Category Archives: Extremism

Hearing the Other side?

Extremism, Polarization, Truth Seeking

 

British philosopher John Stuart Mill said that “He who knows only one side of an issue, doesn’t even know that side.” It is only when your view is challenged by the other side, or at least someone arguing for that other side, and arguing full out, do you actually begin to see the issue fully.

 

Will Braun, our Canadian Mennonite University instructor, like me, listens to CBC radio a lot. He used to listen to Rex Murphy who was quite conservative.  So did I. Braun did not feel comfortable with those views. Nor did I. Yet, Braun said, “CBC should have 5 guys like Rex Murphy because without views like that it is too easy for the opponents to say defund the CBC they offer nothing to me.”

 

I used to say the same thing about CNN. And Fox News. In the last couple of years, I have noticed they both now do have more panelists that bring the other viewpoint to the table or panel. I enjoy the panels more as a result, even though the conservatives enlisted by CNN often drive me nuts. But sometimes, they make important points. I have to admit that is true. And uncomfortably true.

 

Braun thinks it is important to hold the tension between the 2 sides of a polarized chasm. Don’t let it spring out and get wrecked he said.

 

Mahatma Gandhi had bitter fights with the British, but he did not hate them.  Hate never helps. He said that what we need to do to the British is serve them.  If we do that, he argued, there is nothing the British will be able to do but treat us like equals. Would that work?

 

Braun had another example involving the Centre for Israel and Jewish (‘CIJA’) Affairs. It is the primary organization for Jewish affairs in Canada. They have very strong Anti-Palestinian views. They argue hard for Israel and Jewish support. A lot of people on the left are deeply opposed to them. A lof of Mennonites are opposed to their views, but Braun as the editor of the Canadian Mennonite insisted that viewpoint needs to heard not silenced.

 

Here is a thought experiment, what should you do the next time you argue with them? Braun interviewed one of their representatives in Canada. He said his job was to address Islamophobia and antisemitism. That sounds like a laudable goal. What if a Mennonite group approached them and said, ‘that sounds like a laudable goal and we want to help you. We have 10 volunteers, how can we help? Like Gandhi, we want to serve you. Would that work?

 

The goal here, according to Braun, is to move the CJIA to a softer view inside CJIA. Serve your opponent rather than fighting them. That might reduce the polarization. You might eveen find there is something you can learn from the other side. Don’t assume that all truth  and light is on your side. That really is the point.

 

I think Braun had a point.

 

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Curiosity: An Unlikely Superpower

Extremism, Polarization

 

Curiosity is an unlikely super power. For us and our species. It can help to bridge gaps. If we genuinely want to learn from the other, we are not likely to hate the other. We can appreciate the other and make it easier to learn from her or him.

 

If polarization is a problem, as many of us believe it to be, how can we address that problem? Here are some options Will Braun offered us in our class. Some possible strategies:

 

  1. We can yell. Denounce. Cancel. Bash. We can be like the person holding a gun, gazing at the horizon, and as soon as they appear we can shoot them down. This is actually quite common. In what world are these strategies helpful?

 

  1. We can argue and reason with the other. But when was the last time an argument from the other side convinced you of anything? When was the last time I convinced someone from the other side of anything?  Frankly, I can’t remember any successes. Evidence indicates that failure is common; success almost non-existent. Studies have shown the more facts you give the other side the less likely you are going to persuade them to change their minds. Argument seems futile.

 

  1. Use sophisticated jargon. This is very common on the left, though it happens too on the right. The left has their language and analysis and so does the right. The left talks about bias, racism, exploitation and things like that. The right accuses the other of being woke, that is the latest way of dismissing the left. Again, this usually causes the other side to entrench and never come out again.

 

  1. Fight like hell. You can try to be strategic, smart, learned, and effective and you end up being none of those things. Another exercise in futility.

 

  1. Listen. Now this option has possibilities. Are you not curious about what the other will say and think and do? Curiosity can be a super power. Will Braun did not use this language. It is mine. If you go to the other side and say I want to learn from you. I want to hear what you are saying. For most of us this is very hard. Braun admitted it was hard for him. But something happens when you change to this approach. It really is a superpower. It often takes courage to make the first move to approach the other side with curiosity. As Braun said, “This can turn down the temperature.”

 

 

Braun said he has a friend who is a strong Trump supporter and lives in Texas. The two of them though can talk to each other, with the temperature lowered. They disagree with each other, but they do so respectfully because they remain friends. As a result, they are each less likely to demonize each other. Braun said, “Then you hold some tension. If instead you say, screw all those other people I am letting go, then the tension snaps like a rubber band.” It is gone. Then you go to your side and the other goes to her side. Does that create a better society? Braun argues that for the longer term it does not. It does not help the weak and vulnerable. They are not better off.

Personal Life back in the Bible Belt for John Neufeld

Extremism, Polarization

 

I know whereof Will Braun spoke, when he told our class about his trepidation about moving back to the Bible Belt near Winkler Manitoba. I had exactly the same experience, moving back to the south eastern Bible belt of Steinbach after 7 years of university. I dragged my lovely exotic French wife, Christiane with me. And she was fearful of what this move would mean. It was a big change from life in the big smoke. But she was brave and came with me.  She might not have realized how anxious I was about this move too. I had never intended to come back to Steinbach, but all of a sudden it just happened, when the local lawyer hired me right out of law school. I was not at all sure whether or not I would fit in either. Most of my friends were gone. Not many of us came back from University, at least so it seemed to me at the time. And just like Will Braun, the people here seemed strange, because they were so different from the people I have been living with in the past 7 years. But I was thrown into the deep end, as was Christiane, even more than I.

 

I think Braun had it easier than I did. He had kept his faith more or less intact, and both of our communities were places where faith, or lack of faith was vitally important. I kept my doubts more or less to myself and my close friends who understood this. My alienation was quiet but deep.  Here Braun and I were in similar conditions.

 

It took a while, but gradually I started to realize that I did not have all the answers about these people in the country—these people that were largely from the Bible belt.  I particularly felt this in Niverville a small town that at first seemed very conservative to me.  My boss had asked me to work there every Wednesday night.  Many of those people were from Paraguay or Mexico or other places in South America. They mainly spoke low German, a language I had to learn on the job. They wanted to speak low German and I tried to speak it. I was grateful when they did not laugh at my broken low German with German and English words mixed in. They liked it that I tried. That’s all they needed.

 

I got to know these people and I got to like them. We had different viewpoints but that did not matter. I realized they were good people. People I could trust. Of course, with some rare exceptions. We were not that different after all. They had much more conservative views than I did.  But I was no better than them. I still kept my views, as did they, but we could get along.

 

John O’Donoghue was right: “Part of the awakening of any life, is the arrival of contradiction within that life…It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.” These contradictions arrived in my life, and I had to accept them.

 

I remember many years later, after I had been working in Niverville for decades. I had worked there one day a week only because I had a busy practice in Steinbach.  I reluctantly came to realize I would have to turn that practice to another young lawyer who had more time and could devote his whole time and attention to the practice there. He has never looked back.

 

I remember too when that happened how sad my secretary was. She said she loved working with those people from Niverville. She was a town girl from Steinbach but she would miss them. I was surprised. But I realized I felt exactly the same way. The contradictions had melted away.

 

Personal Life back in the Bible Belt for Will Braun

Extremism, Polarization

 

Our facilitator for the course Christiane and I took at Canadian Mennonite University, as part of their outreach to old people, was Will Braun. He gave us his opinions of to live a modern life in a fractured and polarized society. And he encouraged us to make our own thoughts on the subject.

A few years ago he and his young family moved into the southern Manitoba Bible Belt where he really felt in some ways out of place, even though he grew up there.

 

 

Braun moved back to his old home town and wanted to live in the country a little bit off the grid. They wanted to do a little bit of farming. Alternative living, grow your own food and live a simple life. The rural dream. He thought it was difficult because he believed he and his family did not really fit in. Most people had different values than he and his family had. He said, “it was hard not to feel judgmental and somewhat isolated.”

 

They had worked hard building up their barn that became the centre piece of their new rural life. Then one day, that barn caught fire and to him it felt their “ethical high ground went up in smoke.” He knew the smoke going up was a high dose of greenhouse gas emissions. And they were left with a big pile of toxic garbage. Their life reduced to rubble. It tore Brown apart and it was a low point of his life.

 

But then one day, his neighbours showed up. He had “considerable difficulty” with some of those neighbours, but here they were with their equipment prepared to help. “They didn’t even want a thank you.”  It’s just what neighbours do, particularly in the country. One guy he had trouble with brought him bales, without being asked. Braun began to see these people were not one sided. They were rounded, full, and complex. Not need for treating them like card board cutouts. Polarization had not place here. They were good people, even if not perfect. It did not matter that they have very conservative views. It was good.

 

Here was the arrival of contradiction, as O’Donoghue called it. Braun thought he had some things figured out, and these people were not part of that answer. Yet here they were. He still thinks these people had some things wrong, that he had right. This is a strongly held viewpoint. But he could not dismiss these people or write them off or think that somehow he was better than that. That was not possible.

 

Here Will Braun was feeling low, and vulnerable, and beat up, and he had to deal with big contradiction. This was the fundamental contradiction: People are good and bad at the same time. Just like me. It was no more complicated than that. And as well, Braun had to understand what O’Donoghue said, “It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.” For Braun, the arrival of contradiction was a precious arrival, just as O’Donoghue said it was.

The Gentle Revolution.

Extremism, Moral Humility, Rebel, Revolution

 

Will Braun always meandered towards the gentle. That, largely, is what I liked so much about the talks he facilitated with us at Canadian Mennonite University. He avoided the extremes. He was a gentle man. And he did it largely without preaching.  He reminded me of what I knew about Vaclav Havel and his velvet revolution. I always admired Havel too.

 

Havel was part of the amazing revolution in Czechoslovakia that brought down the mighty Soviet Empire that seemed invincible and it seemed it would last forever. Then for 11 days from November17 to 28 1989 the people in Czechoslovakia resisted that immense one-party government. The one party was of course the Communist Party that was backed by the Communist party in Russia. In 11 days the 41-year single party government collapsed largely without bloodshed. How was that possible?

 

The 1989 event triggered a series of anti-Communist demonstrations.  The people had basically never demonstrated against communist rule.  The government was just too powerful.  At least until it wasn’t.  On November the group of protesters swelled from 200,000 the previous day to 500,000. People feared the worst, but did not relent.  On November 24, 1989 the entire group of communist leadership resigned.  On November 27, 1989 a two-hour general strike was held. It involved nearly all working people in Czechoslovakia.

It was a remarkable non-violent revolution. It came to be called the Velvet Revolution. In those 11 days The world saw (and soon forgot) how powerful a non-violent revolution could be. The communist party gave up its monopoly on power. The barbed wire fences at the borders with West Germany and Austria came down. An interim government was appointed and actually resigned after elections were held in 1990. Czechoslovakia peacefully split into 2 countries the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic when the 2 major ethnicities did not get along well. But they negotiated it. Warfare was not necessary. In part that was because they had strong leaders. Havel was a strong leader, not like so many of our current leaders who  boast about being  strong leaders but have no idea how to be one.

Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992. He really did not want to be a political leader. He wanted to be a writer more. He agreed to be a leader  for only a few years. He was a true statesman.

On New Years Day, in 1991 he gave a wonderful short speech in which he expressed a few very interesting ideas. He said wanted a new type of politics—one based on morality. What a crazy idea? He said his country would have to learn that new type of politics. He said,

“politics does not have to be the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculating, calculating, intrigues, secret agreements, and pragmatic maneuvering, but that it also can be the art of the impossible, that is the art of making both ourselves and the world better.”

 

In that speech he also considered what his country had most to fear. He said, “Our worst enemy today is our own bad qualities—indifference to public affairs, conceit, ambition, selfishness, the pursuit of personal advancement, and rivalry—and that is the main struggle we are faced with.”  He then concluded his remarks by telling his countrymen about the upcoming free election which he referred to as a battle,  and urged  his people like this: “Let us not allow that battle to sully the still clean face of our gentle revolution….”

 He did not want a battle of the extremes. He wanted a gentle revolution. He was a man of humility. He knew how powerful the powerless could be a called it The Power of the Powerless.

We need more leaders like that. We don’t need those who are filled with bombast.

Always More Room for Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

According to CBC News a group of white nationalists showed up to intimidate and frighten people on a first Nation territory in BC. They were dressed ominously in black pants, black long-sleeved sweaters, black hats and white pull up masks in a straight regimental style row. Strict ideological conformity was enforced. It also seemed cowardly. Why did they need masks?  The police said they were there “to intimidate, provoke fear, and sow division.” Apparently, they were members of the Second Sons Group as they moved through Kamloops and nearby by Tkʼemlúps te Secwépem Reserve.

 

They carried a banner which asked, “GOT BONES?” That was probably a disparaging reference to what happened at the nearby Residential Schools. The Canadian Anti-hate movement says White Nationalism is more present in Canada than it has ever been. In other words, hate is growing in Canada. It also says Second Sons is a part of that. They have shown up in many Canadian communities recently. Perhaps Steinbach is next. They advocate white men training to be able to protect the White Nationalist movement. They consider themselves white patriots who “remember when Quebec was white.”

 

It does seem to me that there is always more room for hate in Canada.  Where is all that hate coming from?

 

That’s what I have been trying to figure out, without much success.

 Ecosystems of Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

It is a sad fact that hate has been sharply on the rise in Canada. We are becoming more like the United States in other words. Canada is an ecosystem of hate.  And the Canadian military plays a big role in it. As if that was not bad enough it followed closely on the heels of another hate filled incident near the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario which police have indicated was a deliberate hate-motivated attack against the Jewish community there. Both the Islam communities in Canada and Jewish communities have been deliberately and viciously attacked Canadian that can surely be called domestic terrorists in both cases.

 

I also heard recently, that Utah Valley University was severely criticized for not doing a more thorough security assessment before Charlie Kirk was invited to speak outdoors there.  That is what is has come down to. We always think about security.  It is never true anymore to say that murder is unlikely. It is likely everywhere.

 

What is happening in Canada and the United State? Where is all this hate coming from? Canadians tend to think we are so much better than the Americans in this disregard because they live in such a violent gun-filled society. It seems we don’t have much reason to feel superior as we once thought. We also have a society being swamped by hate.

 

Death threats are now so common in Canada and the United States that it almost seems that if you, like me, have not received death threats, you are, like me, a nobody.

 

Where can you go and not find hate?  Nowhere.

 

Reducing Life

Beauty, Extremism, Polarization, Truth and Beauty, Truth Seeking

 

The Irish poet and former Catholic priest, John O’Donohue said, “I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting.” This was a bit like Nietzsche, another brilliant philosopher, who said that if you want to make a person interested in you at a party, you should blush or get embarrassed. Now that is interesting. Perfection is dull. As a person who has always been quick to get red, much to my dismay, I can appreciate the wisdom of these words, though in my case it is likely just wishful thinking. Perhaps it was the same with Nietzsche, but I really doubt that.

 

O’Donohue also said, “In the world of the soul, contradiction is the presence which makes the complexity of the person visible in some way.”

 

O’Donohue says “one of the problems with our western thought patterns and models is that we have been very unfair to contradiction. We constantly want to reduce the complexity of contradiction to one of its sides or dimensions.” This is what polarization is all about in modern society.  Polarization banishes complexity.

 

This is where O’Donohue drags us back to the problems of polarization, without mentioning that nasty word. He says complexity is a good. A fundamental good. Concentrating on only one side, like left or right, good or bad, life or death, is to suck the blood out of life. I have always thought it sucked the blood out of truth, but now I must consider does it also do that to life?

 

O’Donoghue pointed this out, “In a certain sense what western thought has dreamed of, and its rationalism has tried to create, is a kind of one-dimensional kind of painting.” That of course is a pretty thin life, or art. Picasso was the first person to really drive this idea home. It was the basis of his Cubism. He wanted life as a cube not a square.   He actively sought the complex and was repelled by the simple. That of course is a difficult thing to achieve on a canvas with paint, but he manfully worked at it.

 

O’Donohue went on:

 

“If we agree that in our personalities and in our presence, the shoreline of a great immensity, we are just the stencil line, the external visage of an incredible eternal interiority, then naturally there will be many dimensions of us coming awake at the same time. And if we decide that contradiction is undesirable and has to be either hammered out or rooted out or flattened then we will do immense damage to the mystery of our own inner landscape.”

 

I know this is a bit hard to grasp, but I think the effort it worth it.

Aristotle was not the only Greek philosopher who considered the idea of contradiction. Parmenides also has things to say about contradiction. He said that “something cannot be and not be.”  No doubt this comes from Aristotle too. In saying this he had an inner kind of criterion of truth, according to O’Donoghue. Something that has inner contradictions then cannot actually be. This of course is what Aristotle said. He said A is A and not A is not A. sounds simple. But is it?  Ayn Rand the American author and ultra-right-wing provocateur, long before the time of the neo-liberals made this the theoretical basis of her philosophy. But she like things to be simple. A is A.

 

In the world of A is A, complexity is banished. And with it goes a lot of truth. And beauty too.