We’ve learned through our history lessons that the best way to destroy a culture is to eradicate its language, all its artifacts (especially anything written) and layer a narrative on top of it.

The Spanish did a spectacular job of doing this with their encounter with the Aztecs.

They emphasized sacrifices to such an extent that by the time they wanted to wipe out remaining traces of the defeated civilization, the bloody sacrifices were almost the only thing that was retained.

And yet, don’t do we do this with people?

We reduce a person to such a narrow narrative that it’s the only thing we will accept about them, blinding ourselves to anything else. Our reductive minds just can’t resist culling away everything except what we want to see… and what we want others to see about them.

Our problem isn’t our unwillingness to know others—it’s our willingness to expand our narrative.