The Questioner asked: How should we treat others?

Ramanah Maharshi responded: There are no others. 

I think I have always known this. There are no others. We are all part of one big whole. The earth’s a big blue marble in a Petri dish, and we are each a single cell in the giant organism of it all. (I’m mixing my metaphors)

Maybe being raised up by a culturally and economically mixed city, with a rich diversity of teachers, made me appreciate our sameness. Maybe growing up in a non-religious, non-political home made me realize those things are really unnecessary tribal dividers. Or maybe it was the mescaline… 

But I know, deep down, we are all one and the same, together in the collective.

In our current version of human society there are socially constructed differences, separations, and hierarchies. The people with the most means and money have the most opportunity and influence. Geography and genealogy set us on a socially predetermined path. It is up to us venture off that path and seek out other ideas and opinions.

When someone expresses their opinions and beliefs, we call it free speech. But when those opinions and beliefs are harmful and hateful to any one member, they do damage to the whole. 

When we begin to believe that our opinions are facts, and we plant our feet firmly and say ‘prove me wrong’ we aren’t looking to make the world better for all of us. Only some of ‘us’. Not ‘the others’.

This idea that we are divided as a nation of two extremes, diametrically opposed, has been nurtured by main stream media, and overfed by social media, for so long.

But, I have not found this to be true in my own real life. As with most things, politically we fall on a bell curve. In real life, there are more Americans hovering around the middle than on the extreme ends. In real life, most people are willing to listen to each other’s stories. In real life, most people are open to civil discourse. Face to face, in real life, most people are not extreme. 

Social media relies on extremes. Extremes get clicks. Extremes make money. The algorithm uses rage bait to infuriate us. It reinforces our implicit biases, and plays with our emotions and our egos, over and over and over, until we slowly begin to slide out to one end of the bell curve. It rewards extremists with clicks and fame and money. The louder and more extreme, the better! 

Charlie Kirk, may he rest in peace, was loud and extreme. A modern day carnival barker. Boisterous, smug and self-righteous. Perched under a sign that said ‘Prove Me Wrong’. His schtick was refusing to believe that his opinions were not facts. He capitalized on white conservative heterosexual Christian fears that they are being replaced by ‘Others’. He cherry picked bible verses and used Jesus as a weapon against anyone who did not agree with his world view. He spewed hateful and harmful rhetoric against other Americans. He eschewed empathy, compassion and acceptance, and promoted rigid exclusionary whitewashed ethnocentricity.  

He was a snake oil salesman. And the ingredients in his elixir were not benign. They did damage. 

Under his banner, he embraced the idea of Me vs You, and promoted the idea of Us vs Them. He reinforced the idea that there are two groups of Americans. ‘Those Who Agree with Me’ and ‘The Others’. Diametrically opposed, and at war with eachother. 

What he did not realize, is that there are no others. We are all part of the one big whole. Many of us realized this viscerally on 9/11/2001, and we can realize this again.

There is more sameness in us than difference. We are each a tiny part of the one big whole. 

And we have definitely dug ourselves into one big hole.

How do we get out?

We cannot sit alone, perched up on a raised platform, smugly pontificating. We cannot look down and speak poorly of others- because then we are speaking poorly of ourselves. 

We must do it in real life. Face to face. Together. We start here, on the bottom, together, and we lift eachother up. One by one. With honest, open, human conversation. With a desire to elevate the collective. With interest and curiosity. With empathy and kindness. Undivided. Indivisible. Together as one human organism.

This is the only way. Prove me wrong.