Children come into the world with no political sides and no inherited enemies. They speak to anyone who smiles and they reach out to anyone who cares. In the earliest years, there are no national borders in the heart. There is no suspicion toward difference. A friend can be anyone who shares a toy or laughs back. Human warmth is the most obvious truth.
As time goes on, that natural openness begins to shrink. Children learn categories. They learn who belongs to the family and who is outside. They learn the names of countries and the colors of flags. They learn what their parents believe is right and what they believe is wrong. They slowly become members of a team. Other teams become suspicious or strange.
This shrinking of innocence is not surprising. Society cannot exist without shared ideas. Yet there is something tragic in how quickly human beings move from open affection to organized distrust. What begins with curiosity turns into caution. What begins with wonder about others becomes fear of others. Something precious is lost on the road to adulthood.
Learning That Separates
Education is often described as a path to freedom. However, education also brings new ways to divide. In classrooms, history is told from particular angles. In political science, theories frame opponents as either misguided or dangerous. In sociology, society is explained in terms of structures that sort people into roles. Even in literature, characters are used to illustrate conflicts and ideologies. Knowledge becomes a map that divides the world into zones.
Students who study social systems may begin to feel they have discovered the secret machinery behind society. They learn about class, power, ideology, gender, and globalization. These concepts are valuable. Yet they can create an illusion that one sees more deeply than those outside the academic circle. It becomes tempting to think that understanding the system means understanding the person.
This illusion creates distance. The individual across the table starts to feel like a representative of a theory rather than a unique life. He is no longer a father or neighbor or friend. He becomes a symbol of privilege or oppression or nationalism or identity. The language of analysis replaces the language of human recognition. In the name of knowledge, empathy becomes optional.
The Temptation of Superiority
There is a point where social theory begins to resemble a form of religion. It provides its followers with a story of good and evil. It offers a narrative of salvation through activism or transformation. It teaches its believers that they are enlightened, while others remain blind. Theologians once claimed to speak for God. Some academics and political thinkers now claim to speak for society itself.
This is not limited to the left or the right. Any ideology that claims exclusive access to truth risks becoming a new kind of priesthood. When people believe they have insight into history’s direction, they may feel entitled to correct those who disagree. Not through conversation, but through power. They may feel that they understand destiny better than others, and therefore they must act on its behalf.
The danger grows when certainty becomes a virtue. Anyone who questions the doctrine becomes an obstacle. Anyone who recognizes complexity appears weak. Anyone who sees the humanity of the supposed enemy becomes naive. Superiority removes the burden of humility. It invites a confidence that can no longer hear.
From Ideas to Atrocities
Human cruelty rarely comes from a lack of education. More often, it comes from those convinced of a perfect solution. The twentieth century offers heartbreaking examples. The Nazi regime believed it was cleansing Europe for a higher future. The Soviet terror believed it was removing obstacles to equality. In Cambodia, those who executed neighbors believed they were resetting society toward purity. These were not crimes committed in confusion. They were crimes committed in faith.
Even soldiers on the battlefield are often driven by ideas rather than personal hatred. A soldier from a small town may be kind and gentle at home, loving his parents and playing with children in his neighborhood. The same soldier may kill someone else’s father when ordered to do so. Ideology has changed the meaning of action. Killing is no longer murder. It is duty.
Once identity becomes tied to a mission, empathy becomes treason. Humanity is replaced by a picture of the enemy that no longer resembles a real person. A life is simplified into a target. The mind becomes capable of justifying anything. The heart becomes silent. Ideas alone are enough to send millions into graves.
A New Battleground in Everyday Life
Violence today is not always physical. It appears in digital spaces through constant hostility. Social media encourages rapid judgment and harsh labeling. Strangers shout at strangers through screens. People attack one another without knowing their stories or hearts. Everyone becomes a symbol. No one is seen as a full person.
Political leaders are caught in this web. They are either heroes or villains. They are rarely treated as complicated human beings making difficult decisions. An American president like Donald Trump is either celebrated as a protector of national pride or condemned as a danger to democracy. A Japanese female prime minister such as Sanae Takaichi is admired by some as a symbol of perseverance and leadership, while others accuse her of betraying feminist expectations simply because her values do not follow their ideology. Nuance rarely survives in these environments.
The tragedy is that personal relationships offer different truths. When someone grows up in the same hometown as a national leader, there is recognition of her human journey. People remember the years before the spotlight, before ideology turned her into a character in someone else’s narrative. The same happens with leaders abroad. Those who meet them in person see expressions of fear, humor, insecurity, and kindness that never appear in the public image.
The closer one is to the real person, the harder it becomes to reduce them to a monster or a savior. The distance that ideology creates is erased by memory.
Ordinary People and Intellectual Pride
It might seem that the most educated individuals would also be the most fair. Yet often the opposite occurs. Those who trained longest in a framework become the least willing to step outside it. Their identity is tied to their study. Their pride rests on their belief that their education gives them superior insight.
Meanwhile, ordinary people, who have not invested all their dignity in an ideology, may be more willing to accept that a political opponent is also a fellow human. A person who has not spent years defending a theory may still be curious about the lives of others. They may listen without needing to win. Their understanding is less complete, but their heart is more available.
This creates a painful paradox. Education can deepen empathy and wisdom, but only when it remains humble. When knowledge inflates the self, it narrows the mind. When people believe that they alone see the big picture, they stop seeing anything outside their narrative.
True ignorance is not the absence of facts. True ignorance is the certainty that one already knows everything that matters.
The Fragile Line Between Faith and Domination
Religion and politics share a similar structure. Both offer visions of a better world. Both claim to offer truth. Both attract followers who feel they have found meaning. Both create insiders and outsiders. Both can inspire kindness or violence.
Even sacred teachings have been used to justify cruelty. Compassion becomes compatible with persecution when the persecutor believes it serves a higher purpose. The Bible speaks of families divided over faith. This recognizes a painful reality. When one person believes they hold ultimate truth, even love can fracture.
Nationalism operates on similar ground. One can care deeply for home and family. Yet that same loyalty can lead to hatred toward those outside the border. Love becomes narrow. Patriotism becomes a justification for conquest. The idea of protection becomes a reason to strike first.
Ideology always risks transforming care into control.
Loving with Open Eyes
If the innocence of childhood cannot be restored, then the task is to find a mature love that does not depend on ignorance. This means recognizing differences without turning them into barriers. It means seeing politics as a realm of ideas, but never forgetting that every idea is carried by a human life.
Human beings can disagree fiercely and still respect the dignity of the one who disagrees. This is not weakness. It is the discipline of staying human. It means refusing to let ideologies erase compassion. It means holding knowledge gently, not wielding it like a weapon.
This requires more effort than naïve openness. It requires training the mind to notice when judgment is replacing understanding. It requires remembering that every person wants to feel safe, valued, and heard. Even when they are wrong, they are not less than human.
Wisdom is the ability to see the enemy as a potential friend.
The Role of a New Education
Education must evolve. It must teach students to think without giving them the illusion that they have mastered the truth. It must show them many perspectives, not only one. It must encourage strong convictions without turning those convictions into fortresses. It must celebrate knowledge while reminding students that knowledge grows only through humility.
Teachers can help students understand history while also teaching them to care about those who saw it differently. They can explain politics while warning about the dangers of purity. They can present economic structures while also acknowledging the mystery of individual lives that never fit perfectly into any model.
Education should not close minds. It should keep them open, alert to complexity, and ready to listen. It should help people recognize when they begin to treat others as symbols. The purpose of learning should be liberation from arrogance.
Stepping Beyond the Trap
There is a threshold where thought must become self-aware. A person can stand outside their own ideology and look at it as one option among many. This is not the abandonment of truth. It is the recognition that truth is larger than any one theory or tradition.
A mind that can question itself becomes a mind that can change. A heart that can doubt its own superiority becomes a heart that can welcome others. The willingness to say “I might not fully understand” is not a sign of weakness. It is the beginning of real strength.
Belief does not need to be rigid. It can be held with passion and kindness at the same time. Faith does not need to demand supremacy. It can invite rather than conquer. Political conviction does not need enemies. It can seek partners in the shared desire to protect what is loved.
This is a different kind of enlightenment. It is not about seeing more answers. It is about remembering that other people also carry pieces of the truth.
The Courage to See People Again
Learning often begins by separating objects into categories. Maturity requires bringing them back together. The world is not a puzzle that only experts can solve. It is a community of lives trying to make sense of hardship and hope. Every person who speaks or acts in public carries a childhood within them, full of wonder and fear.
To oppose violence in the future, one must see the human being before the ideology. To build peace, one must look beyond the label and into the lived experience. Leaders around the world deserve criticism, but they also deserve to be recognized as human beings trying to navigate impossible tensions. Citizens deserve accountability, but they also deserve kindness.
Adults can recover something children naturally possess. Not ignorance. Not naivety. Something more powerful. A vision that sees the person first and the belief second. A heart that refuses to reduce the world into allies and adversaries. A mind that respects complexity even when it is inconvenient.
Humanity begins again when the enemy becomes visible as a human being.
A Future Worth Building
Knowledge that divides leads to conflict. Knowledge that judges leads to arrogance. Knowledge that forgets compassion leads to tragedy. Yet knowledge that remembers humanity can guide societies toward a better path.
The purpose of education should not be to harden identities. It should prepare people to care for others even when disagreements are intense. The goal is not to return to childish innocence. It is to move toward an adult wisdom that balances understanding with love.
Children love because they do not know enough to fear. Adults can love because they know enough to choose compassion. That choice must be renewed every day. If the world learns to make that choice, then the atrocities of history do not need to define the future.
We can learn. We can disagree. We can protect what matters. We can still see each other. The future of peace depends on this possibility.
Image: Stockcake
Tom’s Blog 