May of Death and ResurrectionHuman beings are gregarious by nature. We have the need to integrate ourselves into a group with which we share something: identity, values, interests..... The problem is when these groups become prisons. ideological that impede dialogue.
The clearest example of this can be found in the political landscape, where parties exploit the "us" versus everyone else, fostering a centrifuge effect that has given rise to the current climate of polarization.
The contrary is judged for being contrary, every last gesture is analyzed looking for defects that reaffirm why we do not belong to that other group, while their virtues, as annoying, we try to minimize them.
Men versus women, young versus old, conservatives versus progressives, madridistas versus culés, believers face to face with agnostics... You have to define yourself, you have to affiliate yourself with what group are you and who are you against?
We inform ourselves in the media and with communicators who agree with our point of view, because when we change brands we become uncomfortable.
We like watertight compartments, encapsulating people, because that simplifies our relationships. If you go to Mass, then you are right-wing, homophobic and bullfighting; if you wear dreadlocks, then you are extreme left-wing, animalist and smoke marijuana; if you are young, you are only interested in social networks, you are pro-abortion and do not know what it is to work; and if you are older, you do not know anything and only think about money. Prejudices make our lives easier because they save us from thinking, but the truth is that they are not true. We don't know a person until we talk to them, we know their history, their circumstances, their motivations and their fears, and many times we are surprised when, after a conversation with that person we disliked, we discover someone with whom we would love to spend more time or even a lifetime, as happened to me with the person who is now my wife.
In its message For World Communications Day, which we will celebrate next Sunday, Pope Francis invites us to foster open and welcoming communication, and encourages us to practice listening "which requires waiting and patience, as well as a refusal to assert our point of view in a prejudiced way (...) This leads the listener to become attuned to the same wavelength, to the point that he or she comes to feel the heartbeat of the other in his or her own heart. Then the miracle of encounter becomes possible, which allows us to look at each other with compassion, welcoming with respect the frailties of each one, instead of judging by hearsay and sowing discord and divisions".
The greatest danger of pigeonholing ourselves thinking that mine are the good guys and the others are the bad guys is when we are not able to see the bad guys inside or the good guys outside because it dislocates us.
Evil is smarter than any of us, it knows how to move well between sides and has no qualms about changing sides as it pleases. The fascist who justified the extermination of people with Down syndrome for the good of the Aryan race now does it for the defense of women under the banner of the right to decide and progressivism; the censor who used to decide what could or could not be said publicly to defend the values of dictatorial regimes, now does the same in favor of the woke culture; the pederast who used to become a priest to be close to children now becomes a base soccer coach or founds an NGO; the one who humiliated homosexuals for the mere fact of being homosexual, now treats traditional families with disdain; the feudal lord who exercised his unjust privileges over the people now does so as a bourgeois republican; the corrupt right-wing mayoress gives up her seat after the elections to a corrupt left-wing mayoress.... and so we could go on with an infinite list of evils that are not characteristic of one or another group, but of the human species.
When good or evil are relativized depending on which side they are on, we lose one of the greatest gifts, perhaps the greatest, that God gave us, that of freedom because we end up accepting evil or rejecting good in the face of the pressure of the herd.
Let us be as astute as snakes so that we do not see others in black and white, but in the infinite range of colors that is ours. Only in this way will we be able to detect our own evil and the good of others, because in reality we are all in the same group: that of the great human family wounded, albeit by evil from the beginning.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
