How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division

by Elif Shafak

How is it possible then that in an era when social media was expected to give everyone an equal voice, so many continue to feel voiceless?

Media panels often exacerbate dualities. On our television screens or YouTube channels almost every day we watch people from opposite camps, talking and shouting over each other. They are not there to listen and they are not there to learn. They are there to make a point, and to harangue and fulminate. Likewise, far too often, we viewers are not tuning in with the aim of discovering anything new either – ordinarily we want to see ‘our guy’ beat ‘their guy’.

This is not to deny that our accents are fundamentally important to who we are, and they are near and dear to our hearts. They are an inextricable trace of the paths we have travelled, the loves we have loved and never forgotten, the scars we still carry and which still hurt. But that doesn’t mean we are from our accents. A human being, every human being, is complicated – layers upon layers of ideas, feelings, perceptions, recollections, reactions, desires and dreams. By placing us into boxes they are denying us our own truth. By placing others into boxes we are denying them their own truth. And so it goes.

We live in an age in which there is too much information, less knowledge and even less wisdom. That ratio needs to be reversed. We definitely need less information, more knowledge, and much more wisdom.