Comments on: A Polarized People

By: Todd I. Stark

Todd I. Stark — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:45:01 +0000

Deven makes a great point, the way we conduct dialog has changed. Not really that fundamentally perhaps. I’m sure there were always ways that people managed to ignore and disrespect each other. The Whigs and Tories probably hired thugs and hecklers to disrupt town hall meetings too. But the ways we can avoid really engaging each other and the ways we can distract ourselves from the issues have become more convenient. We can form local electronic communities now where we don’t have to listen to opposing viewpoints, and we can disrupt conversations anonymously without taking responsibility for our thinking. We can create more effective educational biases and de-legitimize just about any source by creating our own alternate center of legitimacy. The options for evading responsible citizenship and authentic dialog have increased dramatically. The generally agreed on solution seems to be to conduct propaganda wars to counter propaganda wars. Listening to each other is pretty much considered a foolish, wimpy thing to do in most places. That may not have changed much (I think Olliver Wendell Holmes referred to the “hydrostatic paradox of argument”) but our ability to enforce the conflict model has improved.

By: Deven Black

Deven Black — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:32:51 +0000

We are a polarized nation, but I don’t think that is news. Our nation was founded in polarities: between the patriots (Tories) and the traitors; between the Federalists and the state’s rights advocates; between the Union and the Confederacy; and so on.

What’s different is the poverty of discourse, the shrillness, the unwillingness to listen, the instantaneous nature of communication, and the democratization of communication through the Internet, email, IM and Twitter.

That people disagree strongly is not new, but our way of presenting our disagreement is. We have lost respect for each other and for ourselves. It wasn’t always this way.

My grandfather was an inventor and manufacturer. He met his wife, my grandmother, when she recruited the workers at his company into the union. Needless to say, the political conversation at their table was lively, but it was always respectful. Both grandparents taught me that you learn more listening to someone who disagrees with you than
with an acolyte.

Polarization is not the problem; not knowing how to talk with and listen to each other is.

By: Todd I. Stark

Todd I. Stark — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:20:41 +0000

Yes, we come to any important issue with different perspectives, and various psychological and cognitive factors contribute to maintaining and deepening the polarization effect. This is not just seen in politics, but even between academic fields that supposedly are each relying on well defined evidence bases that presumably reflect the same real world!

The “preferences” vs. “core values” point is a big and important one. I would go a step farther and not call them “values” at all, since that word also implies that people “value” different things differently, and is nearly as divisive as “preferences.” I’d say there are also core virtues and basic needs that all human beings share, and which are not ideology-specific. It’s obviously not easy to get to them or hash out how they relate to current issues, but it may be the only path to common understanding.

By: Clint Buhs

Clint Buhs — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:03:46 +0000

An excellent post that makes a strong point. I would object to your use of “perpetually skeptical”, though, as if that’s somehow a negative. Being skeptical means to question what we hold as true, or what we’re told is true, and evaluating its origin and accuracy. It’s precisely skepticality that could remedy this situation. If we were all more skeptical (disregarding assumption and bias in favor of objectivity), we’d be less polarized. There are certainly areas beyond politics that could use some good critical analysis in America, too. That’s another discussion.

I’m a deeply skeptical person by nature, and it causes me unease to have to accept anything without further inquiry. I realize that I’m on one end of a belief spectrum, though, and that it’s not so easy or appealing to be skeptical to most people. We face a great challenge as a society.

By: Matt Townsley

Matt Townsley — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:51:24 +0000

Great post, Ben. I believe that people should stand firm when their (limited) set of core values are being threatened, however many of the discussions we embark upon are focused on our “preferences” rather than these core values directly. As I read your post, I kept thinking to myself how often others (myself included) try to push our preferences as others as fact. Differentiating preferences vs. “best practices” (term used very loosely) is difficult to do. A really silly example would be me spouting off about how “visionless” leaders seem to be these days. How am I to know how much “vision” is present in your school or schools across the country? The leaders in my school may be visionless, but how does that make the leaders in your school visionless, too? When we try to turn preferences and personal experiences into probabilities, things can get ugly. Thanks again for a post that convicts us all…

By: wmchamberlain

wmchamberlain — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:32:33 +0000

This post reminds me of the Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall”.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,

The poem would lead me to believe this isn’t a new problem, maybe you are just in a reflective enough place to notice it. Maybe it is just human nature to take sides, and maybe it is also part of human nature to be too lazy to actually know why we choose the side we do…

To tell you the truth, both the scenarios written above really bother me. Maybe we are simply learning how to respond because of the modeling by our government ;>

By: Louise Maine

Louise Maine — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:16:31 +0000

This is something that has bothered me as well though I know as part of the human condition we express lack of empathy somewhere in our lives. Living in a very rural area, I see this a lot. As a Biology teacher, I want to show students the multi-faceted sides to issues and different viewpoints while still being able to cover what I am supposed to do. I see not only adults, but students unable to listen to another side or even acknowledge that one exists. To me this is more important than the content I am supposed to teach.