Exception or not?

A couple of months ago I had a really nasty fall, from which I am now pretty much recovered. The story of the very kind couple who helped me is here 

It was a lesson that at the time I took on board wholeheartedly. Since then, the constant dripping of bad news and awful people, especially politicians, has given me cause to reflect. Why would someone help a neighbour or a stranger and then help to elect someone whose chief aim is to help himself? Why show compassion in everyday life and then vote for a rich person who shows no compassion in his? It occurred to me that they almost certainly take the same view as I do of the world, just in a different way. You see, when I see kindness and compassion I see it as learnt behaviour whereas when I see unkindness and lack of compassion I see it as real human nature.

The people whose politics I despise no doubt see things in terms of people from different backgrounds having different values and natures, and anyone from those backgrounds who are very similar are simply exceptions to the rule. Now, there are cultural and value based differences, and they can sometimes be significant, but we are all human beings and that’s something that both sides fail to remember. I was very happy  to discuss politics with those who disagreed with me years ago, but now I avoid it like the plague. I was happy to have friends with very different views on politics years ago, but I wouldn’t be nowadays. I have retreated into my echo chamber on and offline and that echo chamber cannot be breached. Maybe this is why I see human beings as basically bad, because I don’t get to know them if they hold very different views. There’s a Guardian section called Dining Across the Divide where people with diametrically opposite views have dinner with each other and see the human beings on the other side. In most cases an understanding is reached although the differences remain. Perhaps I need to apply that type of approach, but I don’t have it in me at the moment. It’s a difficult situation for all of us and unless something happens to bring us together I can only see it getting worse. However kind strangers can be, they will remain strangers until someone makes the first move.