Left and Right Turn Us Into Enemies
Binary thinking doesn't belong in politics; we lose all nuance
Today’s essay is about the political-industrial complex. In other words, how our democratic system is working against us and benefiting from us being divided. We’re going to look at great ways to overcome that.
Let’s start with a quote by Thomas Pynchon, an American novelist who was also on a couple of episodes of The Simpsons.
My last essay was about bringing conflict resolution and dialogue tools into our political system. I touched on the value of excellent questions, so there’s something very significant about a system that’s trying to get us to ask the wrong questions.
Here’s a quick recap of last week’s essay for context:
I introduced interest-based conflict resolution and the role it can play in our society. It’s a way to resolve conflict by figuring out what’s at the heart of the issue for everyone involved. Including everyone and their perspectives is a vital element of interest-based methods.
Many of the issues we’re dealing with are quite complex, so we need everyone’s viewpoints to make sure everyone gets their needs met. Unfortunately, we live in a culture with a win-lose system, so everyone winning is far from a priority. This means we often see people in power making unilateral decisions that benefit them, excluding other relevant voices.
There are three requirements for making quality decisions:
We need to be clear about what the content is.
We need respectful relationships.
We need a process that includes all voices and tries to get win-win outcomes.
We need an omni-win process.
As you may have noticed, we disagree a lot about what’s important. We have many broken relationships, so we lack trust, especially across our political differences. There’s a win-lose process in our voting, too. Representatives are either winning or losing, and they’re bundling legislation together in ways that make no sense to anyone.
While we have a win-lose process now, we can use interest-based processes to dig us out of this hole. We have ways of transforming conflict that can integrate many different perspectives and create mutually agreeable solutions. We can build consensus and deliberate across very complex issues. Still, we’re not using these tools.
It might seem like the problem is that we don’t trust each other or disagree on what’s going on because of ideological differences. But ideological differences are natural.
We all have different lived experiences and ways of seeing the world. People focus on information that they find important. Everyone looks at different problems, solutions, and values. We need all those values, answers to the issues, and information.
None of us can take responsibility for all of that. That’s why we have a democracy. We benefit from the diversity of perspectives. It’s not easy, but it’s super important.
Today, we’re looking at how the system is actively dividing us. It’s creating confusion about the facts, our goals, and questions we’re trying to answer. It’s undermining our relationships, and it’s no surprise that we are siloing out as a culture and dividing. We’re not even getting opportunities to interact with each other.
Something that’s been helpful for me in understanding this is the work of Bill Shireman and Trammell Crow. They wrote this really great book, In This Together, which I highly recommend. It’s about how Republicans, Democrats, capitalists, and activists are uniting to tackle climate change and more.
Bill Shireman, who was on my last podcast, has some really great perspectives. He’s a Republican environmentalist who’s doing a great job of recognizing the value of bridging all available skill sets. In This Together analyzes what’s going on in our system, and it’s fascinating.
Basically, the system benefits from keeping us divided. This includes the government, businesses, political parties, political representatives, media, and lobbyists. They all get money or votes by exacerbating the division. If they weren’t splitting us down the middle and pitting us all against each other, things wouldn’t go the way they want. They can’t solve the problems. Why? Because if they did, we wouldn’t vote for them.
Both sides are saying, “Give us money and votes, and in two years, we’ll get that permanent victory. We’re going to win forever and fix our political system.” Of course, there’s always another two years. That permanent victory they’re promising us is not real.
Steve McIntosh says the left promises to fix what’s wrong. They’re going to fight oppression, regulate the corporations and businesses, and stop all the bad things from happening. You better give them money and votes if you want the bad stuff to stop.
The right promises to protect what’s right. They’ll uphold traditions, make sure there’s freedom, and limit the oppression of the government. Businesses and politics are like, “Hey, give us money, and we’ll keep on fighting for that side.”
There’s no final outcome, and neither of these approaches bring us towards a solution. There’s plenty of evidence that they’re resistant to solving the problems. That’s how our system is running right now. It’s not a conspiracy; no one’s in charge of this idea. It’s just where the incentives are.
Those incentives spill out to our media and lobbyists: The interface between special interests and the government.
The media benefits from this because conflict is exciting. People like watching people fight, so it gets attention. If the media can say, “Come look at these extreme people fighting against these other extreme people!”, that is something people want to see. Typically, the masses don’t get excited about a long, deliberative conversation where everyone gets along in the end and figures things out.
So that’s the first layer. It’s leading to the digitization of our politics, which my mentor Kenneth Cloke talks about. Digitization is binary—this or that thinking. I want to introduce you to one of my favorite pieces of creative research work. It’s by Tim Urban.
He has a wonderful blog, Wait, but Why? There’s a fantastic analysis in The Story of Us. It’s a deep dive into understanding what’s going on with the world, why society is going crazy, and why we’re not making good decisions. I encourage folks to read this as he analyzes this in a really fascinating way.
We’re going to be looking into chapter nine of ten, Political Disney World. Open it up on a separate tab or device, and read along with me. It’s full of really cool graphics and it’s a fantastic deep dive.
Tim’s talking about how we’ve digitized our politics. What does that mean? Well, the opposite of digital is analog. So the natural world is analog: Beautiful smooth curves with all the details. As we turn things into pixels, we lose detail:
Here’s Tim’s example of the star. We lose all the nuance as it gets less pixelated; it becomes a square. That’s what happens as we go along the analog to digital spectrum.
He also has another great example of this, and it’s a sound wave. To start, the sound wave has little curves and nuance, but it changes when we need to digitize the sound. To break it down into “computer units,” we need to use binary code: Zeroes and ones. We lose so much detail when it becomes binary.
This is what our political system looks like. We cannot reduce our complex politics and legislation into binary. It just doesn’t work.
Tim calls this the “Disneyfication of our politics,” where we organize things into a tidy good or evil. There are totally good characters or totally bad characters; there’s no in-between. (Actually, let’s give Disney a shout-out here because they’ve managed to get rid of good guys and bad guys in their recent movies, especially Encanto. They’ve stepped into the nuance. Congratulations, Disney!)
In politics, when we have to choose one candidate over another, we need to decide whether they’re good or bad. That’s how our system works. We have to choose one side’s political checklist. If we believe in left-wing ideals, we have to support all their policies. Our media and culture amplify this. We check in with friends and social media to ensure we’re toeing the line of the side to which we’ve pledged allegiance.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to pick and choose from a menu of left and right policies. This is the quandary that comes up when we invest in binary thinking. We need to be able to see the pixels.
Let’s jump into some nuance, some pixels. We’re all on a political spectrum, but it goes deeper than that. Continuing The Story of Us, Tim unpacks the idea that there are two forces in our mind, incorporating our “psych spectrum” into the political ladder:
At the bottom, where we’re focused on confirmation and triumph, it’s:
Our primitive self
Prioritizing survival
Getting what I want, and what’s best for me
Not wanting to be challenged with a different reality
Us versus them, total partisanship
Right and wrong, good and evil
At the top, where we’re focused on truth and a more perfect nation, it’s:
A willingness to forgo all our survival needs
Finding out what’s true and good for everyone
Acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers
Wanting a win-win solution
Not worrying about which side is which
The graphic on the right shows the political distribution of the American population, with one dot representing 1,500 people. Two-thirds of our population consider themselves part of a political party.
The other third sits at the top, creating an arc. These folks are nonpartisan, and they’re just trying to figure out how to solve the problems. They might lean left or right, but they're willing to engage in the conversation.
But with two-thirds of the population firmly tied to their political parties, how can we even have that conversation when there’s so much rivalry? When we don't want to face another reality and other people’s opinions, we get in the way of progress.
This level of nuance is something we'll talk about a little more later this week. Then, I’ll jump into why our system wants to keep us divided. Stay tuned for Friday’s essay.
If you prefer to watch your content, here’s a video on the topic of this essay:
You can find more information about the work I do in conflict transformation on my website: http://www.omni-win.com
You can schedule a call with me here: https://calendly.com/duncanautrey
Don’t forget to check out the rest of my posts as I discuss how we can work together to ensure we all win.
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