When the world says “two sides,” remember we are a sphere.

We live in a time that insists on a simple map: left vs. right, us vs. them. It’s tidy, it’s clickable, and it sells outrage. But the truth is older and messier: we are a globe — layered, complicated, and whole. When we let ourselves be boxed into two camps, we make it easy for others to use us. History shows how well that works for power: conquerors, princes, clerics, revolutionaries — all have split people to rule them. The Crusades, the sectarian wars, the civil wars — these are not ancient curiosities. They are patterns. Today the pattern runs on code and algorithms; the instruments have changed, the profit motive is louder, but the game is the same: divide, distract, consolidate power.

If we want something different, we need to stop pretending the problem belongs to “the other side.” It doesn’t. Everybody is doing the same thing: clicking, fastening beliefs like armor, marching into cultural battlefields. We’ve been convinced by repetition and fear that the two choices are either to unplug entirely and shelter ourselves from difference, or dive in and fight the fight for a side. Both responses are understandable. Both are insufficient.

The surprising thing is how much different traditions point to a similar solution — not the same language, but the same direction:

• Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (A radical command to treat real people with dignity.)
• Buddhist teaching (Dhammapada): “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.”
• Humanist thought: we are responsible for each other — use reason and empathy to improve human welfare and hold ourselves accountable for harm.
• Many Pagan paths: everything is connected; harm one part of the web, and the whole web frays.

Different words, same heart. Each asks us to look up from our screens and see the human being in front of us.

This is what I see happening and why it matters. Divide-and-conquer works because it simplifies stories. If you’re anxious, it’s easier to believe a tidy villain and a tidy hero. But real life is morally complicated: people make mistakes, institutions fail, and systems of power manipulate truth to survive. When we respond by name-calling or by closing the circle tighter, we hand control back to those same powers. We become tools in their game.

Worse: that division becomes a practical harm. A community that distrusts itself can’t cooperate on basic needs — schools, public health, roads, food. When conversation dies, so does complicity to common good.

A different path: accountability + space to grow that is not a directive for MAGA or for liberals or for republicans or for democrats but for all of us living and breathing on this Earth.

This isn’t pie-in-the-sky kumbaya. It’s practical, hard, and slow work:

1. Name the harm and hold people to account. Calling out lies, corruption, and abuse is essential. Accountability is not the same as cancellation; it’s the practice of truth-telling with consequences that encourage repair.
2. Hold restorative spaces. Practices like listening circles or structured apologies (the kind Dr. Shawne Duperon uses: “the apology you’ll never receive”) let people tell what hurt them and be heard without immediate defense. Healing is not negotiation — it’s witness.
3. Limit the feed, widen your circle. Curate a healthier media diet. Then intentionally seek conversations with people who are different: not to win, but to understand. Tiny experiments: one coffee; one question; one story shared.
4. Work together on something real. Shared projects (community garden, neighborhood repair, soup kitchen) rewire trust faster than arguments do. Shared sweat is better than shared outrage.
5. Teach discretion and humility. Ask: “What don’t I know?” When someone says they’ve been harmed, resist the rush to explain away their pain. Hold space, listen, then ask how to help repair it.
6. Model public virtue. Vote responsibly, support transparency, demand antitrust and anti-corruption enforcement, and hold institutions to standards of care.

What different worldviews see when this works, applicable to everyone and taking personal responsibility for our own minds, bodies and souls:

• If you’re a person of faith, you’ll call it the kingdom of love breaking in.
• If you’re Buddhist, you may call it the softening of the heart that ends cycles of harm.
• If you’re a humanist, you’ll see increased human flourishing through reason and empathy.
• If you’re Pagan, you’ll notice the mending of the web that holds us all.

All of these are saying, in their own words, that repair begins when we stop weaponizing differences and start being accountable to one another.

Something to try:

1. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb for an hour.
2. Invite one person who disagrees with you to a short, listening conversation (not debate). Let them speak for five minutes; you do not respond except to say, “I hear you.” Then switch.
3. Notice how it feels. Repeat once a week.

This is not about abandoning convictions. It’s about refusing to be used by means of them.

A closing truth: we are less a pair of opposing labels than a single human family — fragile, wounded, capable of harm, and equally capable of healing.

Remember and repeat what works for you:

• We all are human and held.
  
• We all are scarred and sacred.
  
• We all are neighbors waiting to be seen.
  
• We all are keepers of one another.

If you want one line to hold in your pocket, try this: We are not enemies; we are one another’s keepers. Start with one conversation. Hold that conversation with humility, accountability, and courage. Everything that follows—policy, justice, real safety—has a better chance of working when we remember that.