It’s striking that you can put a bunch of young kids from different backgrounds into a room and they’ll find ways to happily play whether they speak the same language or not.
So why can’t we do it as adults? What causes us to stop seeing similarities and focus on differences? And fear the other?
The Israelis and Palestinians, the North and South Koreans, the Sunnis and Shia… the list goes on.
Most of this comes down to “propaganda” and conditioning. Sometimes by design by Governments, and other times by the society we live in.
But in the midst of all this fear often people rise above it with shared humanity.
This TED talk by Euna Lee on “What I learned as a prisoner in North Korea” demonstrates this well.