![image.png](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/mingus/T4dj3BuU-image.png)

I've spent a LOT of time trying to reconcile and understand the disconnect. Largely by reading stories from diverse outlets on the exact same event, and listening to different people's very different reactions to the same set of facts. It's actually pretty fascinating.

**Here is the disconnect as far as I can tell.**

1) Facts and events ... something happens. What we know of it almost always comes to us via 3rd parties, media, social media, friends, etc. We didn't actually experience it ourselves.
2) Values enter the picture. Specifically the hierarchy of values differs between people. We might both value say, compassion/care and free speech, most people do, but many people differ on which they hold as a more fundamental principle and so hold as a higher value.
3) We use our values to determine meaning. "What does this event/set of facts mean?" That is what we actually care about, not details of who/when/where/what. We pass the details and facts through our values hierarchy and then we generate meaning, for ourselves.

This is how two people can look at each other and both think the other is blind and stupid. Their derived meaning is different.

**Here is a modern example:**

Free speech vs. compassion/care

Let's say someone, an adult, says something, or writes, or posts something that really genuinely truly hurts and upsets someone else. They are angry frustrated and crying, maybe it is a lot of people even and it hits a common old wound many people can relate to. Anyone with an ounce of compassion can feel for them, feel their pain, and want to help.

What to do to help though? Now you'll find many people with many very different ideas on how best to help and solve the situation. Comfort the person, listen, encourage them not to take it personally, etc., there are a lot of options, and the best option will also actually depend on the individual you are trying to comfort. What resonates best for them.

One option is to punish the person who said/posted whatever. You could even make it illegal by defining it as "hate speech".

Now you are going to see a massive divide between people who value compassion/care *more* and those who value free speech *more*. Articles will be written, facts will be chosen and excluded leading to completely different conclusions, the conclusion the person writing it felt was most important.

Emotions are going to fly, fingers are going to get pointed and you'll have one group of people thinking the other people are dangerous/stupid/evil/clueless. Both will be genuinely afraid of what this portends for the future and they both have a valid point.

This is just one example. There are tons of things like this. These splits or "litmus test issues" as they are sometime called in politics are actively searched for, discovered and used to drum up fear and outrage to divide... so as to conquer/win not just in politics but in the struggle to put forth the dominant societal narrative.

If you, find, stack up and use 10 or 20 of these split issues, you can get people who agree on 90% of everything to look at each other like space aliens, hate and mistrust each other, which is the goal. Taken far enough, they will even dehumanize each other.

The world is littered with the corpses of well over 100 million people in the 20th century alone as a result of both right and left ideas, BOTH of those, going too far and becoming a murderous all encompassing ideology.

This is a human norm. It's not just politics. The world is also littered with the husks of millions of relationships destroyed by the same thing. One set of facts, two completely different meanings derived from them, and lots of emotions, here with just two people, unable to negotiate a shared narrative together.