Tribal othering doesn't help | Josie Pagani

JOSIE PAGANI

STRAIGHT AND TRUE

Tribal othering doesn't help

After cracking down on protests at Parliament, they would logically have to move on to Ihumātao, Shelly Bay and Greenpeace activists supergluing themselves to ships.

Democracy means the potential for change when we make mistakes, and to change, we must accept that, sometimes, people we disagree with have a point. None of us is consistently good at detecting when someone we disagree with is right (I call this phenomenon "marriage").

Most of us believe things that science says are not true. Pollsters have found that majorities were sceptical of climate change until recently, many believe arnica cream cures bruising, vitamin C or antibiotics cure colds, or the number of wars and people living in poverty around the world are much higher today than 50 years ago.

We can all be dangerously wrong about something important.

Josie's column in the Dominion Post.

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