In an interview in United Airlines Hemisphere magazine, singer/songwriter and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Bonnie Raitt, stated: “This time is the most fraught and worrisome in my lifetime. The polarization and the increased vitriol and the delusional misinformation and the lack of a responsible center, in journalism and in the culture and in politics, is a source of great stress and pain for me personally.” And when the interviewer asked her if she had any hope looking forward, she said: “we really gotta stop turning each other into the other side. I want to try to encourage whatever activities we can do and whatever coming together we can have that allows us to see the humanity in each other.”

Here at the Catch we are proposing just that, and then some. We are proposing that we learn to see the humanity not only in each other but through each other’s eyes.

For a culture of people turning each other into “the other side,” this is quite a departure and will take a good deal of effort. When you turn someone into “the other side,” you don’t have to know what they stand for or what they believe or why they believe it; you don’t even have to listen to them. They are of no interest to you. They are the enemy — “the other side.” They are not on your side. The only people that matter to you are the ones on your side, and you already know what they think because they think just like you. It’s way too simple and awfully boring. But that is our world right now. It is a world where almost everything comes down to us and them.

What if we were to see through each other’s eyes — even the eyes of those on the other side? How would we even do that? It would require a whole different way of thinking and being.

First, it would require a respect for personhood over and above any kind of ideology or point of view, political, religious, or otherwise. It would start with embracing the fact that every person is made in God’s image and is precious in His eyes. Then it would involve listening, not to change someone’s mind, or find out where they are wrong, but simply to understand why they believe what they believe even if it is different from what you believe. It’s been shown that in every real-time effort to bring polarized individuals together for an extended period of time, they become friends. In most cases they don’t change their point of view, but they do come to at least understand why “the other side” believes what they believe, and they end up with a friend instead of an enemy.

This is one of the most important things we can do today to make a difference in the world — make personhood more important that politics. Empathy is not an endorsement of someone else’s beliefs; it’s an understanding of why someone believes what they believe and a respect for their right to think differently from the way you do. Bonnie Raitt got it right. When you think in terms of politics, there will always be us and them; when you think in terms of humanity, there is only us.