We’re all not that different

 I recently watched a TED talk by Robert Hoge entitled Own Your Face. In the video, he describes the path his life has taken due to some congenital deformities that impacted the look and function of his face. His theme was a simple statement, but a complex and emotional topic: “Owning is choosing; choose to accept your face…understand all the love, and the life, and the pain that is part of your face.” His premise is built on science. According to psychologist and researcher Albert Mehrabian, as much as 60% of the communication of a message is through the face. This maximum applies when the facial expressions do not match the vocal message. If you have a deformity on your face, or if your face is in some way displeasing to others, much of what you say can get lost in translation. This is why people modify their appearance.

As always, I’ll identify my biases: I do not have any deformities. I would not represent myself as disabled in any way. I believe that everyone always has a choice, no matter what the decision but that biological and environmental factors influence every single person’s choices differently. I also believe that moral and ethical choices are fixed, not relative.

Ten or so minutes into the video, Robert shares a notion that I took very seriously. Dressing like a goth and dressing like a bearded hipster are the same decision, with different choices. You may look at those respective individuals and see a world of difference, but he does not. He sees someone who has said, “yes,” to the question, “do I want to alter my appearance?” instead of the choice of alteration they made. This made me think, are we all really that different? Let’s look at another question. What political party do you follow? You may look at this and immediately have a reaction, but think about the real question. If a person follows a political party, the decision to which they have answered “yes” is “political parties are important to the function of my government.” They’ve made the same decision, just different choices. If all the party-affiliates agree that political parties are important, why do they act in such opposition to each other? Because of the choices, not the decision. But as previously stated in my biases, I don’t believe that choices are made in a vacuum. Every person makes a different set of choices based upon their own biases, environment, and biology. Understanding each person’s non-vacuum is essential in making a solemn determination about the other’s choices.

American society needs more thoughtfulness like this if our country is to survive. When I look at my social media feeds, my news feeds, and listen to my podcasts, I observe exceptional division. We are all making different choices, but that doesn’t mean the decision was necessarily different. We need to take a deeper look at why each person makes the choices they do instead of looking at the decision and merely saying that we would have made different choices. When it comes to decisions, we aren’t all that different. We’re all Americans, we’re all alive, and we all need others. In the  ESV Bible, Proverbs 18:2 captures exceptional wisdom on the subject: “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.” Right now, many of us could be counted among the fools. Shall we all instead proceed forward into the company of the wise? We can make a difference in the path our country takes forward, but we have to do it together.