You’d have to be living as a hermit, St. Anthony style, to not know there’s a polarisation of viewpoints at present. Friendships, customers, and family relationships have been lost. Dinner conversations have become tense. Rather than lament this, I think it is an opportunity for writers for several reasons.
Polarisation as inspiration
It’s tempting to use the pain of others as fodder for great characters. But there’s also the opportunity to sympathetically reveal character through conflict, with the ultimate aim of those characters coming together in the end. I have covered this a little on a previous blog post, but I think it can be taken further than romantic tropes. As mentioned in that blog, often consensus is impossible. But reaching an agreement to disagree can sometimes be enough, along with the journey of reflection on those opposing views.
Just as writing a different point of view forces us to dig deep into our understanding of humanity, reading different points of view can create empathy. Indeed, one of the reasons children should be encourage to read widely is to understand that others think differently to them. I vividly recall reading Pippi Longstocking and being absolutely shocked that someone would behave like that. Ultimately, it helped me understand some of the less compliant kids in my class.
Saul of Tarsus
The Bible is replete with countless instances of people whose worldviews clash and come together—and many where they do not, with disastrous consequences. I’d like to focus on my favourite worldview change: Saint Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus). His drastic worldview change results in his conversion from murderous Christophobe to one of the most fervent Christian apologists of all time. I’m going to quote at length from The Message, which I quite like for this story:
All this time Saul was breathing down the necks of the Master’s disciples, out for the kill. He went to the Chief Priest and got arrest warrants to take to the meeting places in Damascus so that if he found anyone there belonging to the Way, whether men or women, he could arrest them and bring them to Jerusalem. He set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?”
He said, “Who are you, Master?”
“I am Jesus, the One you’re hunting down. I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you’ll be told what to do next.”
His companions stood there dumbstruck—they could hear the sound, but couldn’t see anyone—while Saul, picking himself up off the ground, found himself stone-blind. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. He continued blind for three days. He ate nothing, drank nothing.
There was a disciple in Damascus by the name of Ananias. The Master spoke to him in a vision: “Ananias.”
“Yes, Master?” he answered.
“Get up and go over to Straight Avenue. Ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus. His name is Saul. He’s there praying. He has just had a dream in which he saw a man named Ananias enter the house and lay hands on him so he could see again.”
Ananias protested, “Master, you can’t be serious. Everybody’s talking about this man and the terrible things he’s been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem! And now he’s shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us.”
But the Master said, “Don’t argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to non-Jews and kings and Jews. And now I’m about to show him what he’s in for—the hard suffering that goes with this job.”
So Ananias went and found the house, placed his hands on blind Saul, and said, “Brother Saul, the Master sent me, the same Jesus you saw on your way here. He sent me so you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes—he could see again! He got to his feet, was baptized, and sat down with them to a hearty meal.
Saul spent a few days getting acquainted with the Damascus disciples, but then went right to work, wasting no time, preaching in the meeting places that this Jesus was the Son of God. They were caught off guard by this and, not at all sure they could trust him, they kept saying, “Isn’t this the man who wreaked havoc in Jerusalem among the believers? And didn’t he come here to do the same thing—arrest us and drag us off to jail in Jerusalem for sentencing by the high priests?”
— Acts 9:1-21, The Message
Not every worldview change will be religious, or as dramatic as Saul/Paul’s. But I think the account demonstrates not only the drama that caused Saul’s change to Paul, but also Ananias’s reluctance to accept him. Who would want to feel anything less than disgust for a man who’d been persecuting him and his friends? Without the urging of Jesus, I wonder whether there’d be such a peaceful resolution.
So, as mere writers, can we hope to bring people together?
Healing polarisation through our work
I believe there is hope. If we accept that the job of a writer is to offer insights into the universality of the human experience, then we need to offer the full spectrum of that experience. Stendhal puts it much more elegantly:
“Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black
I think it is possible to use your work to bring people together. There are many literary examples of this phenomenon, which I won’t list here. But Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolkien, and Dickens are good places to start.
Part of this is to ensure that while your work reflects your own worldview and morality, you leave the heavy handedness out. There are ways of sticking to your own worldview without being didactic (or “preachy”, as my editor says). I’m not just talking about the Christian apologist, but any ideological agenda on the current spectrum. For example, I’ve recently read a few popular young adult books that use lazy stereotypes and woke repentance to flog home a particular political point. That’s a great way to turn parents off your work, as well as give your readers nothing but a reinforcement of their narrow worldview. I think we can do better.
Sometimes, simply writing what we see without judgement is the judgement. Sometimes holding up that metaphorical mirror satirically, or through another literary or artistic form can help heal your own prejudices, as much as it can your reader’s. When we’re writing characters with opposing—even polarising—views, nuance is the key. Along with a heavy dose of self-examination, self-reflection, and tongue biting, writers can help bring people together. Even if it’s just to the point where a conversation is no longer a battleground.