My gut, it wrenches, at the lies perpetrated
How we buy into our differences just how they’re stated
Creating a chasm that is too rarely crossed
That we’re not unified is humanity’s great loss
Name calling hurls we label and spew vitriol
No attempts to understand or be convivial
It’s seen you’re separate seen as the other
Rather than as kin all our sisters & brothers
I can see clearly the pain when we deny
Others for their beliefs with no reason why
That we’re different is to be expected and sacred
I honor your differentness and the choices you’re making
Yet in group and out group quickly normalize
Perceptions of human worth don’t empathize
With those not in your group fail to realize
That our opportunity is to accept others truth and humanize
So camp out on extremes with positions polarized
Dig in the trenches aim at an opponent to neutralize
Resistance breeds resistance triumph will ostracize
One at the expense of the other who’ll soon return despise
If I’m right and you’re wrong or vice versa
We will always be opposed a truth that hurts a
Little more than we can all afford to bear
Collective is our destiny and how we’ll all fare
If today’s history is written by the victors
we have failed to learn from our past pictures
Opting to once again play out patterns of oppression
A pendulum that always swings in cyclical procession
Solutions? I honor your truth AND don’t have to agree
Find power in searching for opposing belief’s validity
That requires a commitment to a higher ideal
Where personal preference submits to collective ideals
I choose to value your divine individuality
The bounds of which is the law of reciprocity
Self-determine your life claim your sovereignty
But infringe on no one else’s autonomy
Taken too far beliefs and opinions become dogmatic
Self-expression soon infringes becoming autocratic
Find balance in loose views held not emphatic
Reconcile differing sides in a dialectic pragmatic
A bit of sacrifice is required if we’re to find unity
I’ll let go of this for you if you let go of that for me
It’ll take work maintaining a semblance of harmony
And we can meet the needs of the most soon you’ll see
Yet taken too far agreement leads to conformity
Our plurality of ideas shrinks and we lose resiliency
Too much uniformity quickly brings fragility
All downsides of pushing for TOO much unity
On a see saw of either/or thinking let’s understand
How we switch from zero-sum outcomes to both/and
We can value being individuals while also being united
Harmonizing poles the key to reducing human in fighting