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      In this day and age, people are taking sides faster than ever. The moment an event breaks, public opinion crashes like waves against the shore, instantly splitting into left and right, male and female, black and white. It's as if everything in the world is either one thing or the other, with no middle ground, no gray areas. What's even more curious is that people often don't pick a side after seeing things clearly—they rush into the fray while the picture is still murky.

      When faced with a public incident, we often need only skim a few lines of a news summary before we start making definitive judgments about who's right and who's wrong. Take the much-debated engagement case in Datong, Shanxi, a while back. It involved law, ethics, gender, and family—a complex matter that deserved calm, careful discussion. But soon enough, the conversation slid into extremes: one camp cast the woman as the embodiment of morality, while the other questioned her motives and sincerity. Both sides were shouting "justice," yet no one was truly willing to look down and examine the details of the facts.

      This tendency isn't just about speed; it's a habit deeply embedded in the contemporary mindset—we crave simple, clear-cut answers and can't bear to linger in ambiguity. But as Zhuangzi once said:

There is no right or wrong here, and no right or wrong there.^{[^1]}

      Between right and wrong, there lies a winding middle ground. Yet we always rush past the process, seeking only a stance, a conclusion we can lean on.

      If the ancients showed restraint in disputes, it was because they knew judgment takes time. Confucius said:

Listen to what a person says, then watch what they do.^{[^2]}

      But today, we often get angry just from "reading the headline." Zeng Guofan, in a letter to his younger brother, advised:

In dealing with the world, harmony is paramount; in facing matters, think thrice before you act.^{[^3]}

      Sadly, such reminders seem to have long been drowned out in the flood of information.

      This adversarial spirit isn't confined to public events—it's spreading rapidly through every corner of life. Take gender topics, for instance. Almost every discussion about relations between the sexes inevitably descends into a battle of "male chauvinism" versus "feminazi" labels. One side cites statistics, the other offers personal examples, and then they spiral into an endless loop of exceptions and counterexamples, denying and hurting each other. Meanwhile, the structural issues truly worth exploring get washed away entirely in these emotional clashes.

      Consider the Xiaomi versus Huawei controversy. From a technical standpoint, each has its strengths—this should be the normal state of market competition. But in the online discourse, it morphs into a clash between "national pride" and "everyday consumer choice." Some shout hysterically that "anyone who doesn't support Huawei isn't patriotic," while others sneer that "people who buy Huawei are just putting on airs." As if choosing a phone were no longer a consumer decision but a declaration laden with original sin.

      Is this kind of polarization really just about differing opinions? Probably not. Sometimes we refuse to admit the other side might have a point, because that would shake our conviction in our own righteousness. And this conviction is further reinforced by platform algorithms in the internet age. The more fiercely you express yourself, the more the platform feeds you similar viewpoints, so the world you see becomes increasingly one-dimensional, until it turns into a silent echo chamber. You think "everyone agrees with me," but it's just a fictional resonance with your own bubble.

      The Book of Songs says:

The speaker is blameless, but the listener should take heed.^{[^4]}

      Today, perhaps we could turn this around—we can't always claim our words are blameless, and we should learn to reflect on ourselves through what others say. But the reality is, we're all too quick to slap the label of "enemy" on others at the first opportunity, rather than listening and trying to understand.

      At times, this polarization is even deliberately amplified. For instance, some accounts or platforms manufacture two-sided topics just for traffic; or behind certain events, there may be "information manipulators" who, by magnifying conflicts and stoking emotions, turn the entire public discourse into their traffic factory. We may not always see through these tactics, but we must stay vigilant.

      The English poet Yeats wrote in The Second Coming:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.^{[^5]}

      Translated: "The best remain silent, while the worst are full of passionate fervor." These words ring quite true in today's information society. The voices most worth hearing often sink beneath the noise, while the most visible are the most extreme and agitated expressions.

      So what should we do? Perhaps the answer isn't to jump in immediately or rush to pick a side, but, as the movie puts it:

Let the bullet fly for a while.^{[^6]}

      When something first happens, information is always incomplete, and the accounts from all sides often contradict each other. What's needed most at that moment is patient waiting, letting the anger cool down first, rather than treating your first impression as the final truth.

To understand the world's affairs is to gain knowledge; to be adept at human relations is to master the art of writing.^{[^7]}

      Understanding others and grasping the complexity of events is a form of cultivation, a kind of intellectual maturity. But the black-and-white, us-versus-them opposition is neither elegant nor smart, and it certainly doesn't help the truth come to light.

      Perhaps we should all learn to be a little slower, a little cooler, a little gentler. It may not sound heroic or rousing, but it's precisely these seemingly tepid qualities that mark the path to a society's maturity.

      After all, taking sides is easy, but understanding is hard. And precisely because it's hard, it's worth trying.

References

1. Let the Bullets Fly screenplay and interviews
2. The Datong, Shanxi case; the Huawei-Xiaomi controversy
3. East China Normal University, School of Communication, "Risk Communication in Natural Disaster Events on Social Media"