It’s Hard To Empathize With Other People’s Beliefs If They’ve Experienced Parts Of The World You Have Not.

The gap between how you feel as an outsider and how you feel when experiencing something firsthand can be a mile wide.

There are theories that big wars tend to happen 20-40 years apart because that’s the amount of time it takes to cycle through a new generation of voters, politicians, and generals who aren’t scarred by the last war. Other political trends — social rights, economic theories, budget priorities — follow a similar path.

You can’t empathize with something if you haven’t experienced it; maybe this is true of wars as well.

It’s not that people forget. It’s that empathy and open-mindedness cannot recreate what genuine fear and uncertainty feel like.

I guess that more than half of all disagreements — personal, domestic, international, financial — would disappear if you could see the world through the lens of your opponent and had experienced what they have in life.

Created from: How People Think 202212291148

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uid: 202212291713 tags: #insights

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