A Philosophy of Peace and Unity
Narrated Version:
Premise:
I have seen the political polarization growing for many years and have been increasingly worried about it. Absent new developments within our culture, I see an unavoidable chain of events that involve increasing polarization and demonization that eventually culminates in civil war. I find this future unacceptable. I hate the idea that one day a civil war may force me to choose between killing friends or family. Many people seem to think that when civil war breaks out, they will have the luxurious option of not choosing a side and laying down like a lamb to the slaughter out of a desire to not shed blood. I find this perspective both naïve and unrealistic. Human psychology is oriented to not give up so easily. I would imagine that evolution would rather inspire you with anger to motivate you in choosing a side rather than giving up on life. Also, even if you managed to pull off being a bystander, what makes you think your hot-headed loved ones won't be forced to do the dirty work of killing to protect you? Your lack of action just forces your loved ones to kill on your behalf so that you can keep your conscious clean. This brings to my mind such a horrific image of reality that I am inspired to do everything within my power to help avoid it.
I have nascently concluded that better philosophy and better epistemology are the way forward. Yet, I am not an expert in either. I was hoping to be able to spend a few years studying philosophy to get a better grounding before trying to develop a solution to this pending social catastrophe. Yet, it seems that polarization is growing faster than I can keep up with. I look around at the ideological landscape and see many people who notice the problem, yet few who are able to offer any solutions. I don't want to be the one providing solutions, but someone needs to do it. I can't sit back and idly watch the cultural decay of my nation without trying to do something. But obviously I am not enough. The way I see it, we need as much collective brainpower on this issue as we can get. The more people who join in on the discussion for brainstorming solutions, the better chance we have. I feel compelled to share my thoughts and hope others will as well. Because time is of the essence, I feel forced to show my hand and attempt to provide my best guess at a solution for our society.
The solution could perhaps be summarized as:
Transcend biases
Transcend demonization
Believe narratives only in proportion to the evidence
Worship unity as the highest value
1. Transcend Biases: this can include
a. religion
b. politics
c. conspiracies
d. morality
Transcending Theism:
I have always been passionate about truth, especially when I believe truth can make the world a better place. Ever since I was 9 years old, I had my first experience with God in prayer that led me to conclude that I was 100% confident in the truth of God's existence. I boldly took my truth to challenge the atheist scientists online, because my perspective was that if I truly had the truth, then it should naturally be persuasive and force others to accept its veracity. I always believed truth would prevail over falsehoods if they came together in verbal combat. So, I wasn't afraid to make my case for God known to the world. By interacting with those with opposite perspectives to mine, I confronted the mythological dragon of chaos. Yet, it was purely my religious biases that caused me to believe atheists where evil God-hating monsters. When faced with the reality of truth-loving skeptics, I was forced to admit that the true nature of atheists was different than my emotional image of an evil creature. I transcended my bias against them. I came to realize that the truth of God is much more complicated than it seems, and my mere prayer is not good enough evidence despite how powerful it felt.
Transcending Politics:
I also grew up passionate about politics. I grew up in a conservative family. I naturally took a liking to the principle of efficiency, which low taxes, low regulation, and free market forces seem to magnify so well. I became dogmatic about the principle of efficiency and viewed it as the most important political goal. I became so obsessed with the idea of efficiency that I began to think that perhaps the disabled and the elderly were a problem since they represented inefficient forces within our society. Yet, in my pursuit of truth, I purposefully sought out those with opposite perspectives to see if my ideas could hold their weight. I eventually came to understand that my obsession with efficiency had grown to be pathological. I learned that empathy was an equal if not more important virtue than efficiency. I grew to accept the idea that perhaps a mix of socialism (empathy) and capitalism (efficiency) would be a better solution that having only one unbalanced virtue. Hence, Andrew Yang's proposal for a UBI seemed like the perfect marriage of efficiency to empathy.
Transcending Conspiracy Theories:
I used to be very willing to believe any narrative produced by my tribe. I believe my religious upbringing assisted in my conspiratorial thinking, since religions are conspiracy theories in and of themselves. There is some esoteric knowledge that only the righteous in-group is aware of, and the out-group is either evil or ignorant. Because accepting the narrative (faith) is framed as virtuous, questioning the narrative becomes framed as evil. Hence, your epistemology is corrupted by axiomatic assumptions that commit the begging the question fallacy. You can't assume that a narrative is righteous before vetting it for accuracy. You can't assume your conclusion, and then search only for evidence that supports your conclusion (cherry picking) and ignore evidence that goes against your righteous conclusion (confirmation bias). Yet I was completely guilty of this. I believed almost every Republican narrative about Obama without having any evidence to justify my belief in those narratives. I had already concluded that the Republican team was righteous and that any narrative they produce must be true, because how could a righteous Republican lie to me? Conversely, it was easy for me to believe that everyone on the left was a liar, since that was the evil team. Yet, over and over I had interactions with honest truth-seeking fair-minded liberals that forced me to accept that my framework for viewing the world was greatly in error (cognitive dissonance) and that I needed a paradigm shift if I wanted to have a more truthful way of understanding the world. Over and over, these liberals practices a superior form of epistemology to help guide me to the truth. I didn't even have a semblance of epistemology, i just believed any conspiracy that came from my team (appeal to authority fallacy). Yet these liberals, instead of reacting like a dragon that had an irrational desire to suppress the truth, they appeared impartial and unbiased as they helped me searched for evidence to either confirm or deny the claims of my conspiracy theories. I realized that I was completely wrong in my approach to obtaining truth. I realized that I needed to search all areas of the intellectual landscape for information, not just my echo chambers that confirmed my biases. Eventually, I learned a useful precept from an atheist that helped me know how to deal with conspiracies - you need to match the level of your belief to the quality and quantity of the evidence.
Transcending Demonization:
After so many experiences having my framework for understanding the world blown apart by my exploration of it, I realized that the demonization of others is one of the most dangerous problems that corrupts us. Transitioning from a religious social group to a non-religious social group helped me realize that non-religious people are not the immoral monsters the religious can sometimes make them out to be. I was guilty of demonizing all sorts of groups because of my biases. But a careful exploration of reality proved all of my demonization as incorrect and unfounded. Further pondering on the topic of demonization seemed to illuminate it as the cause of major conflicts. There is a good argument for saying Hitler created atrocities by demonizing the Jews, Marx inspired atrocities by demonizing the rich, Anarchists inspire atrocities by demonizing government, Christians inspire atrocities by demonizing Muslims (and vice versa), and the most dangerous atrocity of nuclear holocaust was almost made a reality by the demonization between the USA and Russia. Yet, our intuition tells us that the average Russian is not evil, nor is the average American evil. How can we allow the world to be destroyed upon the basis of our incorrect conclusions about other people? I think that one of the most sad things imaginable is to murder someone who you thought was evil, only to realize that you were wrong. Yet, this is what demonization leads to. It is a pathology that must be transcended.
Philosophy of Transcendence:
Even though most of my ideological transitions are from right to center, I am not trying to make a case that the left has nothing they can improve upon. I believe the left has plenty of quasi-religious fervor, echo chamber bias, conspiratorial thinking, and demonization of the other. I believe both sides need to transcend to a higher ideological state that sees both sides from a birds-eye view and consciously weighs the pros and cons of each and tries to build a super-ideology that combines the strengths of each and mitigates their weaknesses. We need to actively attack our own biases because they are the biggest enemies to our pursuit of truth. Transcendence means to search for truth via a dialectic (truth is more important than winning) not a debate (winning is more important than truth). Transcendence means giving up your biases that keep you in an ideological rut. Transcendence is the key to bridging that gap between ideologies and merging humanity into one super-truth.
The Benefit of Biases:
We are full of all sorts of biases based in heuristics for understanding reality more rapidly. Biases help us navigate the world without using too much of our computing resources. That leaves more brain power for more important matters. We have biases for food to guide our nutrition, we have biases against filth to guide our health, we have biases against dangerous objects or situations to guide our survival. We have moral biases that guide our cooperation with others.
The Danger of Biases:
Evolution might have us evolve selfish biases that prioritize family or tribe over others. We might evolve a mutation for an incorrect bias. Humans uniquely have been able to evolve the ability to create cultures and ideologies. Yet we might become tricked by our own biases. Cultures and ideologies are biases in and of themselves, yet much of these biases are a product of our own creation. There may be an evolutionary substrate beneath culture and ideology - for example, a culture may favor a certain type of vehicle. Culture A may favor inefficient sports cars. Culture B may favor environmentally friendly electric cars. Culture C may favor a large and sturdy truck. The sports car may be connected to the evolutionary substrate of prioritizing status, fame, and riches. The electric car may be connected to the evolutionary substrate of prioritizing health, cleanliness, cooperation with nature, empathy, etc. The truck may be connected to the evolutionary substrate of hard work, physical power, bigger is better, stability, etc. Ideologies are the same way - each set of ideas hacks into different evolutionary subsystems. Libertarianism might be hacked into the substrate of efficiency and freedom. Communism may be hacked into the subsystem of fairness and empathy. Each might have its relevance and importance. Based on our environment, we might need one set of values more than the other, so it can be helpful to have a culture or ideology that helps us magnify the evolutionary substrates that we need at that time. Yet, if one set of ideas gets exaggerated and extremized, that subsystem can become pathologized by ignoring all the other important evolutionary subsystems.
The Power of Religion:
Just as we have a culture to augment an evolutionary substrate of biases, religion can augment a culture. If we think of culture has helping our behavior adapt to the environment faster than evolution might, religion could be thought of a more powerful adaption than culture. Religion provides more extreme behavioral change and more stability over time. Ancient religions are too rooted in the past. They might have been beneficial adaptions in their time, but the world has changed too much for them to still be fully relevant. Perhaps we need a new digital age religion for helping us adapt quickly to the dangers of our technology.
Significance of Morality:
Evolution guides us to develop morality, because in the absence of morality, we might not survive. Anything with survival importance will be genetically encoded within us as having powerful emotional responses. You can gauge how important something is to someone by the level of their emotional response. The individual instinct for survival is incredibly powerful, yet there are certain ideas that will inspire us to have more powerful emotions that even the instinct for survival. The desire to protect one's children or loved ones is often more powerful than the desire to protect oneself. This seems to be giving us evidence that evolution believes saving children is more valuable to the future of the species than saving yourself. Since what we value guides our decisions, and the fact that our own life carries within it a certain inherent threshold of value, I would say that anything that we value more our own live could be termed a "transcendent value" with the context that the object of our value is determined by our actions to be worth more than life itself. Moral codes often get embodied within religious groups, or ideological groups. Since the importance of a common moral framework is so important to our survival, evolution as given us a large amount of emotion to support our frameworks. Often, people are willing to die for their moral frameworks, hence its importance as a transcendent value.
The Danger of Moral Polarization:
Historically, morale codes would be common within tribes and different between them. This leads to demonization of the other, since their behavior and rituals are "evil". The Bible is full of examples of Israelite genocide of other tribes deemed "evil" by their moral code. When moral codes are more similar between countries or tribes, a religious syncretic fusion can occur where they absorb aspects of their moral code from each other. As moral codes begin to polarize and grow further apart, religious syncretic fusion becomes less and less likely and war becomes the final destiny - an evolutionary test for determining which set of moral codes is superior for survival.
The Moral Divide:
Every topic I have engaged with seems to be, upon deeper investigation, be a thousand times more complicated than it appeared at the onset. Morality is no exception. Many people think morality is black and white, cut and dry. Yet when presented with complex situations, the grey area becomes obvious. It is wise to understand the complexity of morality, because an incorrect moral judgement can make the world a worse place, and incorrect attitudes about morality can lead to war. Morality is how we define what is good or evil - an inherent religious substrate of our emotions. We determine what should be supported with morality. We also determine what should be destroyed with morality. Yet, the most fatal flaw in biased moral thinking is to judge other people using your own personal moral framework. That which is truly evil (consciously evil) must be evil according to its own moral framework. Too often I see Christian right-wingers say "the left is evil because they support abortion, homosexuality, sex-work, etc." or left-wingers say "the right is evil because they support racism, homophobia, unfairly low wages, pollution, etc." Often the moral conflict seems to me to be a difference of preference for utilitarian moral ethics (consequentialism) and deontological moral ethics (categoricalism). Yet funnily enough, often people will switch between utilitarian and deontological thinking on different topics. To me, it seems that what we care about deeply will fall into deontological thinking in that we are dogmatically strict about certain moral no nos. Utilitarianism means we measure the pros and cons before determining what we should do, trying to find the best net consequence. Deontological morality means you have a duty to not do certain things because they are categorically bad, it doesn't matter what the consequences are. When it comes to abortion, the Christian right say that this is categorically bad (not caring about the consequences), yet the left might try to weigh the pros and cons and see if perhaps abortion might improve the world based on some metrics. Neither side, is necessarily evil, because neither side is intentionally violating their own ethic. Same with something like borders. The left might say strict borders are exclusionary and racist. They might view borders as categorically evil. Yet the right might try to measure the pros and cons of border policy and arrive at something that makes the world a better place. With the coronavirus and censorship, the left seemed more biased to take a utilitarian approach, measuring the pros and cons of policies and trying to get the best consequence. The right seemed more focused on the deontological aspect of the duty to respect each individual's right to their own person and their right to their own speech. From the right's perspective, it doesn't matter if pure freedom brings a bad consequence - it is our duty to prioritize freedom over consequences.
The Danger of Freedom:
The way I see it, societies can only properly function when everyone has a similar moral code. Our evolutionary history was rather tyrannical. Whether is was a social order by family, gang, tribe, religion, city, state, nation, or empire, it seems like most of the time we evolved with a moral code imposed tyrannically in a top-down fashion. The leader had the power to punish anyone who deviated from the collective moral code. By tyrannically keeping everyone on the same moral page, they created stability. As we evolved larger social groups, we expanded the scope of our in-group/out-group family/enemy psychology. The Christian empires were necessarily at odds with the Muslim empires. The more friction between two groups moral codes, the more likely there will be violent conflict. Yet, the enlightenment softened the tyranny of the west, and the west fractionated into a many different ideologies. We have performed a dangerous experiment in the West - the experiment of freedom. Can we maintain a stable society founded upon principles of freedom instead of tyranny? It's an open question. The freedom that we hold so dear is also our kryptonite - the freedom to be divided. We have already proven that freedom is not perfectly stable, as evidenced in the first 100 years of American system, from the revolution in 1776 to civil war in 1861. Yet, our civil war seemed to guide us into a better, more moral system with the absence of slavery. But is moral equivalent with more evolutionary successful? It seems reasonable to conclude that slavery is good for the economy of a state. As the USA declines, China rises as an economic power, yet it seems that their economy is riding on the backs of around 3.8 million slaves. China | Global Slavery Index
The Problem with Dogmatism:
I would say that there is a strong argument for claiming that morality comes from our evolution not God. You can find examples of moral codes that have evolved in animals. Basing morality in dogmatic monotheistic religion makes the division between our tribes more concrete and inflexible. If a tribe is always dogmatically stubborn that they alone have the truth, all other tribes must necessarily be evil and worthy of destruction. If our morality is not tied to the one and only God, we are more flexible in updating it to match the best philosophy available to our modern age and we can be more flexible in compromising some aspects of our moral framework with others that disagree with us. In ancient times, it was much easier to work with polytheistic nations, because you could absorb their gods into your polytheistic framework and vice versa (religious syncretism). We need to give up the theologically dogmatic roots of our morality if we want to be able to work with those that we disagree with and update our society. We can respect the fact that religion is also a product of evolution and may have some useful components within it, but it should not be the end all be all authority. We should try to extract the best parts of religion and merge it into our modern collective moral philosophy.
The Problem with Objective Morality:
There seems to be no way to develop an objective morality. Philosophers have been trying and failing for millennia. The root of every supposed objective morality is a subjective opinion. If you want to use God as a source of objective morality, then you must base that theory on the subjective opinion that God both exists, is good, and has a coherent way to communicate with us, none of which are provable claims. Even then, divine morality is just based on the subjectivity of a god. If you want to base your objective morality on the non-aggression principle, then you must base that on the subjective definition of aggression and the subjective opinion that it is always bad. If you want to base an objective morality on the principle of "do no harm" it will necessarily rest on the subjective definition of harm and the subjective opinion that harm is always bad. If you want to base your objective morality on wellbeing, then you have the subjective axiom that wellbeing is good and its subjective definition.
The Problem with Subjective Morality:
If we are forced to conclude that morality is subjective, what does that mean? Does that mean everything is relative? Does it mean that good and evil don't exist, and are merely opinions? Subjective morality presents inherent weakness - a lack of fortitude against criticism and dissension. If a tribe gives up on objective morality and focuses on subjective morality, it might make itself more vulnerable to ideological fractionation and civil war. Therefore, evolution might support brainwashing us to think morality is objective in order to steer us away from the dangers of relativism and push us towards one powerful collective moral code. Perhaps this is why we evolved a religious instinct. But just because we evolved a certain way doesn't mean that it is good or right (appeal to nature fallacy).
Philosophy of Morality:
We should not give up on morality just because of its subjective nature. That should inspire us. We need to elevate our collective morality. Our democratic system relies on the collective wisdom of the masses. We may not be able to develop an objective morality, but we can develop a morality of the majority. We should try to combine the best ideas into our moral framework rather than be obsessed with dogmatic packages of ideas. Religion has the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Progressivism has the rule of "do no harm". Libertarianism has the rule of "non-aggression". I personally like Sam Harris's rule of maximizing sentient wellbeing. Perhaps the best moral philosophy might be a proper combination of all these principles? The more we fractionate into moral tribes, the less we can benefit from combining our ideas with others, and the more likely we will end up in bloody conflict.
Evolution of Morality:
Each human being has a moral calculator within their emotions. We react to things and try to calculate what is good based upon how it makes us feel. Our evolution tries its best to identify problematic behavior for the species and attack it. If someone hurts you, evolution guides you to want revenge - this is evident in the animal kingdom as tit-for-tat morality. Why is it good to evolve a revenge instinct? That means no one can hurt you without incurring a cost. If all animals are trying to maximize their own success, it is in their best interest to maximize their benefits against costs. Perhaps animals could evolve to steal food from each other. But if animals also evolve a revenge defense mechanism, the behavior of theft will stop because the cost is greater than the benefit, therefore the whole species can benefit with more total cooperation. So we should respect everyone's opinions on morality, because they are most likely based on evolutionary wisdom. Yet at the same time we must respect the fact that evolution is not always right and there is likely to be error in a population. But most likely the majority of the species will have a stable moral calculator.
Evolution Reliability Fallacy:
The problem with relying on our evolutionary toolkit is that what if our environment changes faster than our evolutionary toolkit can keep up with? For example, it is much easier for humans to cooperate in face-to-face communication since that was how we evolved. Yet, in the digital age, it is very easy to provoke conflict with the person behind the screen. Our emotional subsystems don't know how to handle faceless communication. We often react to the unknown or less understood with anger since it poses a theoretical threat. Our technology is destabilizing to our discourse.
The Danger of Democracy:
Relying on the wisdom of the majority is a treacherous business - what if they get it wrong like they did in Nazi Germany? I propose that each individual needs to do a cost-benefit analysis of what it means to support the majority. If the majority is so evil so that their deeds are even more costly than a civil war, then perhaps a civil war is justified. Since not very many deeds are more atrocious than a civil war, that should be a high enough threshold for helping us identify when disunity is necessary, yet avoid falling into civil war unnecessarily. In our modern scenario of the "election steal" accusation, even if the election steal were true, it is not a greater atrocity than a civil war, therefore the masses should continue to support unity.
The Danger of a Narrative:
Determining good from evil is very dependent upon the narrative. The murder of a person is evil, until the narrative of "terrorist" is appended to them. The killing of a fetus is evil, until the narrative of "killing it's mother" is appended to it. Treating a certain race, class, or gender differently might be evil, until the narrative of "oppressor" is appended to them. Narratives play an insanely important role in how we view the world, how we view morality, and how we vote. Yet, narratives are subject to all the weaknesses of subjectivism and relativism. Who is the oppressor? By what metric? Are they oppressors as a group or individually? Cherry-picking different sets of facts can flip the narrative. If narratives are so easily flipped by changing the set of facts that you look at, evil becomes good and good becomes evil. Failure to see both sides of the debate can cause you to vilify those that are not actual villains - they are merely people with a different set of facts. Failures to understand both sides of a narrative will increase polarization and lead us down the path to civil war.
The Solution to the Narrative:
Passion for narratives must be aligned with the amount of supporting evidence for a narrative. In 2020, we had a left-wing narrative that the police are hunting down blacks. After removing outliers (George Floyd) this narrative seems to me to be largely untrue, as the statistics show it to be quite rare. Yet, many people engaged in riots to express their anger at a the narrative. This would have been avoided if people didn't believe the narrative that there were murderous police everywhere until they saw statistical evidence. In 2020 we had a libertarian narrative that the government was secretly preparing to control everyone by virtue of the covid restrictions. Many people resisted the safety guidelines. This would have been avoided if people didn't believe the narrative of tyrannical monsters in government until they saw evidence of multiple government officials admitting that they enjoy locking people in their homes for no reason. In 2021 we had a right wing narrative that the election was stolen. The Capitol was violently invaded as a result of this narrative. This would have been avoided if people didn't believe the narrative of an election steal until they saw the hard proof and quality evidence.
Evolution of Conspiratorial Thinking:
In our evolutionary history, we had less access to data. Perhaps conspiratorial thinking was necessary to protect yourself and expose treacherous plots. It seems to arise out of a curiosity towards patterns and an assumption that something is awry. It is commonly imagined that there are genes that encode for superstition, magical thinking, hearsay, which feed into conspiratorial thinking. It is imagined that when we hear noises in the darkness of the jungle of our evolutionary history, the rational genes that said "there is no evidence of danger" were eaten and those that had a bias to believe in threats without good evidence would have survived encounters with wild predators. Yet our modern environment is much more complex than our historical environment. Making errors in our modern age carries more danger than benefit, unlike in the past, when it might have been more beneficial.
Pros and Cons of Conspiratorial Thinking:
Some may say that conspiratorial thinking is important because sometimes conspiracies are proven to be true. This may be true, but the way we deal with them is important. There seems to be little danger in curiosity towards conspiracy theories. Curiosity can help fuel the desire to gather evidence which can assist in exposing the truth. The unjustified belief in conspiracies is the problem. Every event has a multiplicity of potential explanations. The conspiracy theorist becomes obsessed with one interpretation for a pattern of events. His bias filters out alternate explanations and guides him to see more patterns (confirmation bias) which grows his belief. When his belief grows strong enough, he will act on his belief, possibly in ways that are harmful to society. A pizza-gate believer carried a gun to the restaurant and shot it up. The BLM burnt down many parts of the country. QAnon people stormed the Capitol. The conspiracy theorist needs to understand that, if the evidence supporting your belief is strong enough, then everyone should believe it. The fact that few people believe in it is a problem. That should be a warning to you that perhaps you have an irrational belief in something that the majority of rational people are rejecting. Conspiracy theorists who don't heed this warning often develop a religious mindset of thinking that they alone have an esoteric knowledge and that the majority of people are ignorant or evil. This narrative comforts them in their ideological loneliness - reminding them that they are the hero of the narrative. Using language like "sheep" and "wake up" should be red flags for identifying people who have become lost in their own bias, completely forgetting about epistemic humility.
Bias Corrupts Moral Epistemology (Axiology - how we know what is right and wrong):
Religious, political, and conspiratorial biases corrupt how you view others, where the in-group is righteous and the out-group is wicked. This bias corrupts your moral epistemology, where you begin to judge people not by their actions, but by their group identity. This bias also leads to a dogmatic adherence to your own moral framework, which further corrupts your moral epistemology by causing you to judge others by your personal moral code, rather than by their own code.
Bias Corrupts Ontological Epistemology (Ontology - how we know what is real and not real):
This bias also corrupts your ontological epistemology, in that your brain refuses to process information that questions your understanding of reality and only absorbs information that confirms it. It corrupts how you gather information, only gathering the news that supports your bias towards reality. You grow more and more confident in your understanding of reality, even though you are getting further and further from reality every year. You then use your corrupted understanding of reality to support the narrative that your ideological opponents are evil, cycling back into further corruption of your moral epistemology.
Transcending Polarization:
If Americans can commit to transcending their biases, they will be able to resist in-group and out-group polarization and stave off axiological corruption, and ontological corruption. Biases are largely subconscious. The only way to destroy biases is to become conscious of them and continually reject them. This requires a type of birds-eye view of yourself. You need to see yourself as a judgmental logical cortex stuck within a biased creature. As the judgmental logical cortex, it is your job to evaluate the rest of your brain and fix it when it is wrong. This judgmental cortex can identify when the rest of the brain produces an incorrect calculation and then reprogram it to be more accurate. As biases are destroyed, demonization of the "other" will be reduced. If they can resist grouping themselves to an identity, then they can stop grouping others by identity, or at least apply much more nuance to the concept of group identities. When moral biases are resisted, it will be easier to stop calling other groups "evil". It will become easier to empathize with others and their frameworks for understanding the world. Fighting your biases will make it easier for you to become friends with people outside your in-group. As you befriend a variety of people, they will tell you how they think and it will be easier and easier to see the good within them despite their opposing framework for viewing the world. You can have more empathy with them when you see and understand that they are victims of bias just like you are. The enemy is not them, but it is the biases within them. As a friend, you will have more power to guide them away from their biases with love.
The Benefits of Diversity:
An ant hive needs a variety of types of ants. They need the workers, the soldiers, and the queen. Likewise, human society needs a variety of types of humans. We need those that care about fairness, and we also need those that care about efficiency. We need a combination of all of the ideologies in order to have a more accurate and balanced view of the world. There is some argument to say our natural genetic temperaments contribute to our political leanings. There is also research that says this is inaccurate, since temperaments can change over a lifetime, yet don't significantly impact political leanings. Some combination of nature and nurture probably sets you on a political path. Because of confirmation bias, most people stay on the path they were given. Absent the bias, perhaps people would follow their temperaments to ideologies that match their values. Do we really want only open-minded people who are disorganized? Do we really want only conscientious people that are rigid and inflexible? Do we really want only empathetic people who can never ever punish a criminal? Or do we really want only disagreeable people that tyrannize others? Perhaps evolution has figured out the proper ratio of temperaments to bestow to humanity. Perhaps evolution has given us the variety we need to be successful. We should treasure the variety and use it to our advantage. Instead of pathologizing our own temperament and deeming it as the one and only primal temperament, we should welcome different temperaments, otherwise we might be working against our own evolution. Ideological diversity can help us confront our blind spots. Why would we want to be ignorant of something relevant? If we can move past tribal polarization and demonization, we can take advantage of the variety of ideas and form a dialectic in which we learn from each other and grow in our understanding of truth together.
When Is It Okay To Be Biased:
What if our in-group is truly the only good group? Or what if a certain out-group truly is evil? If our bias is factually correct, doesn't that justify our bias? Perhaps bias can be justified in the face of facts, statistics, and evidence. But it is a dangerous road to follow. What if 70% of Muslims, when polled, support terrorism? Does that justify bias against Muslims? Perhaps. But group level bias should be avoided to the best extent possible. We should try our best to be biased at the level of the individual. Instead of banning all Muslims entry to the USA, we should ban all Muslims who support terrorism at the individual level. But there is an argument for saying, when the probability of danger is so high, a cost benefit analysis will tell you that it is better to act on sweeping group-level biases rather than handle it individually, because the cost of making an error in judgement at the individual level is too high. Perhaps you would need to do a probability analysis paired with the costs of error on both sides to figure out whether or not a bias would be justified. But because group-level bias corrupts so many things, it is usually better to steer clear from it.
When Is It Okay To Demonize:
The word evil should be only used to mean those who consciously, consistently, and intentionally make the world a worse place, according to their own moral framework. We should try our best to distinguish between those who are evil and those who are misguided. If someone is purposefully trying to destroy that which they have publicly stated that they believe to be good, then it might be okay to demonize them. We should try to demonize at the individual level only and not at the group level, because you become less accurate. Not everyone within the group is the same. Some may be evil and some may be misguided. We should be very judicial about how we use the word evil. Every time I hear the word evil used to describe a group, it immediately translates in my brain to - "I am psychologically preparing my group to murder that group". Hitler demonized the Jews to prepare the Nazis for genocide. Stalin demonized the rich to prepare the communists for classicide. Anarchists demonize the government to prepare the people for regicide.
The Danger of Extremism
Demonization seems to be the gateway to extremism. Demonization helps justify violence, since that which we view as evil is usually seen as worthy of being destroyed. When ideologies are quick to view violence as the solution, they have gone off the deep-end into extremism. When ideologies get obsessed with grand narratives of "good" and "evil" they tend to become more blind to counterarguments, since every argument from the other side is necessarily evil and therefore not worthy of consideration. When you are blind, you fail to see good and evil accurately. As a consequence, you then commit violence against something that you imagine to be evil, yet you find yourself to be the evil one when you realize that you were wrong in assuming your target was evil.
The Danger of Marxism:
Marxism is blind to the benefits of income inequality since it obsesses itself with a grand narrative that the upper class is evil and the lower class is righteous. Marxism consequently concludes that the poor are justified in destroying the rich. This murderous ideology imagines up a collective guilt on the heads of the rich, which fails to appreciate nuance between individuals within the members of that class. By collectivizing guilt, Marxism fails to accurately determine which rich people are evil and therefore murders the innocent rich people. By collectivizing guilt they commit classicide.
The Danger of Nazism:
Nazism is blind to the benefits of diversity since it obsesses itself with a grand narrative that the Jewish race is evil and that the German race is righteous. Nazism consequently concludes that the Germans are justified in destroying the Jews. This murderous ideology imagines up a collective guilt on the heads of the Jews, which fails to appreciate nuance between individuals within the members of that race. By collectivizing guilt, Nazism fails to accurately determine which Jews are evil and therefore murders innocent Jews. By collectivizing guilt they commit genocide.
The Danger of Anarchism:
Revolutionary anarchism is blind to the benefits of government since it obsesses itself with a grand narrative that the government is evil and that the people are righteous. Revolutionary anarchism consequently concludes that the people are justified in destroying the government. This murderous ideology imagines up a collective guilt on the heads of those in government, which fails to appreciate nuance between individuals within the members of the branches of government. By collectivizing guilt, revolutionary anarchism fails to accurately determine which members of government are evil and therefore murders innocent members of government. By collectivizing guilt they commit regicide.
The Danger of Black Lives Matter:
To the extent that BLM is only focused on highlighting and fixing problems Blacks face, it is beneficial to society. To the extent BLM engages in collective guilt, demonization, and extremism, it is a dangerous ideology, like Nazism, Marxism, and Anarchism. If BLM isn't careful with their narrative, they may become blind to the benefits of diversity since it obsesses itself with a grand narrative that the White race is evil and that the Black race is righteous. BLM consequently might conclude that the Blacks are justified in destroying the Whites. This potentially murderous ideology might imagine up a collective guilt on the heads of the Whites, which fails to appreciate nuance between individuals within the members of that race. If they collectivizing guilt, BLM might fail to accurately determine which Whites are evil and therefore murders innocent Whites. If they collectivize guilt they might commit genocide.
The Danger of White Pride:
To the extent that WP type ideologies are only focused on highlighting and fixing problems Whites face, they are beneficial to society. To the extent WP engages in collective guilt, demonization, and extremism, it is a dangerous ideology, like Nazism, Marxism, and Anarchism. If WP isn't careful with their narrative, they may become blind to the benefits of diversity since it obsesses itself with a grand narrative that the non-White race is evil and that the White race is righteous. WP consequently might conclude that the Whites are justified in destroying the non-Whites. This potentially murderous ideology might imagine up a collective guilt on the heads of the non-Whites, which fails to appreciate nuance between individuals within the members of that group. If they collectivizing guilt, WP might fail to accurately determine which non-Whites are evil and therefore murders innocent non-Whites. If they collectivize guilt they might commit genocide.
The Danger of Collective Guilt:
Collective guilt seems to be the gateway to demonization, which leads to extremism, which leads to atrocities. There are many ways to collectivize guilt, whether by political party, class, religion, age, race, or gender; but all of them appear to be noxiously wrong and deserving of constant rebuttal until their grand narratives are replaced by a cautious investigation of nuance. The current danger of our political discourse is the tendency to apply collective guilt to members of the opposing political party. If we do not fix our discourse, our parties may end up committing atrocities against each other.
The Danger of Cherry-picking Facts:
Cherry-picking facts leads to collective guilt narratives. Since our biases often guide our epistemology, we only collect the facts that suit our bias. Then we organize them into a narrative that makes it seem like our bias is factually justified. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there has been a series of atrocities committed by both sides. By cherry-picking only the Israeli atrocities, the Palestinians can feel comfortable with their anti-Israeli bias. By cherry-picking only the Palestinians atrocities, the Israeli can feel comfortable with their anti-Palestinian bias.
Solution to the Political Divide:
Stop cherry-picking information, get your information from both sides, and always research counter-arguments before you believe something.
Stop collectivizing guilt - only apply guilt at the level of the individual.
Stop demonizing groups by using the "evil" word (or synonyms like "terrorist") loosely - only use those words for those who are worthy of capital punishment.
Call out extremism when you notice an ideology that is quick to advocate violence as a solution, rather than consider other alternatives first.
Focus on Unity:
When we realize that most people are good and are truly operating from a desire to make the world a better place, we will find allies where we formerly saw enemies. We need to transcend the desire to see out-groups as enemies if we want to make the world a better place. This type of transcendence involves seeing humanity from a birds-eye view are understanding that we must all work together in order to maximize wellbeing. The only way to fix the political divide is for more and more Americans to consistently push for unity. This means we need to actively reach out with love to those who disagree. We need to help them see that their biases are wrong. We need to help them see that their conspiracies are wrong. We need to help them see that their narratives are wrong. And then guide them to a better narrative - a narrative that we are all trying the best we can, that most people have good intentions, that most people want the world to be a better place. A focus on looking for common ground rather than looking for disagreement. If we make unity a viral ideology, perhaps we can bring multiple ideologies together and synthesize them to develop a better collective perspective of the truth.
Social Etiquette:
Unity means that our social etiquette must change. We will need a return to politeness and manners. Ancient cultures places special value on honor, politeness, reputation, and living up to your family name. Perhaps our modern culture has lost some of the wisdom of the past. A return to dignity in speech might be helpful. Perhaps faceless communication has corrupted our evolutionary ability to communicate civilly. Perhaps we need a modern pseudo-religious intervention to help us adapt more quickly to our technology.
Sociological Evolution:
Our evolutionary history starts us in a caveman-like social order. Our social order might have started as families, but then the order of a family might have been threatened by gangs. Therefore the family evolved into the tribe for additional protection. As tribes began to grow, they began to threaten each other for resources. Tribal warfare was common. Tribes needed to become bigger so as to protect themselves from tribal feuds. Mysticism became a tool for organizing multiple tribes in accordance with a common moral code and purpose. Mystic social organizations began to dominate, and only other mystical organizations would be able to compete. Eventually nation-states evolved to formalize social structures, usually on the backs of a preexistent mystical structure. As the borders of a nation-state grew, maintaining a cohesive cultural identity, moral code, and purpose became more important for social stability. When mysticism evolved into more formalized religion, nation-states could use religion to unite larger populations. Nation-states often became empires when they grew in power relative to their neighbors. Yet, all empires seemed to fail to maintain their social structure into the future. A phenomenon probably related to the fact that the subverted cultures are unable to fully assimilate into the larger structure. It seems like as a social structure grows, there is a power struggle between the conquering culture and the subverted culture. Just because you have militarily conquered a populous doesn't mean you have conquered their hearts. As the borders of a social structure extend to include larger varieties of people, races, religions, and ideologies, it becomes harder to maintain unity. Perhaps a stronger more persuasive religious philosophy is needed.
Evolution of Unity:
Evolution is something that guides us to survival. Our built in motivational substrates guide us to wellbeing. Sometimes people can evolve selfish motivational substrates. Other people develop selfless motivational substrates. Natural selection is the test that each of these genes must pass in order to be considered worthy of survival by nature. The question is, what type of motivational substrates will win the long-run game of evolution? In the animal world, it seems like tyrannical selfish motivational substrates are not successful. If an ape leader is overly abusive, a group of less powerful apes will band together in a coup and wipe out the abusive leader. Our tendencies for revenge have a useful evolutionary purpose for destroying anti-social genes. What that means is, selfish genes cannot so so selfish to the point where they abuse others to a degree that would cost their own life. What about selfless genes? If you take selflessness to the Christian extreme, it is to sell all your possessions, give to the poor, and serve others. This makes you very vulnerable to famine. A stockpile of possessions is what helps you survive through the winter. If you have no possessions, as soon as nature becomes unpredictable, you will die. Therefore, evolution seems to be guiding the collective consciousness of creatures towards a healthy balance between self-love and love for others. By placing self-love and love for others in equilibrium, we are able to unify with others into stable social structures.
Evolution of Consciousness:
Evolving into larger social structures takes a toll on our brain power. It is one thing to manage calculating things in the best interest for just yourself. As evolution inspires you to focus on your family's success, consciousness needs to upgrade its model for optimizing behavior to be tuned around the wellbeing of the family, not just itself. As the game theory aspects of evolution play out, there is a pseudo "arms race" for larger and larger social structures, since a larger tribe offers more protection than a smaller one. This means that human consciousness must evolve to a greater and greater vantage point for looking at the world and optimizing behavior for an ever growing social structure. Thinking in terms of family and tribe are no longer good enough. We need to be inclusive of other races and religions. Eventually, consciousness needs to grow to be optimized for the benefit of all the people of the world. After that, consciousness must then evolve to optimize for the benefit of all sentient creatures. Finally, consciousness must evolve to be in equilibrium with the needs of the planet and the needs of the cosmos if we want to survive the death of the Earth and Sun. This means an ever expanding circle of love, that isn't limited to loving humans, but all life, and even the universe itself.
Altitudes of Development:
Ken Wilber, American Philosopher and champion of a modern version of eastern mysticism, has build a framework for understanding the evolution of consciousness along a spectrum of altitudes. As consciousness progresses from the self (egocentric), to the tribe (ethnocentric), to the species (world-centric), to the planet (planetcentric), to the cosmos (Kosmocentric), our development is reflected in our social structures. From the archaic cavemen to the warring tribes, from the honor-driven states to the order-driven theocracies, we have now evolved into the modern stage of truth-oriented democracies. Yet, we are also in transition to a postmodern globalized order. Much of the Trump phenomenon has been the resistance of a trend towards more global consciousness, that might be viewed as sacrificing the prior order for the new order. According to Ken Wilber, the postmodern order isn't the end of our transformation, as we will need to move into an integral spiritual zeitgeist that will attempt to combine all of the prior modes of consciousness together. They will recognize the importance of each stage of our development and try to empathize will all of the different motivational forces. The final step will be the post-integral zeitgeist when society learns how to effectively synergize all the motivating forces of our prior stages of development. Rather than globalists warring against nationalists, they will learn how to create a healthy equilibrium between self-love and love of others. Rather than dogmatic theists warring against scientific relativists, there will be a healthy equilibrium between love for scientific truth and love for spiritual truth. Rather than the tribal collectivists raging against the egoistical individualists, there will be a balance between love for the collective's wellbeing and love for individual rights. Rather than a battle between power-oriented hierarchies and spiritual-oriented hierarchies, there will be a balance between the love of success and love of the sacred.
Digital Age Epistemic Crisis:
If the Integral mentality is the next stage for our collective consciousness, how can we get there without tripping a cultural war in the process? The digital age presents some issues that we need to navigate carefully if we want to upgrade the world with the least suffering possible. Digital technology has given everyone equal access to the information ecosystem. Publishers and consumers are now on equal footing. The low barrier to entry for becoming a publisher has created a combinatorial explosion of new information, where each new individual produces an array of information that triggers other individuals to produce an array of information in response. This has lead to an information explosion that has led to a narrative explosion, that has lead to a demonization explosion. In this ocean of information, truth can be hard to discern from fiction, especially since lies often travel faster than truth, and polarizing material travels faster than unifying material. This has lead to an epistemic crisis, in that a critical amount of people are struggling with understanding how to verify the truth quality of the information they consume.
Cultural Instability:
We seemed to have progressed too rapidly from traditionalism, to modernism, and then to postmodernism. This lack of unity within the cultural zeitgeist is leading to a breakdown in its structures. We have an unholy alliance between postmodernism and tribalism as the focus on anti-racism becomes a rallying cry to return to tribal structures as the fear of racism continually gets overemphasized by outrage driven media. On the right, we have an unholy alliance between traditionalism (theism) and statism (nationalism) as they feed on the fear of anti-religious and anti-American narratives. Within the libertarian spectrum, we have an unholy alliance between tribalism, superstitious mysticism (conspiratorial thinking), and anarchic cavemen individualism as they use conspiracy theories to justify violence against the state.
Next Steps:
If we are going to safely transition into the integral stage of our cultural zeitgeist, we are going to need to do it in a way that assuages the needs of the different cultural tribes and rectifies the problems in our information ecosystem. Since the problems we are facing are so great, we need a powerful solution. I propose that we need a digital age religion to give us enough cultural momentum to reverse course on all of the dangerous trajectories we are taking.
Digital Age Religion:
We need a gathering of the minds to construct a school of philosophy. Instead of being an irrational religion, it will be a rational one. The best philosophy available to mankind will be the scripture. The best science of meditation will guide our prayers and rituals. Imagine every Sunday, instead of sending your children to a Church to learn about how humans are naturally so evil that God has to curse them with floods and disasters, you send them to a school of philosophy where they can learn more enlightened principles and get trained in how to detect logical fallacies? Many people complain that there is no money in philosophy. If philosophy has the tools to save our nation from itself, then we should be investing a percentage of our income in building up schools of philosophy. In short, we should be learning how to use the tools of religion for more enlightened purposes. Because perhaps those tools are the things we need to transcend.
