“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” - T.S. Eliot
Our society’s political discussions have reached new levels of polarization. In keeping with this, I want to examine two extremes of how people can respond to political tension, and then discuss whether and how this tension arises inevitably out of human psychology. First, and most commonly found on the political right, the safest reaction to this polarization often seems to be complete disengagement from political speech. Particularly in a professional setting, as public debates become more polarized, even suggesting one’s own persuasion seems riskier. Fearing that our beliefs are in the minority, we often ascribe to those whose views we do not know allegiances and perspectives contrary to our own, often without justification. Worse, we may characterize some people as radicals or militants in the imagined disagreement, both debasing them and erecting a barrier of self-preservation against the honest conversation that might bring the relationship at least to a respectful agreement to disagree. We doom such relationships to tacit resentment with little knowledge of the disagreement so palpably hostile yet unsubstantiated.
Regarding the second extreme response, more common on the political Left, in a 2005 column Thomas Sowell noted that some people hold their political beliefs as undebatable dogma. He used environmentalism as one example, and attributed such instances to an all too relatable phenomenon, namely, our desire to think well of ourselves. In his own words: “many issues that look on the surface like they are just about which alternative would best serve the general public are really about being one of Us or one of Them…. [T]hese crusades are about establishing the identity and superiority of the crusaders.”1 The establishment of such an identity, of course, leads to demonstrations of this new identity, from pride parades to UN conferences on environmental sustainability to performative social media posting. Our pride in our own rational faculties leads us to amalgamate beliefs into an identity, and then to believe ours a superior identity, at which point the original beliefs are beyond debate. And I would propose that our innate pride pushes us this way whenever we conflate what we believe with who we are.
This pride and the Us-versus-Them mentality that Sowell observed are actually common to both sides of the ever-widening political aisle. The more common experience on the right is simply the introverted variant of how this mentality plays out in society, while that on the left is more extroverted; and this is simply a result of a perceived majority/minority relationship. I think it is important for those of us on the political Right who tend to criticize this tendency of the Left to realize that we are two sides of the same coin, participating in the same underlying cancerous mentality; when we silence ourselves for fear of reprisals, we do so for the same underlying reason as those who shout their opinions from the rooftops, yet refuse to discuss them seriously with anyone who disagrees.
And while you might anticipate the point that we all need to somehow snap out of this mindset, and that if only we could figure out how to do it together (and then ride into a rainbow sunset on the backs of unicorns!), we would solve our polarization problem. Call me a pessimist, but I think that this mentality is baked into the human condition. We will always have an Us versus Them mentality on any significant issue (and even on many insignificant ones, such as sports). We delude ourselves to think that if we all just came together as individuals and had good faith debates that we would somehow reach harmony before we all killed each other. First, we are too broken and stupid to do that. Second, the conflation of belief and identity is unavoidable, and in fact necessary! One cannot define oneself without using the terms of one’s own self-perception, which are fundamental beliefs; even to say, “I am a human being,” without even mentioning one’s specific differences within that genus, subconsciously means “I am what I perceive a human being to be” (though it is likely more complicated and self-referential than that.) And there is astonishingly little agreement on even that fundamental perception. So, our perceptions of ourselves and others like us necessarily make up part of our identity, and that’s why the Us versus Them mentality that leads to our inability to question many of our beliefs is so baked into our consciousness.
So, do we pack up and go back to our trenches? No. I think the expectation needs to be reset: obviously, we should all try to be understanding and amenable to our fellow citizens with whom we disagree, but we need to take a step back from the lofty ambition of broad political unity. Let’s first recognize how astounding it is that our civilization has not already totally dissolved into violence, and that our ability to live in proximity to each other remains basically intact despite such fundamental and intractable conflicts as “what even are we?” Amid all of these challenges, we should begin by acknowledging that every good faith, respectful debate between two individuals on opposing sides of a serious political issue is truly a miraculous confluence of courage on the one hand, and humility on the other; perhaps that mutual acknowledgement could be the foundation for bridging the ever-widening ideological gap in our society.
Thomas Sowell, Ever Wonder Why? (And Other Controversial Essays), “‘Us’ or ‘Them’”, Hoover Institution Press, 2006.