Social media. It’s here to stay, and depending on your age, it is a way to connect with friends you haven’t seen in awhile or it’s the way you manage your social calendar. It is also gives people a sense of freedom to mock, disparage or otherwise disrespect beliefs and opinions that are different from the ones they hold.

It is easy to mock what we don’t understand but I think we should embrace our discomfort. If we do not understand something, respectfully ask questions and seek to be empathetic with the other. I know that we try to dispel our discomfort with humor but some of our humor is hate speech in disguise. Some of our hate speech is insidious – it is taboo to insult someone based on race or physical ability but we feel free to insult someone’s gender, alma mater, political party, size, nationality or economic status.

I think it comes down to seeing the other as a threat to our own comfort. To understand someone different from ourselves makes us examine our own beliefs.  For the Republican and  Democrat to sit down and have a meaningful discussion of their philosophical differences requires both to be willing to listen rather than pointing our where the other is wrong. It is best to look for common ground, understand each other’s belief and realize that we are making a choice in our own belief.

Religion is our main belief system whether we want to admit it or not. Our religious upbringing colors our view of the world. The Greeks and Romans had their own mythologies to explain the world, the Christians and Muslims have theirs.  We even have our own familial mythologies – stories that are handed down through the generations that explain why we do what we do and become our traditions. Our traditions, or rituals, ground us and help us make sense of our world.

We are becoming a global society and, in Western society, it is not acceptable to discriminate against someone based on race, sex or ability. When we are presented with beliefs that are different from our own, I encourage us to embrace that discomfort and seek to understand what is making us uncomfortable. Is it a personal belief or a fundamental difference in values. There is a difference between expressing your individuality and being consciously disrespectful.

I personally do not like coconut but that does not mean I cannot understand that someone else would love it.