Polarization is ubiquitous, but isn't the truth always in the middle?
Why are we always so tempted to be divided? From sports teams to geopolitics, is this just healthy competition or, if its unhealthy, is there anyway to reverse this tendency?
Think about the social contract.
When I was a kid, I understood this in a regional context. Our football team, the Green Bay Packers, was the best team, with the best history. But some people liked the Vikings or the Bears. For whatever crazy reason, they were not happy to like the best team, they deemed it best to like a less-best team.
But this was fine, and it was well understood that the liking of a best team or a less-best team did not change anything about science or math or the weather that day or the next.
Politics is a lot like sports. At the federal level, perhaps it is like Pro(fessional) Wrestling. It used to be, and if we think meditate hard enough probably will still be, that politics cannot change science or math or the weather that day or the next. Just like who wins in a wrestling match.
As someone who has long been comfortable moaning about how terrible the 'government' is at doing stuff, how corrupt and corrupting the systems must be, I have to admit I have grown tired of tirades. It just plays into the show.
We don't need them. We don't need technocrats. We are capable of developing ourselves. We can propose new methods, new social contracts. And I suspect there is lots of progress to be made with plants and growing them in places where they weren't grown before.
There are multiple ways to see things. A broken social contract is just an invitation to develop new models.
Additionally, polarization tends happen in many dimensions at the same time. Within the polarized waves, additional polarization fractals can form. As the winners of World War 2 split into Cold War opponents, members of the winning political party split to form factions within.
Is the world a dual place? Does one always become two? In a certain sense this seems like the principle of life, Yin and Yang , Dark and Light, Female and Male. The law of Polarity is even a Hermetic principle of philosophy.
But it doesn't apply to everything, and I can prove it.
Male and Female, Yang and Yin, Light and Dark, these things are not Good and Bad. They just are. It is good to have some hours of Day and some hours of Night.
Good and Bad is not a polarity, and morality is not under the law of polarity. A lie is a corruption of the truth, but 'lies' cannot balance against truth like Yin and Yang. Both Yin and Yang are truthful.
Thus, to be truthful, we must find balance, harmony and proportion in our lives, in our societies.
Surely the current polarization is becoming animated by perceived victimization. I say perceived not because we aren't victims, but because it is our perception of being victims, especially victims of others, that makes us so dangerous as humans.
As Pierre Beaudry states in the above image, the 'Right to Revenge' has been enshrined into the diplomatic code. Should it surprise anyone then that the people are being mobilized as 'armies of victims'?
A victim is a weapon. A victim has a 'right to revenge'.
Combining polarization with the weaponization of victimhood, it almost seems sinister. But its easily defeated if we just rethink our basic assumptions. Treat your enemies with kindness, work on forgiveness as if it was your job in this life.
To change the world by planting mint or lemon grass seems impossible, but I think its working.