Let it Linger

What a strange thing National elections can be! I don't know if I was the only one in South Africa who experienced unusually courteous behaviour after our people had the opportunity to vote. People were smiling more to the point I thought I had some left over muesli stuck to my face. A taxi even stopped at a pedestrian crossing, gave a toot on his hooter and gestured for me to cross, also smiling broadly! There just seemed to be this silent agreement to be friendlier, regardless of whom they voted for. I imagine it is the sense of empowerment and equality experienced that 'levelled' the mental self-importance field. I just hope the agreement is not short-lived and the emotions generated by that voting process linger a little longer.

I imagine the reverse emotion may also come into play, if you vehemently believe that the party you support is better than everyone else, to the extent that you are willing to use violence and intimidation to 'encourage' others to follow too. How short sighted as this is the best method to further supporters from your cause!

I read an article the other day, that I couldn't quite agree with. It revolved around our brains instinctive responses. The flight-or-fight sector was monitored in response to stimuli. In this case a person's racial group. The results indicated that a reaction was generated when a person of dissimilar race was presented and the conclusion was that humans may be predisposed to be racist. There was no discussion about the subject's community up-bringing, racial exposure or anything of that matter that may program a person's thought pattern, instinctive or cognitive. I recall a story my sister told me when she was back-packing through Africa and visited remote villages where no (or very few) white people visited. The people were fascinated with her and kept rubbing her arm to see if it was paint and stroked her straight hair as they had never seen anything like this before. I am sure the instinctive parts of their brains were responding in hyper-mode and not because of their predisposed racial tendencies but merely because they were seeing something different. My point is that we are different! We have different opinions, different priorities, we look different and we will support different political parties. What we have to do is not pretend that there is no difference but rather appreciate those differences and engage in one another's worlds to experience something new, even if your flight-or-fight receptor is buzzing.