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The idea that in order to live in peace with someone, you need to understand them well is creepy and controlling. It's already placing conditions on how they're allowed to exist and insisting that they fit into your framework, a framework that makes sense to *you*.
And I'm not saying that there can't be *any* conditions for living in peace with others. Obviously, that involves neither side attempting to harm the other.
But you don't actually need to understand someone well to not be harmed by them.
But you don't actually need to understand someone well to not be harmed by them.
It's *helpful,* but it's not necessary.
And this plays out on so many levels. You see it when individual people in partnerships freak out when they discover that there's something they just *don't get* about their partner, some area of their life or beliefs or dreams that's impenetrable.
You see it when parents freak out upon realizing that their teenage kids are actually *entirely different people* from themselves, not close-as-can-be replicas.
And you see it between cultures, where the desire for understanding can very quickly devolve into appropriation and demand for assimilation.
To insist that someone else be completely comprehensible to you is, first off, insisting on an impossibility. It's insisting that they become a projection of yourself, something that exists only within the limits of your self and understanding.
But while it's impossible to actually achieve, the demand itself is wrong. It's a demand that they reduce themselves and be absorbed.
You will never completely understand anyone else--and probably not even yourself--or any other culture--and probably not even your own.
And that's fine, that's normal, that's reality, that's GOOD.
You can live with and even love what you don't fully understand.
And that's fine, that's normal, that's reality, that's GOOD.
You can live with and even love what you don't fully understand.
