Remember the old saying that goes something like:

Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference?

It's "wisdom to know the difference" that holds the key.

Or maybe it should be 'wisdom to accept the difference'…

There is so much argument, so much polarization, so much nastiness, so much mud-slinging these days… it's mind boggling.

Why is it that we tend to want every other person to move through life the way we move through life? To see life the way we see life?

Hhmmm… well, OK. Some of it's protective. Some people are just flat dangerous and we truly do need to protect ourselves from them.

But most times we just like to convince ourselves that others are dangerous, and then gossip about them whenever we can. Blow certain things out of proportion. Distort other things. Their very existence seems to threaten our outlook or our cushion or our way of life, so we start obsessing and trying to convince others how absolutely wicked they are.

And a lot of it's simple bossiness, desire for control, fear of change. We talk about freedom and independence a lot in this country, but, beneath the surface, do we really want others to have their own mind, or do we really just want them to do whatever we tell them to do? If we actually did honor independence and freedom, in others as well as in ourselves, not just talk about how much we honor independence and freedom, there'd be a lot less friction between fellow Americans.

And some of it's biologically, genetically inherent. Animals act like the other animals in their species, or they get pushed out of the herd. "Rogue" animals are not treatly kindly in the real world (there's a safety tip for Sarah Palin here somewhere), because an animal which doesn't act like all the others is a genuine threat to the safety of its whole herd.

Hhmmphf… we operate in animal mode more often than we operate in conscious-being mode.