Ours is very much to reason why

MOST of us live in an echo chamber. Our family and friends tend to hold similar enough opinions to us or, if not, you or they generally learn to keep the peace by keeping a lid on contentious views. The people whose opinions we read or follow are either those with similar opinions to us, or, those with wildly-opposing ones so we have something to get incensed about and fuel our bonding with the people in our particular echo chamber.

It’s good to get out of the echo chamber sometimes. For instance, I don’t have a religious background so my absence of faith is a culmination rather than an aberration. It has therefore been very interesting for me to meet devout people and to learn what they believe and why. Their explanation of their principles helped me understand that there are many layers to faith.

Recently I met someone who had been a proud No voter in both the marriage and abortion referendums. It was a change from my usual echo chamber and, as the evening progressed, it turned out he was right-leaning regarding most things on which I would lean left. He is also a Trump fan. Discussion ensued.

He explained his views, however, not as principles but through single, worst-case scenarios. He was against marriage equality because at one Pride he had seen a lesbian couple with a little boy with a penis painted on his head. He was against repealing the Eighth because he once knew someone who had four abortions. (He failed to see the irony when he later expounded on his dislike of condoms.) He was against immigration because, of the 20 people who came asking our group for money, one was foreign. I’m biased, but without explainable principles, it all sounded a bit like hate.