Polarization Weakens Our Society

The Right and the Left grow weaker and more susceptible to tyranny if they do not absorb the best
of the other while eschewing the extremes of each. Our failure to do this work effectively can be observed in the belief each side seems to hold—that it occupies exclusive domain over truth and righteousness, and that the other side is irretrievably bankrupt of values, morals, and practical solutions.

If you must dismiss the values of half of the country to prove your case, you are likely suffering from a lack of what the other side has to offer—because, in an overall societal sense, ‘They’ are ‘Us.’

Polarization creates a societal disability that causes people of opposing perspectives to overly simplify issues into Good vs. Bad, Right vs. Wrong, Good vs. Evil.

That unyielding rigidity is the malady because it begins to impede progress toward our shared interests.

Interestingly, while the disorder equally affects both sides, it presents different symptoms in each. If there is a “They” and “They” are the universal set of ‘Bad’ and ‘Wrong’ and ‘We’ are the set of ‘Good’ and ‘Virtuous,’ you have been infected by the malady of polarization.

You are suffering from an illness that causes mental rigidity and reduces a complex multivariate system such as a society into a single-variate dynamic—a ‘They vs. Us.’ Demonization becomes the process of the day when we lack a guiding principle of “love thy neighbor.”

Read more in The Erotic Justice Handbook