Conflicting Ideologies

I recently watched a video defending Avatar: The Legend of Korra. For those of you who don't know, which should be just about all of you, The Legend of Korra is a sequel series of Avatar: The Last Airbender, arguably one of the best cartoon/anime series I've ever seen. The Last Airbender had a plethora of memorable characters (and a few forgettable ones, but we can forget about them), deep character development, and a single story arc that spanned its three seasons. In my opinion, The Legend of Korra didn't live up to its predecessor. I had a hard time relating to the main character, and the side characters mostly seemed pretty flat. Not knowing how many seasons they were going to get, the writers wrapped up all loose ends at the end of each season, meaning that there wasn't a continuing story. There wasn't even a recurring villain, since each villain was defeated by the end of the season in which they were introduced. But it was the many villains that Youtuber "Just Write" praised.

While Avatar: The Last Airbender focussed mostly on the characters, Avatar: The Legend of Korra focussed mostly on the world, as explored through the actions and opinions of the characters. Notably, the villains possessed strong, conflicting ideologies, none of which were bad in moderation, but the villains became villains by taking their ideologies to the extreme. By the end of the series, Korra learns to find a balance between the extremes, learning something of value from each of the villains she defeats, or so I've been told.

And it's this "learning from others" and "finding balance and harmony by avoiding extremes" that I really want to blog about.

In our society, particularly in our political society,  there doesn't seem to be much interest in listening to other people's points of view. Instead, our politics seem to be polarized and polarizing, with each side going farther and farther into the extremes that they espouse, while decrying the "extremism" of those on the other side of the debate. This needs to stop. We can't afford to listen only to those who agree with us and vilify those who don't. There are good points on both sides of the debate on any issue, and we'll become better-informed, wiser people by listening to them.

I'm not saying that we all have to agree with each other or always let each other get their way. What I'm saying is that we should listen to each other and keep our minds open to the valid opinions and perspectives we may hear. No one (besides deity) is completely right or completely wrong. (And no one, besides maybe the prophets, are or were completely right about God's opinions of things, so we can't claim that we're right about everything just because we're on God's side. Many other people also think they're on God's side, and yet, we still disagree.) It's important to be humble, willing to share our opinions courteously, and most importantly, willing to consider other people's points of view, even and especially when their ideologies conflict with our own.