Partition

On the day I started writing this post (it can take me a while) it was reported that Islamic extremists had taken the Iraqi city of Mosul and one of the Republican Party's most senior figures had lost a primary to a TEA Party challenger. In many ways just another day in the 21st century, but I worry what that means: both these events were illustrations of polarisation in societies. The received wisdom is that, tired of the perceived ineffectiveness of moderation, people around the world turn to extremes in the hope of radical change, yet in neither situation is this entirely the case. In Iraq, the Sunni insurgents have found little resistance partly due to the sectarian machinations of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, which have sought to exclude the the Sunni minority from any involvement in government and wider society. As a marginalised and partially vilified population, the Sunni are likely to welcome an armed rebellion that at least recognises their existence. It is likely that a similar sentiment drives many people involved with the TEA Party movement: the idea that their government doesn't represent them and so they need to sweep it away completely. Embarrisngly, in the UK this sentiment has found its focus around a corduroy wearing idiot who presents himself as a man of the people by spending too much time in the pub.  

Regardless of how it manifests itself, the sense of alienation from mainstream politics and the resulting minority factions that are formed are common across the world at the moment. These anti-establishment movements gain significant traction in seemingly short spaces of time, but we have no way of knowing what would happen if they achieve their ends, as none has yet done so. Historically, extremes are either assimilated into the mainstream as politicians address their concerns and/or economic conditions improve, or the situation becomes so intractable that it deteriorates into civil or international war. Of course we take such a suggestion and happily assume it could never happen in the west, but that is historically because a relatively centralised media has ultimately fostered a consensus of compromise. In the internet age, information and potential consensus is disseminated in a much more focused manner, resulting partly in the kind of sentiment we see amongst these minority factions going entirely unquestioned. Indeed in the self-reflective silos of modern social media, the overwhelming impression is one of incomprehension that anyone could not be of the same opinion. When you don't encounter an opposing viewpoint, you become even more convinced of the rationality of your own beliefs. 

The number of 'popular' uprisings in recent times seems to be another symptom of this attitude of self-confirming rectitude. Whilst in cases like the Arab Spring, it is easy to see how the all-enveloping blanket of social media feedback encouraged the protesters to remain strong in the face of the brutal dictatorships that they opposed, the same blanket allows others to believe in the overwhelming popularity of their cause despite evidence to the contrary in the form of democratic elections. Several times recently, groups of people unable to accept the outcome of elections have decided to change that outcome to something more to their liking, either by attempting to redefine their place outside of their current state, or by attempting to overthrow the government. Of course these situations are rarely clear-cut; democratic legitimacy is claimed by both sides in almost all cases and hard to establish in most. Not so, you would hope in the defender of world democracy, and perhaps that (and the memory of the last one) is what stops it descending into civil war. It seems almost ludicrous even mentioning civil war with reference to the modern USA, but then I'm sure that thirty years ago, most Republicans would consider it ludicrous that members of their party would shut down the government over non-negotiable principles, or ditch their party leader because of his record on compromise. The whole ethos of the TEA Party and those like them is that reasoning with those of a different viewpoint is losing. In these new orthodoxies deviation from or dilution of the message is heresy. Unbelievers are branded fanatics and dehumised so that their opinions need not be given any credence. You may think that in many conflict situations it ever was thus, and this is certainly the case (take Israel/Palestine for example), but the rhetoric of uncompromise is much wider than the war zones of the world's intractable conflicts these days. 

I worry that we are genuinely losing the ability to debate with each other; we spend all of our time listening to those who agree with us or shouting to drown out the sound of those who don't. As a species, we have many vast problems to try and overcome - some of which count as existential threats - and we will need to work together to overcome them. Working together requires agreement, which requires compromise, which requires genuine debate based on the understanding that other points of view have validity. The certanties that the World Wide Web allows us to affirm with others of the same opinion are largely illusory and only serve as a barrier to the greater understanding of others that we need if we are to maintain any sort of functioning wider society. If we keep believing we (and solely those who agree with us) have exclusive access to the truth, then we can only look forward to a world defined by conflict, fragmentation and partition.