We’re stuck in a weird place in our world right now, where people are feeling like they have to set up firm boundaries around their beliefs. There’s also the angle that if you take one position, like supporting gun rights, you are forced to take a particular position on a separate subject, like opposing abortion rights. Very rarely do people choose just one of those items.
Instead, I encourage people to soften those boundaries and tackle each issue as an independent idea, which is exactly what it is. As Gary Vaynerchuk would say, be more purple (not just a “red” or “blue” political supporter).
We also have the issue of considering both sides of an issue. Take gun rights, for example — most people think you’re either for or against, but there is a lot of middle ground. Shankar Vedantam calls this “integrated complexity“, and it’s a powerful idea to grasp.
In his book “The Black Swan“, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it this way:
“Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries.”
If you lean to one side politically on a variety of issues, that’s certainly fine, but be willing to cross to the “other side” on various issues if that’s what really makes more sense.
