People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
In any group there is more or less tension between people, and there are complicities and affinities.
Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Societies can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery. But they can also talk, and act, their way out.
I think so many people are reactive... they see things in a short term way they're right up against it.
You can see over time whether people are prepared to differ or not.
Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies.
For me, opposition is just another opposition.