Thanks for posting this article. I asked this question in the book club with Gary Kasparov, and I would like to ask you David. If groups of like-minded people meeting together tend to radicalize, what is the solution? Where are these mediating social gatherings? Much of the Church isn't doing it, social clubs won't do it in places like where I live due to homogeneity (northeast Georgia), and political gatherings certainly won't. So, how do we construct places of ideologically diverse discussions locally? As much as I like the Persuasion and the Dispatch, I would wager I am one of a very few reading these sites in my county.
There is such a need to foster that type of local community. As I watched the few minutes of Barr's hearing I could stomach, I asked what is the point of all this showboating? Nobody was there for a discussion. Nobody was there to improve the country. To make a hearing like that worthwhile, a revolution in expectations would have to begin locally. Only when people locally expect political discussions to mean something and improve governance, only when we elect people interested in doing that, will our national system begin working again. So, how do we change things locally?
Hi Seth. I'm afraid there's no great answer to your question. Seeking out diverse communities (like Persuasion) is one, but I've also taken to sometimes playing the role of the dissenting voice in like-minded gatherings (if I'm familiar with the arguments) just to check the groupthink -- especially if I think the other side isn't being portrayed fairly. But we've got a real problem with the creation of immense ideological bubbles, and I frankly don't think we have an easy or obvious path out of this mess.
The great thing about focusing on local issues is that they so often transcend ideological divides. Most everyone wants good roads and schools, a safe environment for their children, access to nature and open space, good recreational facilities, etc. etc. So perhaps part of the answer is to build on the relationships among diverse individuals when they come together to solve a common problem even when that common issue has been resolved.
+1 for local issues. One of the really bad megatrends of the last 20 years is the hollowing out of local media, particularly newspapers. First Craiglist and later Facebook sucked giant portions of their revenue away and... for what? Hyperpartisan fake news in everyone's feeds? In the meantime there are many undercovered local issues that aren't particularly partisan per se.
Hi Seth, I love the idea of using local communities to enforce the direction and purpose of political discourse. Is it possible this is already happening, but it's just happening too slowly in the time of instant everything? Humanity works, sadly, very slowly and perhaps in this next election and in the years to follow more people with ideals like yours will run for office and improve a woefully outdated system (government) into something more accountable, agile, and representative of the needs of its citizenry.
re: the path forward - Surprisingly, nobody seems willing to discuss a change in the fabric of America as it stands today. But isn't that worth considering under the current political and social divide? Is it valuable to discuss a home renovation without addressing an obvious problem with the shifting foundation?
This may seem reductionist, as it doesn't address religion's impact on state and local policy, but the more a society diverges in terms of income & wealth the more their priorities shift and ultimately their realities follow. If any society continues to separate into haves and have nots and value fame/currency over community was this outcome not almost predictable?
I'm equally challenged with this question as I have also benefited by society's current structure so I hope the Persuasion brings us better ideas.
If I can recommend a book:
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
My question is the same Seth, and I do not have an answer or even a suggestion of where to go from here. My only hope is that someday we will admit what we truly are, an ape just a few days down out of the trees. We need to face up to what drives “human nature” in basic biological terms.
Good article, as always, David. I disagree with you on many issues but always enjoy reading your good-faith musings. On slavery - my first paternal ancestor came to America in 1649 and eventually owned dozens of slaves. My family is scattered throughout the South and I have no doubt I would've been on the side of the confederacy. I like to think of myself as a free thinker -- in fact I moved out of the South in part because of the racism and backward attitudes I saw all around me in my small town -- but an open mind has to be fed with good books. I doubt there were very many available in in rural Georgia in the early 19th century to make the case against slavery. And the few available ones were probably viewed as radically as the Communist Manifesto was after 1917.
I’d also add that even if such books were widely available and not under censure, the average person in an agrarian society doesn’t have a ton of time for reading. My grandma said this of life on a farm: “A man works from sun to sun but a woman’s work is never done.” Even with the improved agricultural efficiencies of the 20th century, my farmer grandfather read sparingly for pleasure, and when he did it was usually his Bible.
A person with more leisure time for reading might have been more personally invested in the rightness of the system that gave him leisure, so he might have avoided works with a compelling argument against slavery. I always wondered why had to be a question, because slavery is so obviously inherently abhorrent. But I guess you can build a bubble of self-reinforcing ideas that explain the rightness of your way of life, and it would take a war to shatter that bubble.
I wonder what self-reinforcing bubble I’m living in right now, all unaware!
I was reading today the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by William Lloyd Garrison and adopted at the 1833 convention creating the American Anti-Slavery Society. . What surprised me was Garrison's insistence right up front on the principle of non-violence. I somehow assumed that the Declaration's passionate condemnation of American slavery as the greatest evil in history would excuse, not explicitly of course, some level of violence in service of its eradication. Your article and the Declaration have caused me to reflect how the principle of non-violence implicitly embodies a faith in the possibility of truth winning out over tribalism rooted as it is in the belief that once people fully understand an evil, in this case what a perversion of American ideals slavery represented there would be no need for violence and it would somehow fall of its own weight. But what Garrison never understood is how political engagement could advance his ultimate purpose. By contrast, Martin Luther King fully understood the need to engage with the political process to expose the evils of segregation. But he did it in a manner that neither shamed people nor did he emphasize the monstrous evils of slavery. His focus was on the present and the future and the need to constructively engage with even those most deeply committed to everything he opposed. Guilt trips were never part of his arsenal I do worry, perhaps unnecessarily, that the current emphasis on past sins may be wasting a vital opportunity to constructively focus on what needs to be done now. In politics, the truths you choose to focus on must ultimately match the goals you wish to achieve. Right now I perceive a growing mis-alignment.
Sidebar on perception of word meaning. It caught my eye that you referred to “gun rights advocates” and “gun control activists.” To my mind, an advocate is calm and reasoned, while an activist is impassioned, maybe to the point of unreason. I‘ve always seen the gun lobby as obsessed past the point of sanity, and the gun control folks as concerned and reasonable, so I would have flipped the adjectives, gun rights activists and gun control advocates. Was the word choice intentional or am I reading too much into it?
(Sorry, I just like analyzing how word choice can shape meaning at an almost subconscious level, and that snagged my eye.)
Defending tribe over principle is surely in our DNA and it served us well at a primitive level - defend the “us” from the “them” was probably very critical to survival for our subsistence level distant ancestors. It’s so counterintuitive to stop and ask ourselves (and our peer groups) is this a right principle, and why is it right? And, how do we correct our path if we are wrong? Am I strong enough do diverge from a wrong path on my own?
FWIW, my father’s family fought for the confederacy, and, although I never knew the details, it was probably the same army as yours since my family was settled then in what my grandfather always referred to as Hell’s Neck Holler, in Humphreys county Tennessee. He always told us kids when we asked about the Civil War that his grandfather and great uncles just fought for home.
Would I have done differently? Would I really have said, this war is about something so wrong that I will not fight for it, not even to protect my family from the invading troops that are on the right side of this principle? Or would I have let myself be persuaded that it was really about states’ rights, to soothe my conscience enough to let me avoid thinking about what the states wanted the right to do?
I do not know the answer I would give for my imaginary past self, and that scares me a little. Slavery is so monstrous, yet I understand why my ancestors fought in a war that would have preserved it. As I look to the future, I know the principles I would like to uphold, and I also wonder if I will recognize the moments that test my conviction, or if I will miss them in my focus on the immediacy of home and family. If we all do that, we’ll certainly lose the principles that give us the framework to build our free homes and prosperous families.
Quick note: shared the piece on FB but it's getting blocked because of "violent or graphic content" in the image. May be a good idea to swap out the thumbnail image so the piece travels farther — whatever you guys decide. Thank you, I learned something valuable today, and that is rare.
As a Canadian living in Europe, reading about David's approach as a Christian and his stand for civil liberties and free speech is a shot of optimism as my friends and I have been watching American politics/discourse devolve into a dark parody of itself. As the comments seem to agree, the path forward is unclear but I appreciate the steps David is taking.
The part of David's article I think missed the mark though is his apples to apples comparison of the tribal Evangelical Trumpers and Urban centers that voted for Clinton. If anything, this is the exact argument that leaves American voters more divided and is one of the central arguments that has led to the rise of Conservatives' demonization of anyone left of centre as "Leftists", which sounds eeriely like the polarization seen in other countries en route to fascism.
Yes, the umbrella on the left is united against Trump but the diversity of opinion under that umbrella is very far from the homogeneity French asserts. From debates on police & healthcare reform, to the severity of race and income inequality, there is a strong debate of ideas and what meaningful progress looks like. On the right, in the Evangelical communities, those united FOR Trump, the diversity of opinion appears very narrow as their policy ideas seem united under religious dogma and a leader, Trump, who seems allergic to experts and ethics.
So for French to assert that those who voted differently in a two party system are equally tribal, regardless of the context of the Presidential candidates, the parties and their issues, feels naive at best.
That said, thanks again to David for the thoughtful article. I join you all on the road to better solutions
Co-sign. I'm a centrist Democrat and there's certainly some far-left agitators who spend all their time bashing us, but there is nothing like the RINO phenomenon on the right. There's no mainstream commentator like Tucker Carlson who called John Bolton a leftist the moment he was fired. Yes, Noam Chomsky and Democracy Now will call Biden bad names, but they are a very small faction relative to the median Democrat voter.
“Safety in numbers” is a basic theme of evolution and the notion that humans evolved differently or are in some way uniquely removed from this biological dynamic is absurd. Of course the forces of tribalism are powerful. It’s been an integral part the evolution of Homo sapiens from the start. My question is, given we can never escape this phenomenon, how can we consistently use to advantage of good more than evil?
Perhaps the only answer to extremes of tribalism is for reasonable people to be publicly, forcefully reasonable. Reasonable arguments, particularly couched in easy to understand language, still have force. I have longed for a centrist, reason-based political party for decades. Doesn't seem like that's going to happen.
Yes. A hundred times yes. This is why the term "like-minded" has always made me cringe a bit. I'd much rather be with a bunch of like-hearted people.
Thanks for posting this article. I asked this question in the book club with Gary Kasparov, and I would like to ask you David. If groups of like-minded people meeting together tend to radicalize, what is the solution? Where are these mediating social gatherings? Much of the Church isn't doing it, social clubs won't do it in places like where I live due to homogeneity (northeast Georgia), and political gatherings certainly won't. So, how do we construct places of ideologically diverse discussions locally? As much as I like the Persuasion and the Dispatch, I would wager I am one of a very few reading these sites in my county.
There is such a need to foster that type of local community. As I watched the few minutes of Barr's hearing I could stomach, I asked what is the point of all this showboating? Nobody was there for a discussion. Nobody was there to improve the country. To make a hearing like that worthwhile, a revolution in expectations would have to begin locally. Only when people locally expect political discussions to mean something and improve governance, only when we elect people interested in doing that, will our national system begin working again. So, how do we change things locally?
Hi Seth. I'm afraid there's no great answer to your question. Seeking out diverse communities (like Persuasion) is one, but I've also taken to sometimes playing the role of the dissenting voice in like-minded gatherings (if I'm familiar with the arguments) just to check the groupthink -- especially if I think the other side isn't being portrayed fairly. But we've got a real problem with the creation of immense ideological bubbles, and I frankly don't think we have an easy or obvious path out of this mess.
The great thing about focusing on local issues is that they so often transcend ideological divides. Most everyone wants good roads and schools, a safe environment for their children, access to nature and open space, good recreational facilities, etc. etc. So perhaps part of the answer is to build on the relationships among diverse individuals when they come together to solve a common problem even when that common issue has been resolved.
+1 for local issues. One of the really bad megatrends of the last 20 years is the hollowing out of local media, particularly newspapers. First Craiglist and later Facebook sucked giant portions of their revenue away and... for what? Hyperpartisan fake news in everyone's feeds? In the meantime there are many undercovered local issues that aren't particularly partisan per se.
D, Thanks for your comment and, unfortunately, you are all too right.
Hi Seth, I love the idea of using local communities to enforce the direction and purpose of political discourse. Is it possible this is already happening, but it's just happening too slowly in the time of instant everything? Humanity works, sadly, very slowly and perhaps in this next election and in the years to follow more people with ideals like yours will run for office and improve a woefully outdated system (government) into something more accountable, agile, and representative of the needs of its citizenry.
re: the path forward - Surprisingly, nobody seems willing to discuss a change in the fabric of America as it stands today. But isn't that worth considering under the current political and social divide? Is it valuable to discuss a home renovation without addressing an obvious problem with the shifting foundation?
This may seem reductionist, as it doesn't address religion's impact on state and local policy, but the more a society diverges in terms of income & wealth the more their priorities shift and ultimately their realities follow. If any society continues to separate into haves and have nots and value fame/currency over community was this outcome not almost predictable?
I'm equally challenged with this question as I have also benefited by society's current structure so I hope the Persuasion brings us better ideas.
If I can recommend a book:
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
by Anand Giridharadas
My question is the same Seth, and I do not have an answer or even a suggestion of where to go from here. My only hope is that someday we will admit what we truly are, an ape just a few days down out of the trees. We need to face up to what drives “human nature” in basic biological terms.
Good article, as always, David. I disagree with you on many issues but always enjoy reading your good-faith musings. On slavery - my first paternal ancestor came to America in 1649 and eventually owned dozens of slaves. My family is scattered throughout the South and I have no doubt I would've been on the side of the confederacy. I like to think of myself as a free thinker -- in fact I moved out of the South in part because of the racism and backward attitudes I saw all around me in my small town -- but an open mind has to be fed with good books. I doubt there were very many available in in rural Georgia in the early 19th century to make the case against slavery. And the few available ones were probably viewed as radically as the Communist Manifesto was after 1917.
I’d also add that even if such books were widely available and not under censure, the average person in an agrarian society doesn’t have a ton of time for reading. My grandma said this of life on a farm: “A man works from sun to sun but a woman’s work is never done.” Even with the improved agricultural efficiencies of the 20th century, my farmer grandfather read sparingly for pleasure, and when he did it was usually his Bible.
A person with more leisure time for reading might have been more personally invested in the rightness of the system that gave him leisure, so he might have avoided works with a compelling argument against slavery. I always wondered why had to be a question, because slavery is so obviously inherently abhorrent. But I guess you can build a bubble of self-reinforcing ideas that explain the rightness of your way of life, and it would take a war to shatter that bubble.
I wonder what self-reinforcing bubble I’m living in right now, all unaware!
This was amazing. Thank you.
I was reading today the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by William Lloyd Garrison and adopted at the 1833 convention creating the American Anti-Slavery Society. . What surprised me was Garrison's insistence right up front on the principle of non-violence. I somehow assumed that the Declaration's passionate condemnation of American slavery as the greatest evil in history would excuse, not explicitly of course, some level of violence in service of its eradication. Your article and the Declaration have caused me to reflect how the principle of non-violence implicitly embodies a faith in the possibility of truth winning out over tribalism rooted as it is in the belief that once people fully understand an evil, in this case what a perversion of American ideals slavery represented there would be no need for violence and it would somehow fall of its own weight. But what Garrison never understood is how political engagement could advance his ultimate purpose. By contrast, Martin Luther King fully understood the need to engage with the political process to expose the evils of segregation. But he did it in a manner that neither shamed people nor did he emphasize the monstrous evils of slavery. His focus was on the present and the future and the need to constructively engage with even those most deeply committed to everything he opposed. Guilt trips were never part of his arsenal I do worry, perhaps unnecessarily, that the current emphasis on past sins may be wasting a vital opportunity to constructively focus on what needs to be done now. In politics, the truths you choose to focus on must ultimately match the goals you wish to achieve. Right now I perceive a growing mis-alignment.
A great piece, it left me humbled
Sidebar on perception of word meaning. It caught my eye that you referred to “gun rights advocates” and “gun control activists.” To my mind, an advocate is calm and reasoned, while an activist is impassioned, maybe to the point of unreason. I‘ve always seen the gun lobby as obsessed past the point of sanity, and the gun control folks as concerned and reasonable, so I would have flipped the adjectives, gun rights activists and gun control advocates. Was the word choice intentional or am I reading too much into it?
(Sorry, I just like analyzing how word choice can shape meaning at an almost subconscious level, and that snagged my eye.)
I noticed this too, thank you for pointing this out Emily!
Defending tribe over principle is surely in our DNA and it served us well at a primitive level - defend the “us” from the “them” was probably very critical to survival for our subsistence level distant ancestors. It’s so counterintuitive to stop and ask ourselves (and our peer groups) is this a right principle, and why is it right? And, how do we correct our path if we are wrong? Am I strong enough do diverge from a wrong path on my own?
FWIW, my father’s family fought for the confederacy, and, although I never knew the details, it was probably the same army as yours since my family was settled then in what my grandfather always referred to as Hell’s Neck Holler, in Humphreys county Tennessee. He always told us kids when we asked about the Civil War that his grandfather and great uncles just fought for home.
Would I have done differently? Would I really have said, this war is about something so wrong that I will not fight for it, not even to protect my family from the invading troops that are on the right side of this principle? Or would I have let myself be persuaded that it was really about states’ rights, to soothe my conscience enough to let me avoid thinking about what the states wanted the right to do?
I do not know the answer I would give for my imaginary past self, and that scares me a little. Slavery is so monstrous, yet I understand why my ancestors fought in a war that would have preserved it. As I look to the future, I know the principles I would like to uphold, and I also wonder if I will recognize the moments that test my conviction, or if I will miss them in my focus on the immediacy of home and family. If we all do that, we’ll certainly lose the principles that give us the framework to build our free homes and prosperous families.
Good article, made me really think.
Quick note: shared the piece on FB but it's getting blocked because of "violent or graphic content" in the image. May be a good idea to swap out the thumbnail image so the piece travels farther — whatever you guys decide. Thank you, I learned something valuable today, and that is rare.
Thanks for pointing this out! We just swapped out the picture, so hopefully it will now work!
Thanks for telling me Maria!
And thanks for the kind words about the piece.
Nicely said.
As a Canadian living in Europe, reading about David's approach as a Christian and his stand for civil liberties and free speech is a shot of optimism as my friends and I have been watching American politics/discourse devolve into a dark parody of itself. As the comments seem to agree, the path forward is unclear but I appreciate the steps David is taking.
The part of David's article I think missed the mark though is his apples to apples comparison of the tribal Evangelical Trumpers and Urban centers that voted for Clinton. If anything, this is the exact argument that leaves American voters more divided and is one of the central arguments that has led to the rise of Conservatives' demonization of anyone left of centre as "Leftists", which sounds eeriely like the polarization seen in other countries en route to fascism.
Yes, the umbrella on the left is united against Trump but the diversity of opinion under that umbrella is very far from the homogeneity French asserts. From debates on police & healthcare reform, to the severity of race and income inequality, there is a strong debate of ideas and what meaningful progress looks like. On the right, in the Evangelical communities, those united FOR Trump, the diversity of opinion appears very narrow as their policy ideas seem united under religious dogma and a leader, Trump, who seems allergic to experts and ethics.
So for French to assert that those who voted differently in a two party system are equally tribal, regardless of the context of the Presidential candidates, the parties and their issues, feels naive at best.
That said, thanks again to David for the thoughtful article. I join you all on the road to better solutions
Co-sign. I'm a centrist Democrat and there's certainly some far-left agitators who spend all their time bashing us, but there is nothing like the RINO phenomenon on the right. There's no mainstream commentator like Tucker Carlson who called John Bolton a leftist the moment he was fired. Yes, Noam Chomsky and Democracy Now will call Biden bad names, but they are a very small faction relative to the median Democrat voter.
I agree. It is totally asymmetrical.
“Safety in numbers” is a basic theme of evolution and the notion that humans evolved differently or are in some way uniquely removed from this biological dynamic is absurd. Of course the forces of tribalism are powerful. It’s been an integral part the evolution of Homo sapiens from the start. My question is, given we can never escape this phenomenon, how can we consistently use to advantage of good more than evil?
I really needed to read something like this today.
Perhaps the only answer to extremes of tribalism is for reasonable people to be publicly, forcefully reasonable. Reasonable arguments, particularly couched in easy to understand language, still have force. I have longed for a centrist, reason-based political party for decades. Doesn't seem like that's going to happen.
Well done again good sir!
Fantastic article, David.