Bridging the Great Divide
I was reading Daily Kos today, and came across an article I think people of all political inclinations should read: De-polarizing: Finding common ground through Bohm Dialogue.
Near the beginning of the article, they have a great quote from Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism:
(Emphasis mine)
That quote for me, puts words to thought's I've been having about difference I've felt in politics these last couple years.
I watched this vid, and despite being guilty of behavior that approached what he described, I started to write a diatribe about how the other side really is evil in this case, but stopped myself halfway through.
I didn't used to be so polarized. Through my teenage years, virtually all my friends were Republicans, big fans of Rush Limbaugh even, and it used to be fun debating the benefits of policy back when it was mostly about economic philosophy, and how much regulation there should be.
Now, the most non-hostile frame I'm personally willing to put on the divide is that on the several big issues of the day, economic policy, the war, the environment, and health care, one party denies that there's a problem, and the other party seeks to address the problems.
Throwing in the fact that the parties now have opposing stances on torture, and I do begin seeing things as good and evil. I see at best, voting for a pro-torture, pro-war party stems from being uninformed or misinformed, and at worst a failure of character.
I try to be a good liberal, and treat everyone with respect regardless of their beliefs, but being supportive of those who torture and wage an unjust war is kind of hard for me to set aside as being a simple difference of opinion that I should respect.
I don't blame the "typical" conservative demographics -- I know they're good people at heart, which just makes the whole situation this country is in all the more infuriating to me.
To me the "separate realities" idea is at least slightly comforting: the average hardcore Republican out there would agree this is wrong, he's just not on the same page with me about what this is.
The problem, is getting us all to get back into the same reality again -- or at least into one where the facts, history, and moral values aren't in direct contradiction of each other.
Near the beginning of the article, they have a great quote from Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism:
This book was born in a Brooklyn coffee shop during the summer of 2004. I was talking to my soon-to-be-agent . . . when the conversation veered towards the parallel culture--an amalgam of extreme nationalism and apocalyptic religion--that seemed to be ascendant in much of America. Again and again while reporting for Salon, I'd had the sense that liberals and conservatives no longer merely had divergent values--they occupied different realities, with contradictory facts, histories and epistemologies.
(Emphasis mine)
That quote for me, puts words to thought's I've been having about difference I've felt in politics these last couple years.
I watched this vid, and despite being guilty of behavior that approached what he described, I started to write a diatribe about how the other side really is evil in this case, but stopped myself halfway through.
I didn't used to be so polarized. Through my teenage years, virtually all my friends were Republicans, big fans of Rush Limbaugh even, and it used to be fun debating the benefits of policy back when it was mostly about economic philosophy, and how much regulation there should be.
Now, the most non-hostile frame I'm personally willing to put on the divide is that on the several big issues of the day, economic policy, the war, the environment, and health care, one party denies that there's a problem, and the other party seeks to address the problems.
Throwing in the fact that the parties now have opposing stances on torture, and I do begin seeing things as good and evil. I see at best, voting for a pro-torture, pro-war party stems from being uninformed or misinformed, and at worst a failure of character.
I try to be a good liberal, and treat everyone with respect regardless of their beliefs, but being supportive of those who torture and wage an unjust war is kind of hard for me to set aside as being a simple difference of opinion that I should respect.
I don't blame the "typical" conservative demographics -- I know they're good people at heart, which just makes the whole situation this country is in all the more infuriating to me.
To me the "separate realities" idea is at least slightly comforting: the average hardcore Republican out there would agree this is wrong, he's just not on the same page with me about what this is.
The problem, is getting us all to get back into the same reality again -- or at least into one where the facts, history, and moral values aren't in direct contradiction of each other.
7 Comments
you're right, but unfortunately most people are retarded.
if you say you think kids should get healthcare you're a marxist etc. etc.
support the troops, but still vote for people who consistently ignore the needs of veterans. etc.
support the war when it's about WMD, but if they find no WMD, then pretend you haven't been lied to.
etc.
That's a really good article NetRunner. I particularly like this part...
I've felt this. Usually I try to lose my convictions in an 'argument', and pretend that I don't know anything, to try and have a child's ear. This takes a lot of bravery, since you're turning your back on what you're so sure you "know". The panic someone feels when they begin to doubt their own convictions immediately hardens them against seeing any other point of view, causing them to become increasingly recalcitrant and even less likely to see your point of view.
*quality, for sure.
Awarding NetRunner with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by schmawy.
I do that better in person.
'Round here, I have trouble when I'm the guy who just painted the wall white, and someone comes along and says "you fools who go around painting walls black are the reason this country is broken."
While writing my portion of this, I couldn't help but wonder if part of the polarizing effect is coming from the internet, where human interaction is reduced, and where once there was truth and falsehood, we now have a marketplace of ideas.
Everyone can now self-filter information so that only information that reinforces your beliefs makes it to your eyes and ears.
I worry about doing that to myself, but reading Redstate makes me sick, and the "mainstream media" seems obsessed with trivialities, and has an obvious aversion to doing any real truth seeking.
I'd love a conservative equivalent to Stewart and Colbert, but there is no such animal.
However, I end up coming back to what someone once said to me about Fox "fact doesn't need the be balanced with fiction".
I might have doubts about the source of my facts sometimes, but not too much.
Netrunner, you are biting off way more than I would ever try to. It might sound absurd, but it seems that geomoo's post on DailyKos isn't particulary concerned about 'facts' at all (Incidentally, I haven't even finished reading that article because it keeps spinning me off into separate Google searches, that's the problem with not knowing anything). If the conclusion of the article is anything like it's opening, then it isn't about facts at all. It seems to be about two concepts that result in these 'separate realities', where facts have lost meanings.
Of course if we follow these principles, we can forget about painting any walls anytime soon. Like I said, that's more than I'm willing to chew. I'm having a hard enough time with the first steps of suspending judgment and really listening.The article seems to assert that thought is flawed and is often just emotional response disguised as "thinking", and as a result "listening" isn't actually practiced. In an effort to counteract these short circuits, The article introduces Bohm's Principles": That seems to be a lot to take on at once, but the poster submits a personal observation that addresses really important point:
Again, excellent excellent post. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, it's just what I was looking for.
Nothing like blockquotes to bring a discussion to a halt. Booooriiiing. I am the Threadkilla.
Actually, MGS4 is the threadkiller.
I am biting off a lot, but I've been in a very adversarial mode about this election for a while now, and it's just not healthy.
I'd love to set the adversarial nature aside, but the past 8 years has shown me that's just going to lead to the end (or at least massive diminishment) of everything I believe in.
Bohm dialogue was kind've secondary to me -- interesting in its own right to be sure, but it doesn't seem like it could help the overall goal. I do see elements of it in how Obama has handled campaign attacks, but it's not really suited for the situation we have now.
It's definitely a good way to remain friends with people who're on the other side of the divide, especially when it comes to focusing on the shared experience of being human.
I was more focused on that wonderful quote that highlights the key issue I see. Democrats may win the presidency, a filibuster-proof majority of the senate, and rebalance the supreme court to our favor, but if the Republican/conservative people insist on staying in their alternate reality, it's just going to make the division worse.
Obama seems to have a way of piercing that bubble, but there's still a media empire out there dedicated to creating and sustaining the alternate reality.
I think media reform is probably one of the most important things to focus on if we do wrest control away from the neocons.
Personally, I'd love to see people who speak to the press charged with perjury for lying to the press. Let them say "no comment" if they want, but no more of this standing in front of cameras and flatly denying the facts at hand. If they want to do that, they can release a YouTube on their website.
I also think there's need for independent watchdog groups that have official standing as media regulators would be a good idea. Something like mediamatters.org, only with some restrictions on the political affiliations of who works there.
In short, truthiness needs to die for us to truly get back on track.
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