image by erin MC hammer

The other night, my dear friend N. came over to hang out for a while. She told me that she’d been fighting a lot with her mother, a born-again Christian who watches a lot of Fox News, about politics. “What I don’t understand,” N. told me, “is the vitriol. She might disagree with Obama, or with me, but why does she have to be so hateful?”

Remembering several occasions on which N. had spewed her own venom in the opposite direction, especially during last fall’s election, I gingerly asked her how her rigid stance differed from her mother’s. “Aren’t you just as much of a fundamentalist about your beliefs as she is?”

We talked through this for the next hour or so. “They don’t believe in evolution so they want to teach theology in schools! They hang out in their little enclaves and won’t even listen to anyone who doesn’t agree with them! They won’t let up on the most asinine things!”

In each case, I saw the truth in what she was saying. And I also saw, with more clarity than ever before, that each of those statements could be applied to “our” side as well. From the religious right’s point of view, random, causeless, meaningless evolution is a form of religion—an atheistic one they don’t want their kids learning. Liberals also hang out in little enclaves, and have unwavering stances. We are all guilty of the same rigid way of thinking.

As we talked about it and shared our ideas, we both got some clarity on this, which felt to me like a tremendously good thing. Because fundamentalism of every stripe means stagnation, when what we need right now is an entirely unprecedented explosion of freely-moving, rapidly-evolving ideas.

This free exchange and evolution can only come about when each of us realizes that, in this immense and wondrous universe, there might be something more important than our being right. This in turn can give us the courage to let go of our fundamentalism and join our fellow humans in reality, where no one person or group has the entire monopoly on the truth.

So how do we get there? Here are some ideas.

• Stop the jerking knee and be curious. When someone puts forward an opinion contrary to yours, ask him about it. Find out what’s motivating it. So often we think we know what others are thinking and are completely wrong. You may be surprised to find that the motivation makes sense to you, even if the conclusion doesn’t.
• Make the heroic effort to put yourself in the other side’s shoes. For instance, I firmly believe in a woman’s right to choose, but when I really try to see it from the other side, their stance also makes perfect sense. From where they are sitting, abortion is murder, a denial of God’s will, and an immoral shutting off of possibility. Understanding and appreciating this makes me see that other solutions may be possible other than screaming at each other for perpetuity.
• Remember that it’s about learning, not about being right. If you have a really hard time shutting up about your own opinions long enough to listen, pretend you are an anthropologist studying a fascinating worldview different from your own. This can help you maintain some sort of professional objectivity.
• Keep in mind that every idea is eventually replaced by a better one. Millions of people all throughout history thought that the world was absolutely flat, that Earth was the center of the universe, and that owning slaves fit right in with the laws of nature. These examples should provide you with the humility and perspective to see that you alone of all of humanity are not 100% right about everything.
• Look for agreements and new ways of seeing. A great example of this is the work of Evolutionary Evangelist Michael Dowd. Instead of setting up evolution in one corner and religion in the other, then dinging the bell so they can duke it out, he stepped back and saw a way for each to enrich the other. He saw two oppositional forces—the theory of evolution and monotheistic religion—and found a way to synthesize them into a new understanding that includes and transcends both truths. Each of us has the power to do the same.

In an evolutionary world where everything is constantly changing, clinging to our ideas as if they are the only valid ones serves absolutely no purpose. It just stops the flow. Let’s lay down our fundamentalism and figure out a new way to talk about what’s important to us, a way that allows the new to emerge.