Diversity’s Ugly Relative, Polarization
Our democracy may not survive the polarization pandemic. Therefore, we must strive to gain a deeper understanding of the causes of polarization in hopes this will enable us to reduce its levels.
Polarization is an emergent property of diverse societies. Emergence occurs in social environments when an individual following simple rules creates an organized response that has a large effect.?
When an ant wanders around randomly, it follows the simple rule to emit a pheromone when it discovers food.?This attracts other ants that also emit pheromones.?Suddenly thousands of ants are marching to the nearest picnic to carry away the feast.?Human societies engage in similar behavior driven by ideas.?The term homophily was coined to describe this phenomena.
Robert Merton, one of the 20th Century’s most renowned sociologists, came up with the term homophily in 1954 long before the internet facilitated worldwide instantaneous communication.?Merton lived in a physical world that limited an individual’s ability to communicate. He observed that cultural, behavioral, genetic, or material information that flows through networks will tend to be localized. Or as some have described, birds of a feather flock together.[i]
In Merton’s day flocking led to people live in neighborhoods with others that were like them.?They joined social and civic groups based on social stature, shared interests, and concerns.?Typical groups would be golf clubs, PTA’s, and the chamber of commerce.?
Thanks to increased understanding of the brain and the discovery of DNA in 1953, a year before Merton coined the term, we now know that homophily is embedded in our genes.?We instinctively seek out others that look like us and are suspicious of those who do not appear to be members of our tribe.
Evolution built this system into our brains to insure our survival.?Those traits led to the formation of tribes and these tribes protected their members.?
Today, we inhabit both physical and virtual space.?The localized network of Merton’s day has become your Facebook friends and followers on Instagram.?The pheromones we leave for others to follow are meme’s, thoughts, and images.???
In the 1950’s the United States went through a period of extreme bipartisanship.[ii] There was so much agreement that reformers in both parties argued the common agenda undermined social progress.?They argued responsible government required parties organized around distinct policy positions that would provide voters with choice and undermine the ties of tradition, patronage, and personality.?
The key to reducing polarization, then as now, is to get large groups of individuals to commit to common goals and ideas that are broadly shared among diverse groups. In the 1950’s, Americans had those broadly shared goals.?They had just fought a war against a common enemy, Hitler and Japan, and were united in their dislike and fear of communism.?Everyone was committed to turning the war economy into a prosperous post-war one. One of the keys to creating the harmonious environment of the 1950’s was limited media that delivered messages supporting the common goals. There were a few large radio and TV networks that delivered similar messages.[iii]
Today's Polarization is Different
Getting polarization under control will be an extremely difficult job, but we have no choice.?If we fail in this effort, our democracy will grind to a halt and we may become an autocracy.
Any autocracy will be an ugly one because autocracies are threatened by polarization as well.?They understand diversity is one of the most important forces driving polarization.?One of their favored techniques for dealing with the diversity threat, is to encourage a large majority to bond together and hate a minority group such as Jews, Muslims, or Kurds.?In extreme cases, this sometimes manifests itself in ethnic cleansing.
Based on my observations, I have concluded that if we are to address the polarization challenge, we will have to do two things at a minimum.?The first is to come up with broadly supported common goals. The second is we will have to figure out how to deal with the localized communication issue associated with homophily.
There are of course no silver bullets. Everyone seems to agree we must solve the problem and most then observe, they have no good solution.?With that in mind, here are my proposed bad solutions.?
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Ending Polarization: One Person's Opinion
I would encourage voters to elect moderates to office.?If the extremists in all parties lose political power, there is a chance our leaders could get the citizenry to adopt a common purpose.?
Since we are at war with Covid, a virus that has already killed 643 thousand Americans, more than twice the number of military personnel that died in World War II, maybe that can become our common cause.[iv],[v] ?
I know the above idea sounds farfetched in the current political environment but if moderates replaced the extremists leading the political opposition to such a cause, it might happen.
Secondly, I would observe that zero-cost-one-to-many-targeted-communication facilitated by the internet, social networks, and the invasion of personal privacy, have made it efficient to organize polarizing activities, spread fake news, and conspiracy theories.
Before the internet, targeted many-to-one communications were probably one-thousand times more expensive, making these problems substantially smaller.?So, maybe if we did things to make these types of communication ten times less expensive rather than one-thousand times less expensive, it would have a big impact.?
The types of things that could be done would be things like giving individuals ownership of their personal information and charging for emails and time spent on social networks.?
However, these types of things would be difficult and distasteful to do for many.?There may be lots of other better ideas for addressing the problem and if so, I am all for them.?
There is, of course, another choice.?We can continue to wring our hands and do nothing.
My concern is that if we choose to do nothing, by our inaction, we will have chosen the extreme autocracy solution.?That is the worst choice of all.????
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Bill Davidow Site?|?Twitter?|?Facebook?|?Medium??
Great piece, Bill. Thanks.
Great piece of work
Founder of Willow VC Advisors (formerly Boggy Creek Advisors)
3 年A superb framing of the underlying cause and solution to our polarization. Now can we stop moral posturing and fighting long enough to do it??
Whilst I agree in the broad sense, wasn't it the thrive of individuals that used polarization to invoke change..."good or bad" according to the ethical feeling at the time?