After last year’s presidential election, Democrats who were shocked that Trump won were encouraged to step outside their bubbles.
This isn’t bad advice, but it isn’t just urban Democrats who should step outside of their bubbles. All of us should work to understand people who are different from ourselves by exposing ourselves to all sorts of diversity.
It can be difficult for us to step outside of our insulated worlds. Sometimes there are invisible barriers that are hard to overcome. If you aren’t wealthy, how likely is it that you’ll get to know a wealthy person? Sometimes we’re afraid of people who are different from us. Have you ever ignored a homeless person because you feared interacting with them? Often we simply prefer to be with people who are like ourselves.
But here are just some of the reasons why we should make the effort anyway:
- It will help us develop understanding and empathy. As a Christian, I believe in a God who embodies love and who calls me to love others. But I can’t truly love people if I won’t make an effort to understand them. Even if you don’t believe in a moral imperative to love, there’s a selfish reason to understand and empathize with people who are different from you: If you are trying to persuade others, you won’t be very good at it unless you understand their point of view. As someone who works in marketing, I know that my job is to reach potential customers. In order to do that, I need to understand them.
- It will shake up our worldview. We don’t really like to have our worldview challenged, but I think it’s better to have beliefs that are able to stand up to different viewpoints than to build our lives around ideas that are too fragile to be questioned. And it’s better to be open to changing one’s mind than to steadfastly cling to something because we’re afraid to consider alternatives.
- It will enhance our creativity. Creativity flourishes when we expose ourselves to novelty. Whether we’re interested in being more creative artistically, generating new business ideas, or making scientific discoveries, one of the best things we can do for our brains is to step outside our bubbles.
There are countless ways for us to expose ourselves to different people and viewpoints. Here are a few ideas:
- Get your news from a variety of sources. Read outside your geographical area. If you only read your hometown paper, subscribe to the online version of a paper from another part of the country. Better yet, get your news from international sources as well. And if your news sources are only reinforcing your beliefs, it’s time to expand your list of go-to sources.
- Diversify the people you follow on Twitter. When I was fairly new to Twitter, I realized that almost all of the people I was following were white, so I made a point of following people who did not look like me. Now my biggest challenge is to make sure I’m following people I disagree with. I don’t think it’s a big surprise to my readers when I say that I lean to the left . But I’ve made a point of following some conservative columnists and politicians. And if a person with whom I disagree follows me, I will often follow them back. (A recent follower who didn’t pass the test? Someone whose tweets all seemed to be anti-Hillary Clinton rants. It’s fine not to like her, but I don’t have time for tweet after tweet about locking her up.)
- Listen to podcasts that expose you to diversity. As a white person, I find NPR’s Code Switch podcast very worthwhile. And the Hidden Brain podcast helps me understand why we prefer our bubbles in the first place. There are many ways you can diversify your listening habits, whether you expose yourself to different political opinions, listen to world news, or just explore music you wouldn’t normally listen to.
- Read widely. Don’t stick to your favorite genre, and be sure to read books by authors who are different from you. Read both nonfiction and fiction about situations you’ve never experienced and topics you’ve only examined from one point of view (if at all).
- Be open to friends who are different from you… but don’t let differences be the motive for pursuing a relationship with someone. No one wants to be your project, the person you’re trying to get acquainted with because you don’t know anyone who is [black/gay/an atheist/a Republican/autistic/you name it]. Instead, simply be aware of who you’re surrounding yourself with. Are you excluding people from your life because they’re different from you? Are you open to meeting people who aren’t like you? Put yourself in the way of potential friendships with people who are different from you and allow friendships to develop naturally as you would with any other person.
- Don’t make anyone your token. I don’t want to represent all Christians to people who aren’t Christian. That’s a heavy burden to bear. I’m human, and I don’t want people to chalk up my faults to a certain group. “Well that’s Christians for you.” You know you aren’t representative of your entire race or gender or religion or political party. Get to know many different people and recognize the variety of personalities that exist within any group.
We’ll never understand everyone, and naturally we’ll always find it easiest to see things from our own points of view. But every time we choose to step outside our bubbles, we expand them. And as we expand these bubbles, we’ll increase our capacity for understanding people who are different from ourselves. Maybe that’s the best way to heal the fractures between us.