We are lefties. If we prefer to engage in peace and in peaceful ways of addressing conflict, this makes us lefties. If we are moved to compassion by the rampages of unrestrained capitalism as it mows down human lives and leaves those unable to compete in poverty and misery, and we try to constructively address this, our friends on the right simply diss us as lefties and refuse to listen. If we prefer to speak to and of others respectfully and refuse to endorse cruel and hateful slurs we are called politically correct. We are lefties.
The major obstacle to fostering meaningful dialogue consists in two things: the right's problem with fear, and the left's tendency towards self-righteousness. What gets forgotten is that we are all human beings. Some of us are very scared, often lack education or, if we are educated, it is generally in business and economics but not in the humanities, and we tend to ignore the humanity in others because of our fear. We endorse brutal, militaristic and punitive measures in order to remain competitive and strong, and this undermines and disgraces our sense of humanity.
If the left is more enlightened than the right, and I for one strongly believe this, then it is also our responsibility to recognize the cognitive deficits of our friends on the right, not to fear or parody (people on the right tend to have very thin skins. So do a lot of folks on the left, by the way). More important, I think, to refuse and resist the temptation to demonize and to look for what we all share in common and do what we can to build on this.
What is going to make this difficult will be reaching past the irrational fear and paranoia of people on the right. Studies have shown that the amygdala in the brains of conservative thinkers tends to be exceptionally big and strong. This is also known as the reptilian brain which tends to govern the basic need instincts of comfort and survival. When one is thinking with the reptilian brain it becomes virtually impossible to approach them with logic or reason. I cite here as an example all the Trump supporters in the US who elected the Dump into power.
It's going to take a lot of patience, time, a little compromise and a lot of love.
By the way, some lefties, such as this one, are Christians, very faithful, devoted Christians. I think what tends to keep Christians like me on the left and away from the right is that we tend to recognize God in terms of love, mercy, forgiveness and justice over vindictive punishment and biblical literalism.
In other words, Gentle Reader, whether left or right or none of the above, it's going to have to be all about love.
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