Episode 48 - Corrosive Habits that Breed Polarization

In this episode we’ll shed light  a set of corrosive habits that breed polarization and propose some antidotes to them.

Episode Transcript

Sovaida (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast
dedicated to envisioning abetter world and to infusing
hope that we can make theprincipled choices to build that
world.
Welcome to today's episode ofReimagining Our World with me
your host, Sovaida Maani.

(00:29):
I'm delighted to be here withyou.
Today I wanted to share with yousome thoughts and reflections
that I gleaned from reading awonderful book called Say
Nothing, by an author calledPatrick Radden Keefe.
He basically gives an account ofThe Troubles, the times known as

(00:51):
The Troubles in the north ofIreland that raged between the
late sixties and the late 1990s.
It was conflict, a sectarianconflict that raged between the
Protestant Unionists and theCatholic Nationalists and that
eventually led to a powersharing arrangement in the

(01:12):
Northern Ireland Assembly in1998.
What's interesting about thisbook is that it highlights a
number of really noxious habitsthat we as human beings tend to
have that breed polarization.
Last time we talked aboutpolarization and today it

(01:33):
occurred to me that it'd bereally useful to identify some
of these destructive andself-destructive habits, that we
have that we're sometimes noteven aware of, that are actually
really easy to fix once we'reaware of them.
So I'd like to dive into thisand take a look at a number of
these habits.

(01:54):
The first habit that he talksabout is the scourge of
what-about-ism or what-aboutery,which is the way he casts it.
And he says that during TheTroubles, this phenomenon of
what-aboutery took hold inNorthern Ireland.
So the best way to explain it isthis.

(02:15):
Do you remember when we werekids in school, if somebody came
and hit you on the head, you'dsay,"Hey, wait a minute.
Why did you do that?" And they'dsay"Do you remember last week
you pushed me?" And you say,"Butwait a minute.
I pushed you because the weekbefore you stole my pencil?" And
then they'd come back and say"What about the prior month when

(02:35):
you did this?" The story justgoes on and on--a whole series
of what-abouts.
And Keef in his book actuallygoes through a whole series of
this, set in Northern Ireland.
For those of you who arefamiliar with the history of
Northern Ireland, here'ssomething of how it goes.
One would say,"What about BloodySunday?" And the other would

(02:56):
respond"What about BloodyFriday?" And then the other
person would respond back.
"What about Pat Fincuane?
And then the other would say,"What about the La Mon bombing?
What about the Ballymurphymassacre?" Then"What about
Enniskillen, and on and on.
So you get the picture.
The trouble with this is thatyou just keep going on and on

(03:17):
back to the past and it is neverending.
It is really grounded in thisgame of endless blame and shame.
Now this phenomenon was not onlypresent in Northern Ireland.
We see it everywhere in theworld.
We see it in thePalestinian-Israeli conflict.
We see it between the Azeris andthe Armenians.

(03:38):
We see it between the Armeniansand the Turks.
We see it in the DRC.
We see it in Yemen.
And wherever you go, we humansseem to have this really bad
habit of engaging inwhat-aboutery.
Now the problem with engaging inthis habit is that it's based on
a feeling of victimhood andendless grievance, coupled with

(04:03):
blaming of somebody else,blaming of the other.
This habit ends up only breedingboth resentment and a sense of
righteous blame, and theultimate consequences that it
robs us of our sense of agency.
We're so busy blaming peopleoutside ourselves that we refuse
to take responsibility for ourown role in this dance, that

(04:26):
we're doing this dance ofgrievance and blame.
I like to think of it as aparasite that blights all our
attempts to plant the seeds of amore peaceful, constructive, and
just world.
Okay, so the second habit that Igleaned from this book Say
Nothing, is the habit ofruminating over and nursing past

(04:52):
grievances.
Now, it's very closely tied tothe first habit of
what-about-ism By engaging inthis, by constantly repeating
something you did to me, wekeep, these grievances fresh and
alive, and we keep our feelingsof victimhood and righteous
anger alive.
We see this in the United Statesbetween the political parties.

(05:16):
We see it between the races.
We see it across all sorts ofidentity lines.
The unfortunate result is thatit perpetuates a cycle of
conflict.
Now in the book again, theauthor talks about a central
family, the Price family.
They were a family some of whosemembers belonged to the

(05:37):
Provisional IRA group thatwanted to unite with the
Republic of Ireland and beindependent of the United
Kingdom.
And he says that in this family,people had a tendency to talk
about calamities from a bygonepast as though they had happened
just last week.

(05:58):
And this is really the nub ofit.
As a consequence, it's actuallydifficult to pinpoint exactly
where the story of this age oldquarrel between Britain and
Ireland first began, right?
Because you're just going backand forth, and back and forth,
and constantly reliving pastgrievances.
Believe it or not, and this isthe good news story that we've

(06:20):
covered in other sessions, theGermans and the French for
centuries had the same storygoing between them: You did this
to me; you did that to me.
And they would, in theirliterature, talk about drinking
their hatred with their mother'smilk and how they would never
live in peace and they'd alwaysbe at war.
And then came the aftermath ofthe Second World War and the

(06:40):
building of the foundations ofthe European Union by Jean
Monet, who created thisbrilliant system of pooling
critical resources like coal andgas in the hands of a
supernational organization thatwould make sure that all nations
got equitable access to thesematerials that they needed so
badly to rebuild andreconstruct, and that basically

(07:03):
formed the foundation of adurable piece in Western Europe.
It's really phenomenal, but it'svery hope inducing because it
shows that even though we mayengage in these bad habits for
centuries, we can actuallyovercome them and overcome them
in a very short period of time,if we flip our mindsets and come

(07:25):
up with a plan that works asJean Monet did.
Now, the problem with this habitof ruminating and nursing past
grievances is that it stops usfrom seeing and accepting
present reality, which can bevery different from a repeated
past.
We end up filling the gaps ofour understanding about what's

(07:46):
going on now by reaching backinto history and pulling it
forward and saying,"Ah, but theydid this." I've been reading a
bunch about NATO recently, andit's fascinating to see how
during the history of NATO wesee this phenomenon emerge over
and over again, where the UnitedStates and the Europeans are so
fearful of a resurgent Germanythat they go to great extremes

(08:10):
to contain it, even at a timewhen Germany really doesn't want
to have its own independent armyand it's not interested in
gaining its own nuclearcapacity, in the 1960s.
The rest of the Europeans andthe US are convinced, based on
Germany's behavior leading tothe first World War, and then
the second World War, that,"Oh.

(08:32):
They're gonna do this again.
If we don't keep a watchful eyeon them, they're gonna go rogue
again." And this leads somereally unfortunate consequences
for NATO and its setup, butwe're not here to get into that.
I just wanted to have pointed tothat.
Now the antidote to both thefirst and second habits is

(08:54):
forgiving and forgetting.
Letting go of the past and notpulling it forward into our
present and our future.
In other words, the ability tosee current reality with an eye
of fairness and justice.
Seeing it as it is, not worsethan it is, not better than it
is, but exactly as it is.

(09:17):
Ultimately, I firmly believethat if we work each of us in
our own backyards to overcomethese habits of what-about-ism
and the endless rumination andnursing of our grievances, we
can create little islands ofhealth and restored social
fabric in a sea of turbulenceand chaos and instability.

(09:41):
And over time, as these variouspatches of land pop up in the
sea, we will find that we canstart connecting them.
And over time we'll find that wecan create a brand new and
better world.
It's going to require painfuland painstaking work at the

(10:03):
grassroots level.
Hopefully not painful, butjoyful, but painstaking work at
the grassroots level as we eachweave our own little segment of
human society.
We've covered the antidote tothe second habit.
The third habit that I gleanedfrom reading this book is the
habit of collective denial.

(10:24):
These are really stories that wecraft as societies or nations.
It doesn't matter how small orlarger society is, we craft them
and we cling to them for dearlife.
Because they justify ourbehavior and they very often
even mask the destructive natureof those behaviors from

(10:45):
ourselves, even as we engage inthem.
It's the art essentially ofwillful denial.
The way it plays out is that weconvince ourselves that we've
been so wronged---so this isthat culture of nursing
grievances--- we've been sowronged that we're entitled to
resort to measures, howeverextreme and including violence

(11:08):
and murder, to avenge the wrong,even if it requires us to act
contrary to our nature.
One of the figures in this book,Dolores Price, who was very
active as I said, in theProvisional IRA for many years,
and then withdrew and steppedaway from it, says that as a
volunteer in the Provisional IRAshe was often quote,"required to

(11:32):
act contrary to my nature," butwhile she was in the throes of
it, she didn't really see it.
Another example of collectivedenial and what happens is when
we just stick our heads in thesand and don't accept the
reality of what's happening.
This is the kind of denial we'remore used to hearing about.
We do this until the pain is sosevere that we have to act.

(11:56):
For me, a perfect example ofthis is what happened starting
in the spring of 2021, as all ofus were sitting in front of our
television sets watching thebuildup of the military in
Russia.
And it was a gradual buildup,amassing troops and arms and

(12:17):
tanks and whatnot, andartillery, and it continued till
June, and then because of somepushback, they withdrew
temporarily, then started againin October, 2021, and all the
way from October, 2021 until theinvasion of Ukraine in February,
2022, we were sitting, watchingthese troops getting larger and

(12:38):
larger in number.
By December'21, they were up toa hundred thousand at least, and
they're moving towards theborder.
And yet the leaders in Europereally didn't believe that this
was gonna happen.
And in fact, when they werequestioned later on, What were
you guys thinking?
Why didn't you take somemeasures?
Why didn't you do something?"They said,"We honestly didn't

(12:58):
think that Russia was going toinvade." And so that is truly
denial and collective denial onthe part of entire nations in an
entire region with devastatingconsequences, which we don't
need to get into because we allcan read the news and see what's
going on.
Now, the antidote to collectivedenial is acceptance of reality.

(13:21):
And taking responsibility forour role, however small, in
creating the problem and thenworking to find a
forward-looking solution.
This is absolutely critical.
It's a sign of maturity to startto take responsibility and to
get out of the game of merelyblaming and shaming someone

(13:42):
else.
It's always someone else'sfault.
At some point we have to step upand say,"What can we do?
What responsibility can we take,at the very least to fix the
problem?" The fourth habit is aculture of gossip.
Again, this is from the book,which I find absolutely
fascinating.
We talked some about gossip inthis series of Re-imagining Our

(14:06):
World and the devastating impactit has on societies.
But again, it comes up in thisbook, Say Nothing, this culture
of gossip, which is oftenunsubstantiated.
And the author of the book saysthat the civic culture of
Northern Island was, as he putsit,"Clotted with unsubstantiated

(14:26):
gossip." And this culture whencombined with a culture of
silence, of never sayinganything openly in consultation
or in foums where problems canactually be resolved, leads to
the fact that we never can getto the truth of what's going on.
So the truth remains hidden fromus, and until we can see the

(14:49):
truth, it's really impossible tocraft viable solutions.
Now the antidote, I believe, tothis culture of unsubstantiated
gossip is fostering a culture ofconsultation.
We talked at length about whattrue consultation looks like.
I invite you to go back toepisode 32 in which this was

(15:12):
discussed in detail and all theelements and ingredients of a
consultative environment thatyields solutions to problems and
yields a maturity ofunderstanding that then leads to
us being able to craft jointsolutions that benefit the
collective.
They're all laid out there.

(15:32):
Now, the fifth habit that Igleaned from reading this book
is the habit of embracing thelimiting belief that the ends
justify the means.
Now again, we spent a wholeepisode on this concept, but
this was before I'd read thebook, and it's fascinating again
to see that the reflections thatwe had in episode 43 are

(15:55):
actually viable.
So in, in this book, the authorsays that we often think of it,
in this context of NorthernIreland, as a way of justifying
murder to achieve political endsAnd we see this, people use it
in the name of liberatingterritory or in the name of

(16:17):
expanding territory.
So it doesn't matter which endyou're coming from.
If we believe that the endsjustify the means, then we will
resort to whatever means,including murder and violence to
get there.
And the leaders in NorthernIreland for a while defended the
morality of violence by arguing,according to the author of the

(16:38):
book, that the course they tookinvolved the use of physical
force, but only to achieve thesituation where their people
could genuinely prosper.
And it was only under thosecircumstances that their actions
of physical violence could bejustified.
So it's the idea that violenceis okay as long as it's meted

(17:00):
out in service of a worthypurpose.
We see this today to justify allsorts of violence in the Middle
East, in Ukraine, in the DRC, inYemen, in Tigray, wherever you
look, in Myanmar, we see thisover and over again.
So the impact of embracing thisprinciple is really quite

(17:24):
severe.
What they found after doingresearch after The Troubles were
over in Northern Ireland, andit's reflected in this book, is
that the effects on theperpetrators of what they call

moral injury (17:36):
this business of I wreak violence in the name of
freeing my nation and gainingits independence, for the good
of my people.
The impact on the people whoengaged in it was devastating,
including very high rates ofdepression, resort to excessive
drinking and prescription drugs.

(17:56):
And as you read through thebook, it's really sad to see
these figures, who at one timewere filled with energy and
vitality, thinking they werefighting the good fight, now
ending up in these dank darkapartments, on their own,
isolated, depressed, wonderingwhy they ever did what they did.
Was it worthwhile?

(18:17):
Didn't get them anywhere, andthey sold their souls in the
bargain.
So it's something worth thinkingabout before we engage in this
kind of behavior, seeing the endin the beginning so that we
don't go down this road.
Now the true antidote to thishabit is embracing a new

(18:38):
principle that the means mustalways be worthy as the ends.
And again, I would warmlyencourage you to listen to
episode 43, because we went intothis in great detail in the
contours of what it looks likeand what it means and how we get
there and so on.
Okay.
The sixth habit that I gleanedfrom the book is the habit of

(19:02):
blindly accepting false beliefsand assumptions.
And an example that's given inthe book that I thought was
really interesting is theexample of the false assumption
that bloodshed is a cleansingthing.
So there was this gentleman bythe name of Pierce who was a

(19:23):
poet.
He was one of the ones whoinstigated the rebellion in 1916
for an independent and freeRepublic of Ireland.
And he was deeply attracted tothis idea of blood sacrifice.
He romanticized it, and even asa child, he thought that
bloodshed was a cleansing thing,and he used to praise the
Christ-like deaths of previousIrish martyrs.

(19:46):
And before the Rising, he wrotethese words that"the cold heart
of the earth needed to be warmedwith the red wine of the
battlefield." So you see howhe's romanticizing this idea of
bloodshed.
But it was a very dangerousthing, because it led to a lot

(20:07):
of indiscriminate killing andunnecessary slaughter of human
beings, and maiming anddestruction of entire families.
So the antidote to thisparticular poor habit,
maladaptive habit, isidentifying and applying certain

(20:28):
first principles, non-negotiablefirst principles or set of
shared ethics, social ethics,group ethics, without
compromise.
In this instance, when it comesto bloodshed, I propose that one
of the foundational principlesis saying that there is no

(20:49):
justification ever forcommitting murder.
For political purposes, forgetting freedom, for gaining
territory, for getting access tomineral resources, for imposing
the faith of one group of peopleon another, whatever the story

(21:09):
is, whatever the justificationis, there is no justification,
ever, for committing murder.
That combined with the principleof recognizing the oneness of
all human beings, that we've allcome from the same source for
the same purpose, will help us along way.
The benefit of identifying theseprinciples is that we then won't

(21:30):
get tempted to start down thisroad of debating whether this
person or this group are freedomfighters or terrorists.
Then we get ourselves allentangled and enmeshed.
And that itself breeds furtherpolarization, as we argue with
each other about this.
"Are these group independencefighters and are they justified

(21:53):
or are they terrorists?" So weget to not even start down that
road when we identify and allsign on to these first
non-negotiable principles.
The last habit that I wanted topoint out actually doesn't come
from this book.
It comes from a different bookthat I've also been reading

(22:14):
recently, and it's a book byRobert Putnam, who's an emeritus
professor at Harvard, and thebook is called Upswing.
He shows in this book thatresearch reveals that when
people become socially isolated,they become more susceptible to
populist ideology.

(22:35):
Now isn't that interesting,right?
And think about the effects ofcovid on our societies as well.
It's really something worthreflecting on.
My own analogy and understandingof this is that social isolation
weakens our social immune systemby depriving us of a vital
element that's necessary to keepit strong.

(22:56):
That element is being in companywith each other, being socially
active and working together andenjoying each other's company,
but also standing shoulder toshoulder together to do acts of
service.
So the results according to theresearch--going back to the
research-- is that what happenswhen we become socially isolated

(23:17):
is that we become more focusedon ourselves and we forget to
think about the plight ofothers.
Putnam points out that thishappened in the United States in
the Gilded Age, which ran fromthe late 1870s to the late
1890s, was marked by tremendouseconomic expansion and really
led to materialistic excessesand widespread political

(23:41):
corruption, and generallyserious social problems,
including, but not limited to,poverty.
It was then followed by theProgressive Era.
But in order to make thetransition, Putnam argues, from
one age, the Gilded Age ofmaterial excess, to the other,
what was necessary was a changein culture initially, which then

(24:02):
led to a change in behavior, andthis is what I find really
interesting.
He claims that in order toachieve a change in culture, we
have to begin by gaining moralclarity and recognizing that we
have a moral obligation not justto ourselves, but to others, and

(24:25):
that obligation is just asimportant as the moral
obligation to ourselves.
I find that absolutelyfascinating and it's grounded in
historical evidence, so it'ssomething worth considering.
This reminds me of aconversation we had in episode
44 about the famous 20th centuryhistorian, Arnold Toynbee, who

(24:47):
also said that in his view, andbased on his studies of world
civilizations, one of the keypreconditions for a positive
shift in civilization is theability to arrive at a common
vision of our values.
Again, that's that same moralclarity that Robert Putnam is
talking about.

Common vision of our values: especially, he says, the (25:06):
undefined
difference between right andwrong.
The last thing is the antidote.
The antidote to this last habitis cultivating a sense of moral
obligation to others.
How very easy! Something we caneach do by engaging in regular

(25:28):
acts of service to the other, nomatter how small the acts of
service are.
And we can get together, we cando it alone.
We can do it with one otherperson.
We can do it in small groups.
We can do it in ourneighborhoods.
We can do it within our familieswithin our friend group, and we
can expand it to our villages,our cities, our nations, and the

(25:49):
world.
All right.
It's been a delight to be hereand, I'm just looking at the
comments.
Thank you all very much for yourcomments.
I appreciate them and I verymuch look forward to being with
you again next month.
Have a wonderful month.
Take care.
Bye-bye for now.

(26:12):
That's all for this episode ofReimagining Our World.
I'll see you back here nextmonth.
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