Connection and Hostility — From an Individual Perspective to a Broader Sense.
Disclaimer: This was originally written and published on 11 Jun 2018 in my deleted WordPress account. —Few edits on 19 Apr 2020
It should make sense that smarter people are the ones who should adjust to uneducated ones. The more oblivious people are, the more vulnerable they are to hostility. The more they hold into their beliefs, the harder to correct them. They will respond as if being attacked even your reasons are logical and valid. Thus, it’s not enough that you know more, you should also know how to share them.
Why people get hostile?
There are different reasons but the one that is acceptable is that we have our own differences in culture and language. The more you engage with different people, the more you realized that they have their habits inherited from their environment. It is noticeable that people who are either older or has explored lots of environment have accepted these by normalizing these habits of people from a different culture. That if you deny that there were cultural and generational behavior conflicts, you would suppose they are just being mere offensive.
Do you really have the right to correct other people?
You cannot correct people directly and you should not be the one in the first place if you haven’t evaluated yourself. Are you the one close-minded? Are you the one being biased? How much you really know? How many facts do you really know? Are you even sure it’s a fact? There are lots of questions you need to ask yourself and it also requires observation if your actions reflect what you think of yourself. Of course, it hurts if you realize yourself you’ve been following the wrong path. But it’s one of the mental biases you should realize right now. You should know it is wrong. You need to snap out kid! You — have — to — let — go. Let go of your ego!
It is a special skill to connect.
Being able to connect with people effortlessly is something I would consider as a special skill any person can have. Being able to have a rich conversation with strangers, able to hear fascinating stories directly from anyone, able to express your ideas in either a casual or formal meeting, etc. It’s a kind of charm but not too admiring. It’s kind of communication but not only through visual or verbal. It’s more than that. It is as if we already know things, we just need to confirm them and in order to confirm things, you should have this special skill in order to get the information you needed.
But in a broader sense, it tends to gets too complex.
Let’s say you have learned lots of things in different areas, you become an adult and had more experience. It would be particularly hard to just accept what people are just saying, despite the fact that you already knew. You cannot truly identify if they can’t just articulate what they knew or they don’t know it at all. This often happens in a political sense, that we become disconnected with people who have different opinions with the world. But again, it is a matter of knowledge. This is a hard thing to say, but would you really want to disconnect to a family just because they supported a politician that you know had done several unacceptable things? Maybe you feel safe with them because you knew them. Maybe you feel comfortable because you know they already have shown you that they would be there when you needed them. But that doesn’t mean you’d be able to truly show them what you truly think inside, because you know deep down that it is different. That what they know is not right based on how you assess it both morally and logically. That they are not on the same level of empathy or understanding towards other people or matter. But we have our own little ways to share wisdom, maybe it would be helpful when you let the others understand it and at least you have tried to educate them.
