The other side of the Story

At some point in life, you learn that all conflicts have two versions of a story. Whether it's a fight between a couple, between friends, or even a political debacle, there is always an angle that you fall into, and one that you are inclined to dismiss, to ignore.

As with many things regarding humanity and its behaviors, this dynamic extrapolates into everything we do. Knowing one version of the story, sometimes the version that lacks the most important details, is precisely how we get convinced of radical ideas, and how we fall head first into binary thinking.

The old saying "History is written by the victors" admits, proudly too, that truth can be adjusted to fit a specific narrative. And again, this is by design, not a bug per se.

I'm only thinking about this because I believe that most people with at least twenty laps around the sun know this well. There's always another version of the story. But I also think that most people forget to be consistent on this front.

Do they apply this to politics? To internal conflicts? To religious claims? To ideological movements?

Maybe not. And that is precisely what I believe we should all be doing.

I'll share something personal for a second, to bring this down to earth.

As a kid, I was taught to hate, and I mean that sincerely, our neighboring country. I was told that Peru was filled with bad people, with land thieves. History books in my childhood depicted Peru as this greedy country that stole land from Ecuador over and over.

Being the impressionable child that I was, and seeing the depictions in these books, I took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Details escape me at the moment, but that may not only be common, it may also be precisely how these falsehoods grow roots. I think I remember being taught that Peru attacked Ecuador unprovoked. I'm sure I was told the Peruvians had been driven back because God was on our side. And I'm pretty sure this is why I made such a clear distinction between what it meant to be Peruvian, and what it meant to be Ecuadorian.

But unlike plenty of people who are fed these stories as children, I was lucky enough to be exposed to other cultures, to grow up in different countries, and to look at things from the outside too.

Not only did I learn that the story I had been taught was far more complicated than I had been led to believe, but I also learned that the city of my birth had once been part of a colonial administrative order associated with Peru, effectively blurring the lines of distinction I had been taught to draw so clearly.

Maybe I was well into my teens when the thought came to me, and I could not tell you precisely what triggered it.

"It's the same people..."

That realization matured enough in my mind to allow me to hear the other side too.

All of a sudden, even the Peruvian occupation of Guayaquil was something I felt allowed to be questioned.

Why would they do this?

That was the question in my mind.

I learned about the British influence in the region, and more importantly, about how the Ecuadorian government intended to deal with its debts by granting British creditors rights to large areas of Amazonian territory.

But there was a problem. These were territories claimed by both countries, with the border between them still unresolved. Peru objected to the agreement and eventually responded by blockading Ecuador's ports, arguing that Ecuador was attempting to dispose of territory that Peru considered its own.

And this wasn't even as simple as Ecuador versus Peru. Ecuador itself was in the middle of a serious political crisis, with competing governments fighting for control of the country.

And that made things look very different to me.

It wasn't that I suddenly decided the Peruvians were right.

It was that I had finally realized there was another side to the story.

I'm bringing all this up to effectively land on my point.

If we think we know the history of a people, of a place, of a flag for that matter, but all we know is one side of the story, we are effectively deciding, subconsciously, that a sprinkle of ignorance is desired or needed.

We can't be afraid to analyze a claim. Even if doubting said claim might be construed as an act of treason by those who treat everything like rival sports teams.

Because we should be striving to live with truth, and not cuddle ourselves to sleep with comforting lies, intentional ones or not.

MenO