the other side

This note last modified September 1, 2024

The other side is my term for people who are completely dissimilar to me politically, and view the world in a different way to me. I use “the other side” instead of naming a specific political party because I want to be generic and broad as I speak; attaching labels doesn’t make anything any more clear and just distracts from the important points.

I know many who do not want to engage with the other side, but my personal belief is that we are forced to live in a world with people who are dangerously dissimilar to us, so understanding their belief system is important.

the other side may be a creation of propaganda

society
- the other side
philosophy - youtube
- Psychology, Politics, and Political psychology. Fantastic videos on the other side.
manufacturing the other side
- the other side sometimes doesn’t exist in the way you think it does. It’s often a fiction created by propaganda (sometimes gray propaganda), a mishmash of people with different views who are strawmanned and represented by vocal minorities.
hate
- But as they get older, they find out about people who don’t subscribe to this mold. They find out about “others”, “others” who may be gay, or choose not to have children, or don’t have career aspirations. And maybe, these “others” are happy when they are not. And the very existence of “the happy other” strikes at the foundational belief that living “the right way” leads to happiness. Maybe they do want children, but meeting someone who is happy without children still causes them to question whether they made the right choice. Maybe they could have been happy following some other path.