overcoming political polarization

There is a lot of talk these days about how impossible it seems to have become for the right and the left to work together, but talk is cheap. And actually it is worse than cheap talk. I find most of the talk to be disingenuous because it is usually more about bashing the other side (and thus contributing to the problem) than looking for a real solution. The starting point needs to be a fundamental affirmation of the fact that conservatives and liberals both have important roles to play in the political arena. It is natural for them to be in opposition to each other, but sabotaging the other side crosses a line.

Sabotaging people we disagree with sabotages the whole democratic process. I admit I'm biased and that that affects my perception, but I don't really believe that the blame is equal. What I see is that most liberals believe in government and want it to work, so they generally tend to be more averse to doing anything that would actually have a detrimental effect on the ability of the government to do its job. Many conservatives hate the very idea of government and see sabotaging it as a noble act. (I have to say though that being opposed to a well-functioning government is not an inherently conservative position, but how they have ended up there is a whole other topic.)

Liberals tend to have more faith in the democratic process so are more likely to be willing to work with people they disagree with. Obviously though, there is plenty of blame on both sides. One of the biggest problems is that the political system is inescapably corrupt. The corruption is mitigated to some extent by the ability of journalists to expose blatant corruption and abuses of power (an important role of a free press). The fact of the matter is that getting elected requires money, an enormous amount of money, and a lot of that money comes from people who expect special treatment in exchange. Politicians are human. They like the perks that come with being at the bidding of deep pocket special interests. So even though progressives are supposed to be advocates of public policies that are broadly beneficial, so called progressive politicians are less beholden to ordinary citizens than they are to those who finance their campaigns.

One of the end results is a general sense of futility, an emotional state that is easily exploited by demagogues. Politics thus becomes cultural warfare. Advocacy becomes purely symbolic. Politicians get elected based on hot button issues that are peripheral to doing what it takes to actually govern. The whole process becomes intractably polarized. There is little or no incentive to work together toward real solutions. Everything comes be about bashing the opposition.

The only way out of the morass that I can imagine would entail a grassroots movement of insistent citizens who are committed to bringing honesty and responsibility into the process. That is hard work. It involves swimming upstream. Most people prefer being told comforting lies over hard truths. However, enough of them eventually come around if the facts are made clear to them. Most people want to believe they are doing the right thing, even though they might not know exactly what that would look like. They are not stupid; they just haven't taken the time to really sort things out. The loudest voices are the well-financed shills who are telling them lies that are more appealing than the truth. The truth will win out in the end though if the responsible grown-ups in the room are willing to speak up with loving-kindness and patience. 

raising expecations

Attitude makes a big difference in how things turn out, but actually changing a less than helpful attitude is easier said than done. The difficulty is not that the way to get there is a big secret. We don't see it because we don't want to go where it would take us. The solution involves letting go of some of our most fundamental beliefs because of how they create, perpetuate, and exacerbate a vicious circle wherein the way we seek satisfaction yields bad outcomes which in turn produce disappointment, a soured attitude, and increasingly wrong-headed and dysfunctional approaches.

If we are not getting what we want out of life, we might need to step back and ask ourselves whether what we are pursuing is even capable of providing any actual satisfaction. If our best efforts are thwarted or if accomplishing what we set out to do leaves us feeling unfulfilled, just trying harder is probably not the solution. There is a pretty good chance that there is something fundamentally wrong with our approach. Conventional wisdom is that we just need to lower our expectations, but that is a prescription for even greater disappointment.

The only thing worse than unmet expectations is expecting too little out of life. The problem is not that we expect too much, but is instead that we expect too little. As the famous quote from the movie "Auntie Mame" goes, "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death". Too often, they are starving simply because they don't show up.

unpleasant truths and comforting lies

Truth claims are often intensely disputed, but that is all the more reason to be vigilant. Some methods for arriving at understandings of the truth are more reliable than others. In fact, some methods are blatantly dishonest, especially those that are tainted by a bias against science and, in general, any evidence that contradicts what they already believe. Scientific consensus is never final, but the very recognition that it is not final actually adds credibility. Truth claims that can't be questioned and tested are highly suspect. It is disingenuous to attack science on the basis that scientists change their minds.

Unfortunately, the sense of certainty that accompanies popular delusions can feel more true than the disconcerting uncertainty that accompanies honest evaluation of actual evidence, and there is nothing more dangerous than a mob of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right and therefore that they need to do whatever it takes to pursue what they believe needs to happen. To a great extent, the problem is in a shortage of critical thinking, but it actually goes deeper than that.

Even smart, highly educated people can get sucked into groupthink, which is collective stupidity that comes about when those who would dispute mainstream beliefs feel pressured to go along or when it just doesn’t even occur to anyone to ask questions. The textbook example of groupthink is the Challenger disaster. The remedy for groupthink is inherently uncomfortable because some of the questions that need to be asked would shake the very foundations of the prevailing value system. Sacred cows become fair game. Since what is being challenged is what seems like the only conceivable truth, the challenge is perceived to be obviously false. We can’t always trust what feels true or what feels like the right thing to do. We need to listen to what our hearts seem to be telling us, but we also need to keep our eyes open.   

being mindful of the big picture

Even when I was working as an ordained minister, I was more interested in the discipline of theological reflection as a way of framing questions than of providing answers. It seemed to me that the primary value in a lot of serious theology (as opposed to ordinary folk theology) was that it provided something other than easy answers. I didn't ignore the extent to which official theological doctrine was about maintaining power over people. I have to admit that I wasn't above using my arcane knowledge of theology to augment the power I had over laity. Nonetheless, I was mainly interested in theology as a body of work that could be mined for helpful resources. It was less about the content than it was about the search itself.

So I don't believe that becoming trained to think theologically was a total waste of time. Being practiced in posing big questions is somewhat rare these days. Almost everybody is a specialist. Few know or even much care about how each specialty fits into the big picture. Theology, prior to the scientific revolution, used to have the role of determining how everything fit together. Today, it is the physicists who are the most serious contenders for the role of probing the biggest questions that can be imagined. They have the most sound knowledge about cosmology. They are the ones who are working on what they call, in all seriousness, "a theory of everything".

I have my doubts about the possibility of formulating a theory of everything, not because of the limitations of human beings, but instead because the ultimate secrets of life are probably not reducible to a single theoretical construct. It seems to me that the attributes that are most helpful in the search for answers to life's deepest and most challenging questions are open-mindedness, honesty, humility, and being prepared for mind-blowing, life-changing surprises. I'm not wanting to go back to the mystification within which theology has traditionally been shrouded; however, I do believe that we would do well to restore mystery to a position of centrality. 

humanizing democracy

There is more to freedom of speech than individuals having the right to express themselves without being persecuted. While personal freedom is important, the main point of freedom of speech is democracy's need for a diversity of perspectives. We especially need the viewpoints and the active participation of those who are systematically excluded because of their socio-economic status, their ethnic background, their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religious beliefs, their lack of religious beliefs, or their outside-the-mainstream political views or because their farsighted, visionary ideas are not yet widely understood and thus might seem to be "out in left field".

The challenge is not just about how to overcome the stupefying effects of the herd instinct; it is perhaps even more about how to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Most of our inability to hear distinct voices amidst the din of the crowd has to do with information overload. Democracy was far simpler when the criterion to be fully enfranchised was being a property-owning, educated white male. And actually, it is questionable whether the governmental design we inherited from the brilliant but hardly representative group of individuals who originally pioneered the basic idea of democracy is adequate to meet the needs of a fully representative democracy.

We have three options. First, we can just carry on with what we've been doing and thereby continue getting the results we've been getting. Second, we can create work-arounds whereby an activated citizenry can overcome the limitations of our current governance model. Or third, we can go back to the drawing board and invent democracy 2.0. In a perfect world, option three would be best, but obviously, we don't live in a perfect world. And actually, in order to get to option three, we would have to go through option two in order to institute the necessary reforms. Our work is cut out for us. 

humanizing civilization

Civilization inspires a lot of ambivalence. Some even believe that we would be far better off without it. Others just believe it is a necessary evil. It supposedly prevents us from the ideal, which is to live in a natural state; however, what that natural state would be is usually not especially informed by actual evidence from anthropology and evolutionary biology. 

What we call civilization was made possible by the Agricultural Revolution, which is thought to have occurred about 12,000 years ago. While that seems like a long time ago, it is not long enough ago for what has happened since then to have had much influence on human evolution. During the vast majority of the time between the emergence of the human species and now, our ancestors lived in hunter-gatherer bands, so having some understanding of what life was likely to have been like for those ancestors from whom we inherited our genetic predispositions would provide the insights into what our natural state might be. 

Evidence about hunter-gatherers past and present demonstrates that even before anything that would be considered civilization, human life was not what seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all”. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is far from ruthlessly individualistic. The very survival of hunter-gatherers depends on cooperating with each other. They might be suspicious of and even hostile toward outsiders, but they are deeply bonded with and intensely loyal toward members of their own tight-knit group. And while they might be “uncivilized”, they aren’t without culture. 

Our natural state is to be participants in a culture that fosters caring, generosity, and cooperation. The basic idea of being civilized ought to be to enlarge the group with whom we are caring, generous, and cooperative. The stakes are much higher. War is no longer fought with bows and arrows against the neighboring tribe. We’ve now had two “world wars”, and the next world war would likely mean the end of human civilization as we know it. Nonetheless, we can’t go back to some mythical natural state. Our best option is become more civilized. That is the only path to the recovery of humanity. 

reframing dissatisfaction

A central question in being human is what to do with dissatisfaction. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but the best strategy is usually a blend of finding satisfaction when it's possible and practicing patience when it's not immediately available. I might not always be able to directly scratch the actual itch I'm feeling, but I can always find something that provides some degree of satisfaction. If satisfaction is elusive, I might need to shift my focus, dig deeper, or go further.

Potential satisfactions might be right under my nose, or I might need to put some effort into breaking out of whatever it is that is limiting my search. There is a good chance that I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be. Human beings are more intellectually and psychologically complicated than other animals. Our power of imagination can be an affliction as well as an asset. Sometimes our restlessness is of our own making. We often don't really know what we want, or what we want is incapable of providing any actual satisfaction.

Distinctively human attributes have enabled us to enjoy significant success in the Darwinian survival game, but they can also create problems for us. It is possible to have an overly gloomy view of this. The Christian doctrine of original sin is not the only example of that. A thoroughly secular and objective assessment of the human capacity to do great harm to other living things, to each other, and to ourselves can easily lead to the belief that the planet would be better off without us. However, since eliminating the human menace through collective suicide doesn't feel like a very good solution, we are morally obligated to do what we can to improve the situation. But how do we do that?

Some would say that our only hope is divine intervention. They might argue that the main problem is that society has moved away from God and from traditional morality, even though there is no chance of ever finding agreement on just what society returning to God and to traditional morality would even look like. Or they might believe that the best path is to hasten the apocalypse. Thus increasing the likelihood of human demise through nuclear annihilation or radical climate change seems like a good idea to them. For the rest of us though, such talk leads away from rather than toward an actual solution.

There is a reason that society has become increasingly secular in modern times. As the world has grown smaller and cultures are bumping up against each other, often leading to pointless and devastating wars, it has become more and more clear that the global public arena needs to be a space that is judiciously neutral with regard to religion and matters of private morality. That doesn't mean that society would become amoral. It is just that we make a distinction between, on the one hand, morality that is in the public interest (like "thou shalt not kill") and, on the other hand, morality that falls strictly into the realm of personal values.

What we have in common with each other is our humanity. That has to be the basis of public morality, and while some don't have a lot of confidence in the human capacity for good, it is our only hope. Only if we are able to feel empathy and act compassionately can we make any progress toward peace and general wellbeing. It is also the most reliable way to still our restless hearts, since much of our dissatisfaction is caused directly and indirectly by our repressed awareness of troubling realities. We can't solve the problem of human suffering, but we can each find what is in our hearts that can contribute to its mitigation.