Category Archives: Polarization

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.

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.

John O’Donohue: The importance of Contradictions

Extremism, Philosophy/Ideas, Polarization

 

Will Braun asked Christiane and I to consider the poetry of John O’Donohue when he was teaching us to dissolve the extremes. I loved the poetry and his glorious voice, but it took me awhile to figure out this fit into the concept of polarizations and how to neutralize them. He did not spell it out for us. He mainly sent a link to a glorious interview with him and some even better poetry.

 

John O’Donohue was a brilliant Irish poet and modern-day mystic. Please note O’Donohue also does not see awakening of life as a bad thing. He does not use the word “awakening” as a pejorative.  It is a good thing. To be awake, or to come out of a slumber is blessed. It is good to be alert. There is a time and place for sleep, but to deal with important ethical questions, for example, being asleep is not an advantage. This is contrary to MAGA right who have been adamant—and not just adamant, but fanatical—about the evils of wokeness.

 

Donald Trump has even tried to make it contrary to law. American Universities are now required to renounce wokeness in order to get millions of dollars in federal grants. Needless to say, they are all scrambling to get as far away from woke as they can possibly get and as fast as possible.

 

John O’Donohue took a different approach which was founded by an unusual idea.

 

O’Donohue thought contradictions were important and could be very useful. He said this:

 

 “Part of the awakening of any life, is the arrival of contradiction within that life. There is no sense of the other deep sides of ourselves. One of the sad aspects of the modern exploration of the self, is that it lacks all irony, that smile at us as we explore the miniscule explorations. It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.”

 

Contradiction is “a precious arrival” he says. That is counter intuitive, at least to me, a student of Aristotle who found non-contradiction as the philosophical foundation of the rational life.  If you arrived at a contradiction, Aristotle asserted, you have arrived at a falsehood.

 

But O’Donoghue said “we have demonized negativity, paradox and contradiction”. In this way we have removed irony from our lives at great personal cost. He felt that did not expand life, it  reduced life.

 

It took me a while to figure out how this related to extremism?  It is impossible to be extreme when you admit the opposite of your position—i.e. the contradiction—is part of the good.

 

To embrace contradictions you must give up the extremes!

 

Looking down on Others

Moral Humility, Polarization

 

In our CMU course with Will Braun, he said that in the spirit of expanding our capacity to see a wide range of people as the beloved of God, he asked us this question: “Have we ever enjoyed looking down on others?”   This question bit. Thankfully I could not remember a specific occasion but I had to admit to myself I probably had done that. Not one of my finer moments. People who can do that, Braun suggested were “confident in their own righteousness.”  That is what enables us to look down on others. Again, I must admit I have done that too. My bad.

Shamefully, I must acknowledge I have felt that satisfaction. But thanks to Will Braun, I won’t ever again have that easy confidence in my own righteousness. I am sure I will still have too much of it, but at least, I hope, a little less than I would have had before.  I will have to back off a bit. I will have to keep my hubris in check and release my humility instead. I hope I can do it.  Not sure I can.