Living with the Long Emergency: Cultivating a modest alternative to polarization – Brattleboro Reformer

There is a growing fear amongst those who make it their business to study such matters that polarization now runs so deep in the United States that we cant do those things that would help us be less divided. Nolan McCarty, for example, a political scientist at Princeton, writes that Any depolarizing event would need to be one where the causes are transparently external in a way that makes it hard for social groups to blame each other. It is increasingly hard to see what sort of event has that feature these days.

Significant to the intensifying polarization is that the United States is experiencing a demographic shift that poses a threat to the white population. The latter is projected to drop below 50 percent by 2045. Because White people have been the dominant power group, this change allows unscrupulous politicians, like right-wing Republicans to exploit White insecurities surrounding their loss of status. The latter is glaringly evident in the growing phenomenon of deaths by despair amongst middle age White people, especially men. However welcome and necessary this loss of white skin privilege is, it nevertheless contributes to the fear and rage of some whites that underwrites polarization.

But as important as race is to understanding ourselves as a deeply, perhaps fatally, divided people, it is only part of the multi-faceted polarizing dynamic that touches on the fundamental questions of identity and power. Another significant dimension is suggested by the visceral reaction that many White folks evince at a Trump rally when the ex-POTUS calls out political correctness. My sense is that for people who may already feel marginalized, disrespected and left behind in the culture wars as well as suffering their jobs being sent abroad and incomes stagnated, it is intolerable to then be judged as racist or homophobic because they oppose government policies that they interpret as favoring immigrants, Blacks and gays at their expense, and are contrary to their values.

So what can we, in our modest, everyday ways, do to help shore up our fragile democracy? As we suggested in the preceding remarks, we need to first and foremost better understand and yes appreciate where people who espouse sentiments and engage in behaviors that we find understandably objectionable are coming from. Polarization is more complex than the good guys vs bad guys morality play as it is typically represented as being because it involves real human beings.

By stretching our compassionate potential to include a more complete picture of the people we oppose, we begin to cultivate an approach where we remain true to our principles and values while eschewing our penchant for clever-by-half insults and misbegotten efforts to convince opponents of just how wrong they are. Though such an effort will be diametrically contrary to our partisan instincts, we begin to find a way to remove ourselves as one of the two essential participants to the adversarial dyad of polarization.

We can only accomplish this, however, through an expression of love for the other, not where we magically become each others new best friend, but rather one that is founded upon a recognition of and respect for the other as the fellow living being they are. We do this by being fully present and receptive to them in our encounters, exhibiting a relational expression that communicates they are worthy of our time and attention, regardless of our differences. This is a behavior that in general so many of us are starved for in our everyday relationships with one another, regardless of our politics.

The nuts and bolts of such an interaction consist of listening to what they have to say without judgmental commentary, regardless of how offensive it may be to us, while avoiding interruptions that are intended to advance our own position. This does not mean we dont take exception to their perspective, but that we do so without making it a statement about their personhood as well. When the moment is appropriate, we offer our view in a calm, succinct, equanimous, non-confrontational way, devoid of self-serving rhetoric. Our purpose is not to change minds, or win debates, but simply to connect with the other as best we can: to offer the possibility of a third way beyond the either/or dyad of polarization.

Though not a common part of our behavioral repertoire, this degree of transparency and vulnerability can be nurtured by incorporating it into our daily contacts with partners, families and friends, people with whom we feel relatively safe and comfortable, but where polarized positions can also suddenly emerge at times because of our natural differences.

There is no guarantee, of course, that the foregoing approach will have a salutary effect. Such an expectation, however, would only undermine our intentions that are best acted on unconditionally.

But by conducting ourselves in a wholesome manner, we succeed by not contributing to the wall that separates us, while providing an opportunity for the other to join us in creating a civil alternative. Modest, for sure, but potentially transformative, as well.

Tim Stevenson is a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions from Athens, and author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age (2015, Green Writers Press). The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.

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Living with the Long Emergency: Cultivating a modest alternative to polarization - Brattleboro Reformer