In our world of contrasts, a world in which light and shadow exist in a natural embrace, we must reconsider the age-old question of whether opposites attract or repel.

Beyond the realm of physical laws, magnets can serve as a metaphor for forces that bring things together or shove them apart, the way Samson did the pillars of the temple in Judges 16:21-31, in the Christian holy book.

And therein resides a deeper question about the nature of our connections as humans.

For example, is it possible to prize both the yin and the yang? Is it possible to find life, in both clashing and agreeing, with any authenticity? When one loves something, is it rational to conclude that one also hates its opposite?

Consider the truth of human emotion and belief, intertwined with threads of both light and dark, kindness and cruelty, love and hate… Consider it against the backdrop of verifiable facts.

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Across that intricate fabric we are made of, can one not appreciate the unique quality each thread brings to the whole? The threads pull in opposite directions, most times. Must we choose one or the other or can we, with the insight of our Homo sapiens intellect, recognise the value of the whole?

The Middle East is as complex as a Persian carpet. It also reflects exactly what my pep talk here is about.

At the heart of the Israeli and Gazan conflict, what should we look for to drive our sensibility and aid our reflection? The warp and weft that make up the history and tapestry of that region make it difficult to think straight, especially in this electronic and internet age.

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The web is rife with memes spouting insults this way and that; with links to articles that each side thinks will convince a reader or smear their nemesis. Yes, there are nemeses and these exist well beyond the Middle East. America is in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with both feet and with both arms that are its political parties: left and right. Evidently, other Middle Eastern peoples are smack within that conflict as well.

I plead for understanding — for recognising actual decency, on one hand, and real wickedness, on the other hand, because these often exist within the same person or the same community. We mustn’t be swayed solely by narratives that divide but also by those that seek common ground. Only then will understanding and empathy win the day.

Religious affiliation doesn’t make it simple, but then religion has never made anything simple. Religion must be set aside when dealing with the affairs of humans. Religion is a personal matter and has no place in public space.

“When you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private,” says Matthew 6:6, in case you disagree with my view about religion being a private matter. Besides, whose religion would we abide by?

On top of all that, many people are nonbelievers!

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These considerations require us to sift through layer after layer of who we are and what we think is best for all of us. They require us to discern fact from fiction.

Our beliefs, certainly tainted by religion, by superstition and by prejudice, often cloud our vision.

We have lost what our genetic heritage has taught us, even if greed and sheer survival instinct can switch off this gift of clemency and altruism that nature has given us. Indeed, evolutionary scientists have confirmed that we have evolved the ability to be kind to others, the survival payoff being reciprocity and mutual benefit.

I therefore call for a new perspective, one that transcends the manacles of unfounded judgment and bias.

Let the days of decisions rooted in ignorance and intolerance fade into the annals of history, the way in which burning “witches” at the stake and sending people whose colour is different from yours to the back of the bus dis­appeared.

Too many choices in the world’s history have been dictated by the ghouls of religious dogma, by enmity or friendship based on ethnicity, and by bias based on gender and sexual prejudice. Most of these, I’m afraid, are byproducts of religious belief.

Consider compromise and peacemaking.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for example, demonstrated how a society deeply divided by racial injustices, even for a very long time, could begin a process of healing through truth-telling, empathy and the acknowledgement of shared suffering.

Similarly, the Good Friday Agreement showed the world that even the most entrenched conflicts, like that in Northern Ireland, could find resolution in mutual understanding and compromise.

Everyone can do it. The first step is to shed religious influence and dump prejudice and intolerance. Easier said than done, I know. But there’s no other way.

It is estimated that at the end of February 2024, more than 30,000 Palestinians had been killed, and more than 70,000 injured, most of them women and children.

In contemporary times, the global challenges we’re faced with, like climate change and viral outbreaks, underscore this obligation for cooperation across borders and cultures and faiths. Such calamities do not respect national, ideological or other boundaries, and therefore require a unified reaction informed by empathy and by a recognition of our interconnectedness.

I try hard to love what I consider good in people and hate what I consider bad in them, and we all own both. In what I call for, which is the embrace of light and shadow and each shade in between, the acknowledgement of value in both the yin and the yang (opposite but intersected) is perhaps some hope for our collective evolution on this planet.

We’re indeed different, yet only through a balanced vision will we be able to advance — not as fragments, but united in diversity and strengthened by a shared destiny. In our difference, we’re more similar than we think. Sub-Saharan Africans are farthest genetically from, among others, Australian Aboriginals, despite skin colour.

“The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 confirmed humans are 99.9% identical at the DNA level and there is no genetic basis for race,” scientists reported.

Outwardly different but one inside.

Like a carpet, with its different interwoven yarns, we are more outstanding that way. DM

Rethabile Masilo is a Mosotho poet from Lesotho who lives in Paris, France.

Ars poetica

By Rethabile Masilo

During an empty period one still expects words,

accepts them like a betrayal and lives them.

There will be questions with no answers

for the day will be funereal. But when they kill a kid

and you receive babble from a three-year-old,

name that time Babel. Let his mother’s wails

frown on you, then add her cries to the child’s.

Get turned into a fist at first, in apartheid jails.

Pielkop! Then become a dog. Kaffir! Gaan fok jouself!

In exile, beg yourself for release from the dungeon

where you put yourself, hoping to starve and die.

When you don’t, let a book write itself with language

from the cruel parts of The King James Bible.

Rise with it, unafraid to face what it tells the world.

Read from it like an echo inside every ear, in order

that you may grow a scab over all your wounds.

The forest is dark

By Kobus Moolman

The forest is dark,

Even in the middle of the day.

The sun does not reach the heart of the forest

from above,

nor from any of its sides.

The only light that does reach the core of the forest

comes up from below,

from the deep and musty earth.

And this light is always dark.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.