Fighting Hyper-Polarization for Our Children and Grandchildren
Newsletter 61 - November 9, 2022
In this newsletter, BI Co-directors Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess encourage more participation in the discussion. We are particularly seeking thoughts about the recent US election and its aftermath, although posts on other topics related to hyper-polarization are also always welcome.
Following this we include Guy’s most recent discussion post on “The QED Trap,” and our usual listing of Colleague Activities and BI in Context posts.
From Beyond Intractability's Co-Directors
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
This month, we will be taking a few weeks off to visit our our grandchildren and their parents. As a result we haven't had time yet to create posts for a few of the discussion items (all videos) that have been shared with us for that purpose. We'll get back to that as soon as we get home. But in the meantime, our visit has reignited our commitment to this project, as it puts into stark perspective how very important it is that we (and all our readers and everyone else concerned about deteriorating democracies around the world) do not give up on efforts to heal society's deep divisions and build a democracy that lives up to its ideals. We can't imagine leaving our children and grandchildren the much darker, more dangerous, and less prosperous future that we are currently heading toward.
We want to use this space right now, however, to encourage more of our readers to become contributors to the discussion. We aren't asking for money — we are asking for your thoughts. Of particular interest now, particularly in the U.S., it seems, are the following questions:
How do we move forward in a positive way after the U.S. November elections? We are writing this on election day, so we don't yet know how it will come out. But we are sure that there are going to be a lot of people coming out of this election who feel as if their future is in grave danger. They may challenge or completely refuse to accept the results. How do defenders of democracy respond to that? What can be done to reassure the losing parties that their vital interests will be protected? What can be done to restore faith in our electoral system?
What can we do to reduce the risk of political violence on the left and the right? And how should we respond when it happens? For example, the January 6 Committee and others have been holding hearings for almost two years and, rather than being reconciliatory, they have been extremely divisive. Is there a better way to deal with electoral violence that would be more effective at defending democracy?
What can be done over the course of the next two years to assure that the 2024 U.S. Presidential elections aren't even more divisive than 2020 or 2022? How can we make sure that election is both fair and credible? How can we give the inevitable losers of that election confidence that their society will still offer them a tolerable future (and a meaningful right to advocate for their views in future elections.)
As we think about these questions, we would like to encourage us all to think critically about the things that our group is doing that may be contributing to the hyper-polarization problem. Not only will that make things better; it is also a lot easier for us to change what our group isdoing than persuade our adversaries to change what they are doing.
From the BI/CRQ Hyper-Polarization Discussion
Guy Burgess: The QED Trap
In high school geometry class, I learned that I was supposed to finish every "proof" with the acronym QED (for "quod erat demonstrandum"). This meant that I had established an incontrovertible fact and that, going forward, I could use that fact as a basis for subsequent "proofs." In the course of a career spent studying intractable conflict, I have adapted this concept into something that I call the QED Trap — a trap that plays a major role in making intractable conflicts intractable.
The QED trap arises when people follow a line of evidence and reasoning that leads them to conclude that some fact or position is absolutely correct and, by extension, that anybody who disagrees is absolutely wrong — often so wrong that they no longer deserve to be treated with respect or even accepted as members of the community. The trap is triggered when other people follow other lines of evidence and reasoning and reach equally firm, but incompatible, conclusions about closely related (though not necessarily identical) issues. When the resulting collision of proven facts involves issues of great consequence, the result is often a major societal confrontation between parties who are absolutely convinced that they are in the right and who are willing to use all of the powers they have available to them in an attempt to force their conclusions on others.
The trap's power is almost always reinforced by the fact that people inhabit information bubbles in which content providers realize that they won't be able to retain the trust and loyalty of their audience unless they steadfastly support the group's core truths.
For example, with respect to climate change, there is one group that, based on one line of evidence and reasoning, has reached what they see as an unassailable conclusion that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity that is so urgent and critical that a climate emergency should be declared and societies should be forced to switch over to carbon-free energy as quickly as is humanly possible. Anyone who disagrees with this conclusion is derided as a "climate denier" — someone to be firmly opposed and not to be taken seriously.
There are others who follow what is, to them, a similarly compelling line of reasoning — one that looks at available evidence and, from their perspective, concludes that climate change is just one aspect of a larger and even more serious problem — oppressive capitalism. This conclusion leads this group to support comparably urgent, populist calls for dismantling the oppressive world order that has been built around capitalism and liberal democracy.
Still others look at available evidence from a third perspective — one that is much more skeptical about the likely effectiveness of the decarbonization strategies being championed by the first group. While this group acknowledges that climate change is a serious threat, they think that we have time to develop truly workable solutions and that it is a mistake to rush toward expensive, feel-good solutions that won't actually work. Their focus is on maintaining the productive capacity of the global economy so that, as genuinely effective technologies are developed and as uncertainties about actual impacts are resolved, societies have the capacity needed to protect their citizens.
And, of course, there are those who think that the climate change scare is a scam designed to enrich the green energy industry at the expense of everyone else.
The QED trap operates by locking these groups into a win-lose struggle for power with little or no effort to synthesize the opposing perspectives into a more sophisticated approach to the problem — one that takes advantage of the reasonable insights of all groups (while filtering out truly erroneous information).
The above is, of course, a highly simplified explanation of one instance in which the QED trap is operating. Similar stories could be told about virtually all of today's other big conflicts.
Like any trap, the QED trap is most dangerous when people don't see it. Once you recognize its dangers, it's much easier (though still difficult) to avoid. People have to learn to accept the cognitive dissonance that comes with admitting that they might, to some degree, be wrong. People have to be willing to do some information bubble hopping and seek out thoughtful explanations of the other perspectives. And, they need to do the hard work of synthesizing multiple perspectives into more workable solutions.
The challenge, of course, is doing this when most everyone else is still operating under the influence of the trap and is likely to regard efforts to look at things from other perspectives as a serious betrayal. That said, the key to avoiding the trap still seems to be making many more people aware of the danger it poses and the importance of avoiding it.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
Conflict Advice
Dr. McFiddle’s Brilliant Book of Creative Conflict Potions and Other Magical Things — Terrific news! From Josh Weiss (a longtime colleague and contributor to Beyond Intractability), a new book that teaches kids how to handle conflict more constructively.Escalation Limiting Projects
Bridging Divides Initiative Building Resilience Ecosystem Map — An interactive map showing both political violence in the US and bridging organizations working to prevent such violence.Effective Communication Strategies
Abortion -- Conversation Guide — A practical guide for those wanting to know how to convene and facilitate constructive dialogues capable of spanning partisan divides and meaningfully addressing our most controversial issues.Effective Communication Strategies
Democracy is at risk. Ten newsrooms explored what’s strengthening it. — Profiles of ten news organizations that are going beyond superficial, horse-race (who's winning, who's losing) political reporting and helping their audiences understand how democracy could be improved.Big Picture Thinking Projects
Citizens for Global Solutions 2022 Annual Conference — A free, virtual conference, that explores five models for global governance and the organizations that are pursuing them today.
Beyond Intractability in Context
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
A Compromise on Immigration Is Possible. This Bill Could Make It Happen. — Welcome news that, even in today's hyper- polarized environment, there are people who are actively working to reach mutually beneficial, compromise agreements on today's tough issues.Social Complexity
Why Is America Always Divided 50–50 — A look at the complex dynamics that keep political power in the United States so evenly divided and elections so close.Political Dysfunction
Cacophonocracy — Important new word: "cacophonocracy" — what happens when the possibility of consensus among the governed deteriorates to unmanageable extremes.Saving Democracy
Francis Fukuyama: Still the End of History — A compelling observation that the alternatives to liberal democracy are still much, much worse. We just have to figure out how to make democracy live up to its ideals.Race / Anti-Racism
America Needs a New Civil Rights Act — A controversial argument for new civil rights legislation (and, a reminder that people with different perspectives can look at the same problem and reach very different conclusions.)Analytical Failures
An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science — Hyper-polarization reinforces the illusion that we are absolutely right and anyone who disagrees is absolutely wrong. This illusion now threatens the ability of science to find real solutions to problems.Communication Obstacles
We’re not going away': Conservatives build their own media ecosystem to fight cancel culture — Further evidence that "cancel culture" sanctions and misinformation control measures are not going to resolve our conflicts. They will simply divide us into ever-more isolated information bubbles.Psychological Complexity
Why are our debates about rights so toxic? — At a time when it seems like most everyone believes that their fundamental rights are being violated, look at one of the most insightful books on rights-based conflict.Saving Democracy
Democrats Are Getting Democracy Wrong. Here's Why. — From the left, self-critical food for thought as the United States contemplates the meaning of the 2022 elections and what it will really take to "save democracy."Left / Right Conflict
It’s Always a ‘Negative World’ for Christianity — For those on the secular left who feel threatened by advocates of traditional Christian beliefs, look at what the constant criticism of Christianity feels like from the other side.
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