Imagine: You’re in a fight with your parents. Conflict has erupted and people are hurt. You’re at a loss for what to do. Upset and unnerved with what's going on, you scamper into your room and shut the door. It locks. You get into bed, shuffle into a comfortable position, and pull the covers over your eyes. Tearing up, you mutter irate thoughts under your breath. You’re frustrated and alone.
Fifteen minutes into your self-afflicted period of solitude, your family knocks on the door. “Come out; stop whimpering. I know you’re upset. Let’s talk.”
No response. “I’m not coming out, I’m not in the mood to talk. This is stupid. I can figure out my issues on my own,” you think to yourself. No matter how much your family pleas for you to unlock the door, talk, and sort things out, you stay inside a bubble you've created.
I have been this person. I’ve locked myself inside and others out in difficult times. I’ve avoided conversations I wasn’t open to engaging in. I’m sure a lot of you have as well.
When we don't feel like talking, we trap ourselves inside. In doing so, we shove away productive conversations about conflict that, despite being difficult, are healthy. I’ve learned that having an aversion to discussing topics that make us uncomfortable, with people that we may not (at first) understand, is terribly damaging. Discussing the issues that make us upset and opening our ears to other opinions helps repair burnt bridges, establish understanding between conflicting parties, and in the end makes us happier.
Locking ourselves in and locking others out is not just a personal issue. It’s global and it’s current.
Trump’s campaign is built off of the “locking others out” sentiment. He rallies together Americans who are angry with immigration laws, economic instability, limited job availability and the supposed disintegration of American values, and promotes and exacerbates their fears. He doesn’t fully understand the heart of the issues or the opinions of all groups of people involved, and he doesn’t really try to.
Trump will shut the door to America and lock it cutting us off from balanced conversations about these important topics - by isolating himself from other world leaders who can’t tolerate his disagreeable personality, alienating minority groups, and building up ironic, unreasonable walls (figuratively and literally) around a country whose welcome-woman, Lady Liberty, has the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” engraved on her bronze pedestal.
Across the Atlantic, “Brexit” is as significant a lockout. The other day, the British people voted to leave the European Union, a conglomerate of 28 (soon 27) major countries in Europe that formed post World War II to help foster political and economic agreements. The decision was driven by a permeating populist and nationalist sentiment, a call for independence, an ever-more-present desire to secure borders and limit intra-European migration, and insecurity in the EU's effectiveness.
Like Trump’s “great” America, Brexited-Britain is locking doors and building walls between itself and other countries. Separating, locking itself in, and locking other European nations out has greater implications and consequences than simply keeping borders secure. Markets around the world have plunged in the most turmoil in the past few days since the 2008 financial crisis. Major international companies that provide jobs to British citizens may forfeit their headquarters in main EU financial centers like London because of economic instability. Young Britons will not be able to reap the educational and professional benefits of the EU as did their parents and grandparents. Because Britain is the most powerful nation in the EU behind Germany, their decision to leave will send a ripple of euro-skepticism around the continent, adding lighter fluid to sparking populist-nationalist movements in other EU countries, and increasing the chances that they too decide to break away.
We don’t know if this will happen, but if it does, more walls will be built between the historically allied. The EU, a union formed to facilitate war-preventing conversation and collaboration between majorly powerful countries, may fracture - isolating the involved countries from one another. At the same time, Trump, the person who may be America’s next leader, is quickly and surely fraying decade-old ties between our nation and others, increasing our own isolation from the world.
Countries, political leaders, and individuals must not block people out, but rather connect and engage across differences. Today, there are increasingly polarized national and international political debates, which are creating ever-larger gaps between people and their differing political perspectives. As leading members of the community of nations, the U.S. and U.K. are increasingly buffeted by metastasizing sectarian and geopolitical conflicts across the globe that are waged across differences. Through technology, people can increasingly and instantaneously see, listen, read and communicate circumstances, ideas and beliefs, whether they are similar or different. Global mobility, whether via immigration or escape, is rising both within the U.S. and U.K. and across their borders. Demographic change in and between nations is altering the mix of people with whom we all interact. Given this dynamic change, engaging across difference is critical to expose us to new ways of thinking, foster awareness, increase understanding and inspire acceptance. Doing so will make us better people and the world a better place.
Walls, doors, and locks don’t help us get better. They make us wallow around in our sorrows. When we lock ourselves in, we inhibit these conversations that are essential to personal and international growth.
