3 Ways to Combat Extreme Polarization
If you’ve been on social media any amount in the last decade, but especially in the previous few years, you know that polarization is harming American civic life. How else can we even try to explain a phenomenon like a school board banning Maus except to say that this is what happens when polarization is allowed to fester. Polarization is a sickness that eats away at shared values and leaves nothing but rot in its wake.
This past week Professor Stephanie Forrest and researcher Joshua Daymude, working with Professor Robert Axelrod, released a complex understanding of what causes polarization. Writing for Brookings, Forrest, and Daymude went further to suggest ways to combat polarization in society. They find three keys are necessary for avoiding polarization: “(1) increasing tolerance, the range of opinions that individuals find attractive; (2) limiting the radicalizing influence of repulsive extremists; and (3) incentivizing non-extremist policies that align with individuals’ self-interests.”
Forrest and Daymude also mention the need for an external force, like the attack on September 11, 2001, or a global pandemic, as a rallying point for a society to come together, set aside differences, and work towards a common goal.
However, we have seen that this pandemic has not been the external force needed to end polarization. If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic has only made matters worse. For example, it’s hard to think that parents would be this upset about mask mandates for schools if the polarization was decreasing. Forrest and Daymude suggest that this is because the pandemic has not been equally devastating for everyone.
What will work if the pandemic will not be the end of our polarization? As pointed out, encouraging tolerance, limiting the influence of radical ideas, and incentivizing people to choose non-extremist policies that are in their self-interest can help. But even knowing that, we’re still far from ending polarization. Forrest and Daymude also suggest, almost as an aside, one way to help implement those three keys that we would all do well to better cultivate: telling stories.
We all need to be better at telling stories and, more specifically, better at listening to the stories of others. Stories have the power to draw us out of ourselves and move us to care for others in ways we wouldn’t otherwise choose or know to choose. But stories only work as an end to polarization if we’re willing to admit that we can change. More bluntly, stories will only work if we are ready to accept that we could be wrong and in need of change.
Polarization takes root, primarily, in groups who are so confident they are right that there is no need to hear from any outside opinion or thought. There’s not even a need for facts, real or alternative.
It’s good to know that there are actionable steps to end polarization. Forrest and Daymude’s work is illuminating and helpful. But from a boots on the ground perspective, the first step that we can all take to end polarization is to admit that we can be wrong.
Four More Things:
1) The always eloquent Dr. Karen Swallow Prior makes a case at RNS that being pro-life calls for sacrifice. She then traces how her conviction that life is precious compels her to both advocate for the unborn and wear a mask. “It is not asking too much — in fact, it’s really the bare minimum — for those of us who believe we are justified in asking a woman to sacrifice much to preserve a life growing inside her body to inconvenience our own bodies by wearing a piece of cloth.”
2) Jack Jenkins in WaPo connects the dots of how the Capitol attack is spreading Christian nationalism on the extreme right. As they become more disillusioned with government, there are some on the right that pivot to a more violent Christian nationalism. What is truly scary is how Christianity can lend a veneer of credibility to extremists. “Any appeal to Christian nationalist views, said Anthea Butler, chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, can embolden extremists by giving the appearance — even unintentionally — of an “alliance” with church leaders.”
3) Vice had an interesting interview with soon-to-be former Wisconsin State Senator Kathy Bernier on why she’s quitting the GOP. Bernier was trying to expand access to voting in Wisconsin, in ways friendly to Republican sensibilities, when she drew the ire of former President Trump for admitting the truth that Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020. You’ve likely seen her quote about why she’s leaving the GOP (“Because the conspiracy theorists have taken over the party.”) but the entire interview is illuminating and worth reading.
4) Finally, Samuel Perry is in RNS tracing how Christian nationalism and its dogma has come with deadly consequences. Perry finds that those who identify strongly with Christian nationalist ideology also have several blind spots in scientific knowledge that correlates with the dogma of Christian nationalism. “Christian nationalism, in other words, didn’t necessarily coincide with ignorance. Rather, it reflected a powerful dogmatism that rejected any facts that were inconsistent with cherished narratives.”