A Byproduct, Not a Goal
Thinking aloud about how to reduce political polarization
As part of some research I am doing for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, I recently read The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization by Peter Coleman. In the book, Coleman, a professor at Columbia University, distills lessons from the literature about conflict resolution and complexity science (who knew that was a field?) in order to help reduce what he believes are unhealthy levels of political polarization in the United States.
According to Coleman, “The most significant finding to date [from his work with the Difficult Conversations Lab] has been the power of contradictory complexity for mitigating escalation, polarization, and hostile stalemates.” Coleman’s commitment to complexity extends to his own work. In attempting to explain why toxic polarization has increased in the U.S. since the 1970s, he details literally dozens of causes. Coleman’s drivers of political division include the hobbyhorses that typically obsess editorial writers, such as the limitations of our two-party, winner-take-all political system, the perverse incentives of social media, and changes to our media landscape, including the collapse of local journalism. To these usual suspects, Coleman also adds some lessons from brain science, detailing how the “neural pathways” of our brains can get reconfigured over time, making it difficult to “comprehend contradictory perspectives on the issues.”
I found myself nodding my head throughout much of Coleman’s chapter on “why we are stuck.” His multi-faceted explanation struck me as much more persuasive than monocausal accounts that point the finger at a single villain (often Donald Trump). But I also found myself sighing. By Coleman’s account, the causes of toxic polarization are incredibly varied, have been going on for a half century (or more), and involve such titanic forces as the nature of capitalism and the way our brains work. Given this reality, can anyone realistically hope to alter the path that we are on?
To his credit, Coleman spends much of the rest of his book attempting to shine a spotlight on people that are attempting to do exactly that. Coleman tells the stories of individuals (a fundamentalist Christian who disavowed her youthful anti-gay activism), groups (a collection of pro-life and pro-choice activists who met with one another in an attempt to reduce the chances of violence in Boston), and a plethora of organizations (e.g. Hope in the Cities) that are working to reduce conflicts of one sort or another.
As with Amanda Ripley’s High Conflict, I found these examples both inspiring and unconvincing. Coleman wants his readers to change how they think about politics and how they interact with people who hold different beliefs. He closes with a call to action:
So the question I leave you with is this: “What path will you choose now?” What new direction will you set off on today — for you, your family, and community — and what learning do you hope to look back on through these most astonishing of times?
Like Coleman, I believe that we all have a role to play in creating a better civic culture in the United States, particularly in an era of social media when so many of us are making public pronouncements of one kind or another on the internet. And, given that I have written a book on incrementalism, I certainly believe that small changes can make a big difference.
But I am skeptical that individual efforts at self-improvement will add up to a less divisive political climate in the United States. I’m also skeptical that bringing together Republicans and Democrats to discuss their differences will move the needle.
It’s not that I think these efforts are stupid or misguided. Indeed, my guess is that many of them are quite worthy and are playing a salutary role, at the margins, in helping to keep our fragile union together. But my current theory is that reducing partisan animosity is something that, like happiness, is best sought indirectly.
It makes sense to me that creating relationships of mutual respect with people who share different political beliefs is a necessary prerequisite for turning down the heat on our political disputes. But there’s only so many people who want to participate in high-minded discussions about politics and civility. Far better, in my view, is for people to get to know one other by working on problems that do not have any explicit ideological character (like fixing a pothole) or by doing something joyful together (like playing pick-up basketball). As Coleman told me when I spoke with him last week about his book, it’s hard to demonize someone you play pick-up basketball with.
When I spoke with Coleman, we discussed a number of efforts to repair American divisions but the one that struck the deepest chord with me was an initiative by a number of large-scale organizations like Habitat for Humanity to think about how their volunteer programs can create opportunities for Americans of differing beliefs to work together side by side. To echo Robert Putnam, my instinct is that a big part of what ails us at the moment is the weakening of American institutions capable of assembling people across the divides of class, ethnicity, and politics — churches, unions, civic associations, etc.