When I was an art major in college, I always felt like a peripheral person. If that’s not a thing yet, I say we make it a thing. A peripheral person is one who doesn’t feel like they fit in with the group, so they stick around on the outside edges. Sometimes this may be perceived, but sometimes it may be real. Mine was real. I was a straight, white, Christian, male with good parents and no trauma surrounded by peers who were not really those things at all. I was observant and interested, but I mostly found my place on the periphery of most studio conversations and social interactions. I was close enough to hear the conversations and to participate if I felt compelled, but I was mostly just observing and soaking up information. I was learning.
I have this student now, we’ll call her Carolina, who I relate to a lot. She comes from a similar family background and checks a lot of the boxes I did as a student. In an art department you’ll see people with dyed hair, impromptu haircuts, goth outfits, rainbow outfits, shirts with political slogans, spikes, chains and metal t-shirts sitting beside pretty people with perfect makeup, freshly curled hair and an outfit suitable for Sunday worship service. Carolina most often has a t-shirt, jeans and her hair pulled back into a pony tail. Obviously, I don’t relate well to the hair, but the outfit, the background and the disposition all fit pretty well.
There are days when the more flamboyant and colorful people will do something a bit over the top in the sculpture studio. In that moment when most people in the room are processing what just happened, Carolina will make eye contact with me, share a knowing smile, and turn and walk out of the room. The silent message is, “That was really weird, wasn’t it? We’re not weird like that.”
It's nice to have a Carolina. Sometimes when things feel so very odd and irrational, Carolina makes me feel grounded. Like, it’s not us, it’s them, you know?
While I’m thankful for Carolina, I’m also thankful for the others who hang around a lot in the studio and in my office. We also share some things in common, but we have some very cool differences. I’m not sure how specific I can be without you knowing exactly who I’m talking about, but let’s give it a go. I’d say we all have some shared moral values and definitely a dark (but really funny) sense of humor, but we have very different fashion ideas, come from different family situations and our friend groups outside of school are also very different. In this group, it’s our differences that make things fun and interesting. When we have conversations about big things, we don’t always agree and that space between our thoughts is so important. Sometimes we all go away in silence and we ponder the different perspectives for hours after. It gives us space to think about what we believe and why. It gives us space to change our minds.
In the dumpster fire that is our country recently, I’ve seen a lot of different reactions to the tragic and disturbing events we see in the news and on our social media platforms. Since the rise of the “clown”, I’ve noticed a few different times that people have posted things like “if you support ___insert most recent abomination of freedom here___ , then please unfollow me”. I’ve heard people say they have cut off family and friends who have different political ideas. Most of my life I’ve also known religious people who will limit their time with you unless you subscribe to the exact same explanation of God as they do.
I understand this sentiment of wanting to block and unfriend people as an act of anger. It’s so hard to believe that someone could intellectually support something that seems to obviously wrong to you. Like you, I’ve asked myself out loud, “How could anyone still support that at this point?”
I think there’s a grave danger in this way of thinking and I want to share that with you for consideration.
You ever wonder how anyone could possibly believe or support something that to you is so obviously wrong? You may not like the answer. It’s because, like you, they’ve chosen to surround themselves with like-minded people. Wait, don’t leave yet. Hear me out, please.
Let’s start with “them”. Because, come on, what idiots, am I right? While we can see clearly that they are wrong and maybe devoid of a soul, what we can’t always see so clearly is that they have chosen to live each day in an echo chamber of their own beliefs. If they wake up and grab their phones to look at the news, what news will they see? The one they trust, which they’ve chosen because the network’s slant aligns with their belief system. Then they open social media. They’ll see an endless scroll of posts that also align with their belief system. That’s how algorithms work. Their friends were chosen because of shared beliefs as well, so when they get text messages or hang out in person, the topics align with those beliefs. Their lives have been carefully curated to avoid troubling thoughts from the other side. There’s no reason to question their beliefs. Ever.
So that thing that happened recently, they didn’t experience that the same way you did. Every bit of information they got was passed through a totally different filter. Their “truth” was provided to them from a different source. The “facts” you know, they never even got to see those and they have no reason to go looking for them. The thing happened, they were told about it by their chosen system of filters, and they formed (or reinforced) an opinion about it.
You see how that works, right?
But what if we flip that little magnifying glass and look at us? The sane people. Do you see how you and I do the same thing? We’ve curated our lives to have our own filters and our “truth” is handed to us through that same process.
In curated lives like these, the only hope we have of keeping an open mind and considering different thoughts is by keeping people in our lives who do not think like we do.
An open mind used to be a sign of intelligence. The ability to hold opposing thoughts in your head was a sign of education. Believe it or not, people used to go to college not to get a specific job, but to learn how to think and filter ideas for themselves.
Even Carolina and I don’t see eye to eye on everything. I’m sure she’d be the first to tell you that! But I love having her similar but different perspective in my life. My office pals will also tell you I’m a crazy person and that I have some very weird beliefs. But I’m so glad to have them around to share different views with me so that I can keep growing and changing. Maybe I’ll have a little influence on them too. And all the other students, the ones who have different gender ideas, different religious ideas, different sexual identities, different family situations, they all have things to teach me, too.
My humble suggestion is to not block the different people from your life. My suggestion is to welcome them. Befriend them, have conversations with them. We didn’t get into this terrible situation in our country by mixing and mingling. We got here because our churches, clubs, neighborhoods and political parties kept saying it’s “us vs. them”.
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