The Wrong Divide

You have been shown the wrong map.

For decades, in every country where democratic institutions still nominally function, the same message has been delivered through every available channel: the person you need to worry about looks different from you. Speaks differently. Prays differently. Loves differently. Comes from somewhere else. The threat is horizontal, they tell you. It lives next door, in the next neighbourhood, the next country. Black versus white. Christian versus Muslim. Native versus immigrant. Straight versus gay. Urban versus rural. Each fresh culture war arrives packaged as urgent, existential, the defining conflict of our time.

I have travelled widely. Over the course of a life lived across several continents and cultures, I have accumulated friendships that span almost every category of human difference the propagandists insist should divide us. And I want to report something from the field: I have never once encountered the monster I was told to fear. What I found instead, everywhere, without exception, were people recognisable to me. Curious, generous, struggling, funny, loving human beings doing their best in circumstances mostly not of their choosing.

The enemies I was promised do not appear to exist. Which raises an obvious question: what is all this noise actually for?