"It is easier to be uncomplimentary and argumentative when you are sitting at a computer keyboard than it is when sitting/standing face to face with another individual. Politics in general bring out the worst in people and social media has become a vehicle for venting previously suppressed frustration, anger -- and, yes, even hatred indicative of man's inbred inhumanity to man. This despicable trend will continue as long as an ill-advised public keeps jumping from the frying pan to the fire by electing combative leaders of questionable character and backgrounds in protest to the perceived performance of incumbent governments. Otherwise, Heaven help us, the attack mode now prevalent in political discourse will continue to fester and divide otherwise decent people."
I posted the above comment on a friend's Facebook timeline earlier today in response to his understandable dislike for unsavory and personally insulting responses to a politically-oriented item he had recently generated.
As the political parade passes, the troubling spectacle plays itself out on television and social media every day. Those who gather choose their sides of the avenue. In so choosing, they self-segregate. Tribal affiliations are on display. It’s a natural human tendency, with deep roots in our evolutionary past.
According to Sharon Begley, writing about the Kurzban-Cosmides-Tooby jersey experiment in which team colors seem to overcome racial biases, [Kurzban’s] basketball-jersey experiment and others who have confirmed its results, suggest that humans do have brain circuits for classifying people — but according to whether they are likely to be an ally or an enemy.
As I say, politics brings out the worst in us by tapping into those tribal tendencies. Sure, trading barbs is better than trading bullets. We all know really nice people who participate in stinging or acrimonious exchanges online. Maybe we get so uptight that we do it ourselves.
How about the oft-repeated: "Justin Trudeau is a joke and so are the people who support him."
Here’s a nice headline from the U.S. that you might have seen: “5 Scientific Studies That Prove Republicans Are Stupid.”
Or how about: “Yes, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.”
Here we have someone calling hundreds of millions of people stupid or crazy. Never mind that the country can’t be so easily divided into two teams. It’s a two party system in the U.S. and three parties in Canada. So in that good old democratic operating system (DOS) you have choices of app, which means choices of tribe.
I wondered if anyone else ever sees this subject from my lonely distance. In this vein, I found some relevant thoughts from the Cato Institute’s Trevor Burrus:
Like any other game, the rules create the attitudes and strategies of the players. Throw two brothers into the Colosseum for a gladiatorial fight to the death, and brotherly sentiment will quickly evaporate. Throw siblings, neighbors, or friends into a political world that increasingly controls our deepest values, and love and care are quickly traded for resentment.
But it gets even worse. The first-past-the-post rules of our democratic politics turn a continuum of possibilities into binary choices and thus imposes black-and-white thinking onto a world made mostly of grays. Teams (politicians), cheerleaders (pundits), and fans (voters) galvanize around an artificially schismatic world view.
And then our biases take over. Now that we’ve invented a problem — “which group of 50 percent +1 will control education for everyone?” — imposed a binary solution — “we will teach either creation or evolution” — and invented teams to rally around those solutions — “are you a science denier or a science supporter?” — our tribal and self-serving brains go to work assuring us that we are on the side of righteousness and truth.
The shrillest and most dogmatic pundits and politicians become the most popular, feeding our sense of righteousness like southern Baptist preachers.
This could have been yet another of those articles which end with a call for reasoned discourse or more tolerance. Plenty of those articles have been written, and I conclude that they don’t do much good. Our tribal brain burns hotter than any intellectual plea for tolerance.
I agree also with futurist and theorist Max Borders who says "Politics sucks and democracy is overrated."
"Politics — especially elections — creates a system that brings out the worst in people. It poisons relationships. It pulls us in as spectators who stand agog at a completely inauthentic show of national politics (over which we have virtually no power). We end up mostly ignoring the local issues over which we could have considerably more influence. As a consequence, an entire nation falls under a particular kind of spell," Borders went on to state in a Foundation of Economic Education article.
As like-minded Jeffrey Tucker writes, "We are encouraged to believe that we are running the system. So we flatter ourselves that our opinions matter. After all, it is we the voters who are in charge of building the regime under which we live. But look deeper and you discover a truth that is both terrifying and glorious: the building of the great society can’t be outsourced. It is up to you and me.
"The only people to whom our opinions matter are the pollsters with their robocalls and their wet index fingers held aloft, and the media who hold up mirrors so distorted we can barely recognize ourselves."
People are different. They are going to have differences of opinions, they’ll hold different values, and run in different circles. But we expect that our opinions, values and circles should extend to nations of multi-millions of people; by brute force if necessary. And until they do we’ll just get on Facebook and sock them in the face until they stay plastered.
On Election Day, the team with the red jerseys will pull on their side of the rope. The team with the blue jerseys will pull on their side of the rope. In the end, both will end up in the mud — because they’ve been standing in it all along.
It was ever thus...and evermore shall be!
Too bad.
I don't like it, but I accept political verbal warfare between sides as an unfortunate fact of life that I prefer to view from a safe distance, often with a hint of humor and devil's advocacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment