If there’s one thing we can rely on people to do, it’s find something to argue about.
The most striking thing about all civil wars — at least to everyone watching from the outside — is how similar the two sides fighting are.
This sketch from Monty Python is funny because of this absurdity.
All modern religions are variations on the same theme, and the closer they are, the more animosity between them.
It’s human nature to engage in feuds and ridicule those we share borders with. Freud called this the “Narcissism of small differences.”
We spend so much time fighting about whether this means more than that, or which method works best, that we end up killing each other and simultaneously both failing at the thing we’re arguing about.
Take wellness, for example.
A quick search on “how to lose weight” will uncover seventeen different, equally convincing ways to drop the pounds. And they all swear blind that the rest are hacks and scams.
Meanwhile, we are all getting fatter and sicker.
How much progress would we make if our experts stopped arguing about tactical differences and put that energy into improving the world instead?