In the Avengers story, a murderous psychopath is convinced half the living creatures in the universe need to die for peace and balance to exist. The sense of inevitability permeates the character’s every dialogue and action.
I wonder how many people, consciously or not, have transcribed their anger, hatred, etc of this character on to Bill Gates. I hear narratives about how he wants to kill a bunch of people with vaccines for a population control agenda. I’ve seen the interviews and understand the connections to planned parenthood, birth control, etc. As far as I understand, population growth works itself out as prosperity increases and there is a connection to having control over your own reproduction and being more self-directed in terms of your economic outcome. From this framework, talking about “population control” isn’t some Thanos move, but a recognition that empowering people to have only the children they want to have and to ensure those children live to be adults via good sanitation, access to healthcare, food, clean water, etc makes sense.
Are these not the things Bill Gates is funding?
Can Bill Gates be a ruthless business man (and potentially a similar hard-nosed philanthropist stretching his money as far as it will go) while also working on improving the world? Do we have space in our minds for these complexities or can we only fall into the “good guy” vs “bad guy” characterizations of the cartoons we watched as kids?
On this and many other topics (vaccines, government, military, 5G, universal ID, blockchain, Covid-19, 9-11, religion, politics, social justice, UBI, capitalism, socialism, etc) I have passionate friends who are completely convinced they have the story figured out. They know who the bad guys are and who to blame. They have their “data” sources which cater to their biases, and they are sure anyone else who disagrees is ignorant.
I think the world is far more complex than that. I think now, more than ever, we can practice mindfulness to recognize our own biases, set them aside, and learn from others. This doesn’t mean turning off our brains, and it certainly doesn’t mean blocking or censoring others we don’t agree with our don’t understand. The movies and media we consume literally programs and trains our emotional responses. We assign negative (and positive, when it comes to hero worship) emotions to real people who are far more complex than fictional characters.
Let’s try to rise above the trap. What if each day, we spent a little time listening and understanding people we disagree with. We don’t have to turn off our brains in doing so. On the contrary, memorizing logical fallacies, non-violent communication, and similar techniques will require our best wits, not to prove ourselves right all along, but to bypass our own filters and biases to seek understanding. Both sides of a debate describing each other as ignorant is not helpful. Listening and learning is.
I hope you learn something that surprises you today. Something that changes how you see the world to better understand it and those around you.
Love, peace, blessing, and lots of light shining all over.
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