The Problem of Polarisation (Part 2): Tools
This post is Part 2 of a 2-part series. If you haven’t yet read Part 1, you can check it out here.
We concluded part 1 with the grim outlook that it looks like everything, everywhere, all at once is conspiring against us to create a polarised world. We also promised to dive into some skills to help get around this. That’s where this post comes in.
But first…
…What are some possible causes behind this polarisation?
As with any self-development, the first step is always, say it with me now… Awareness.
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, two things that we need to be aware of when dealing with biases and polarised information are:
- An appreciation for nuance (coupled with patience)
- And empathy
Appreciating Nuance (with a dash of patience)
Nuance (/ˈnjuːɑːns/): a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound.
The first blind spot we need to address is the ability to appreciate nuance. Essentially, the innate understanding that every story has different sides. That every person has a different version of reality. Nuance is that sea of grey that lies between black and white. It’s the chasms of ambiguity between right and wrong. It is … you get it.
Basically, every side of every story has context. Without at least some knowledge of that context, we cannot expect to have an opinion about something that comes close to the objective truth.
Now, where does patience fit in?
I believe it takes patience to seek out the other sides of an argument. It takes time to read the myriad of articles and sift through the noise to find the signal. Depending on who you ask, the amount of reading that we do has either declined over time or just simply shifted platforms. But the deeper issue here is the readiness to make an opinion about something after reading a single headline or a WhatsApp forward or a short caption on an Instagram image.
Content has gotten shorter and shorter (as evidenced by the success of Instagram stories, YouTube shorts and TikToks) with some reports indicating attention spans have followed suit. It’s possible that this sort of environment serves as a priming of sorts, wherein, we believe more and more that short bites of content are sufficient to make strong opinions about complex subjects.
(The irony of splitting my one post into 2 shorter pieces is not lost on me, but this post would’ve been less useful if people never got all the way through 😬).
Things get worse when we consider that some sources of information may even be biassed themselves, pushing a single perspective of an issue, without covering the “other side” of the story. If these are the only headlines you read, then you can be sure that your opinions are pushed further into a corner that may not be representative of the truth.
Empathy
Empathy (/ˈɛmpəθi/): the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Empathy is somewhat dependent on nuance, in that nuance can serve as a prerequisite of empathy. How can we strive to see things from someone else’s point of view without first attempting to learn about and understand where that view could have come from? Empathy is like the flower that grows from a tree of nuance. Once we can appreciate the different sides of a story, only then can empathy truly bloom.
I wrote about empathy before and much of what I wrote there applies here as well.
What I would add is that part of empathy is being able to push for a more holistic understanding of an issue without invalidating the feelings of someone that holds a contrary opinion. We see this a lot in conflict, where one side believes their pain to be greater and, therefore, to even acknowledge the pain of the other side is unfair, since they have not suffered as much. But this kind of thinking only serves to entrench people in their respective ideologies, since in the end they may feel that “if they don’t care about my pain, why should I care about theirs?”
Let’s talk tools
As with most modern problems, the solutions lie in education and awareness.
Find your blindspots
One of the most important things to learn is how to identify our own blind spots and even identify polarised perspectives and, equally important, different mental models to think about those situations.
One of my favourite resources for this is the book Factfulness by Hans, Ola and Anna Rosling. I would highly recommend the book, as it covers 10 instincts that distort our perspective, but if you’d like a taste of what it covers, this TED Talk by Hans and Ola Rosling is also gold. Once we can learn how our own psychology and instincts are working against us, then we can work to counteract those instincts with better responses to complex situations.
Call in, not out
Another useful tool is in counteracting the “Call-out” culture we live in (also sometimes called “cancel culture”). Calling out has its place, but for lasting social change, we need a better approach. Calling out has a tendency to make people defensive and entrench them in their original opinions of a subject. This goes back to our nature as social beings and our social standing being important for our survival.
Pretty much all of us believe that we are good people and when we are publicly called out for some bad behaviour, then our perception of ourselves as “good” is suddenly threatened. This creates a distortion in which we feel the need to defend ourselves and that often leads to us finding justifications for our behaviour — like, “as a good person, I would never do things that make me a bad person, so what I did was probably right”.
A good primer on the subject, plus a suggested alternative, is in this TED Talk from Loretta Ross on ushering in a “Call-in” culture instead. Calling in avoids the feeling of being attacked altogether and helps open everyone up to a conversation, rather than an argument.
Practice, practice, practice
As with all skills, once we have the tools, we need to put them into practice, so that we can become more attuned to instances of bias.
Deploying a healthy scepticism to what you read and asking questions like, “I wonder what the other side has to say about this?” or “I wonder to what extent this story is true?” etc. One particular red flag is when a story paints entire groups of people or communities in a particular light — painting with a wide brush often misses the smaller details and nuances (there’s that word again!) that a finer brush could do a better job of illuminating.
Overall, we need to cultivate a habit of making positive assumptions when we don’t know that much about a people or a subject and reserve the negative assumptions for when there is compelling evidence for it.
My ultimate hope here is that with the right skills and tools, we can break free from the forces that conspire to pit us against each other; regardless of whether those forces originate from within or without.
