PSYCHOSCAPES: We can't give up now!

John A Powell

We hear it whispered that our cherished American experiment in democracy – which we used to be so proud of – will soon go belly up. Neersaysers say that either our rapidly rising national debt will bankrupt us or that newly powerful nations like China will crush us.

But, to me, the biggest danger to our survival is our raging cultural wars, which are destroying us from within – the same way an autoimmune disorder destroys the human body from the inside out.

I’m acutely aware of how important the human body is right now after recently returning home from Concord Hospital, where they magically replaced a faulty valve in my heart through a catheter, sending me home the very next day. My recuperation is a powerful reminder that a person is pretty useless without a healthy body, just as a country can’t fight itself out of a paper bag if it is divided against itself.

Thirty years ago, the sociologist James Hunter came up with the term “cultural war” to describe this widening societal divide that is turning neighbors into enemies. Since then, the situation has worsened so much that he has written a new book warning us how “culture wars have so thoroughly poisoned American politics that they’ve made authoritarianism dangerously attractive to too many.”^⁠1

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, NH was already starting to divide into camps, but I was still able to talk to acquaintances on the other side of the divide, engaging in amiable conversations about politics as if we were talking about which is better, a Chevy or a Ford. My arguments didn’t gain any converts, but I didn’t hate my opponents, and they didn’t hate me.

Hunter notes that such exchanges, even though they didn’t change minds, were valuable in enabling each side to view each other as fellow citizens, not the enemy. Now that has changed: Nothing is a laughing matter; everything has taken on life or death importance, as Hunter notes:

“America's culture wars have metastasized so that many groups believe they are in a maximalist battle against their own extinction. Whether it's far-right [white nationalists] panicking over the declining white birth rate, or academic theorists popularizing the belief that words are violence...”

We are increasingly viewing each other no longer as neighbors but as enemies. The gap is becoming unbridgeable. In this new cult of the individual, old community guidelines and aspirations have been trampled in the dirt.

We are exhausted from the continuing rancor and distrust while bracing ourselves, after the results of the election, for more hard times ahead. Enough is enough. Under the circumstances, it would be tempting to roll over and give up. But we can’t. There is more at stake than we realize.

What our founding fathers held dear was the Latin phrase embedded in our national motto, E pluribus unum, which translates to “out of many, one.” According to Hunter, this was the “founding aspiration and glue that holds our country together.” A crucial part of this agreement that makes Democracy work is “that we will not kill each other over our differences, but instead, we’ll talk through those differences.”^⁠2

The key phrase is “we will talk through our differences.”

Throughout history around the world, there has never been a civil war that didn’t start as a culture war. To forestall that possibility, we have to regain the fortitude and discipline to work through difficult issues in a responsible manner without flagrant lies and grandstanding.

Throughout our history, we have a decent track record in bridging our differences democratically, except, of course, for our Civil War. That exception led to the unimaginable slaughter of 620,000 of our fellow Americans, our own flesh and blood.

Tragically, we are approaching that danger zone once again as politicians like Trump delight in dividing us one against the other, paralyzing our democratic way of life, and replacing it with a transactional society where the person in power always wins; you know that person: the one, screaming in your ear, ‘What have you done for me lately?’

It’s time for calmer heads to prevail.

I recommend “The Power of Bridging” by John A. Powell, a law professor and civil rights advocate. It is “an insightful and moving exploration of belonging, bridging, and interconnectedness, challenging readers to embrace empathy and understanding in a world where everyone deserves to feel valued and accepted.”^⁠3

Powell makes one feel as if you are in the presence of Ganghi, as you can appreciate listening to this interview: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101907966/john-a-powell-on-polarization-and-the-power-of-bridging.

xxx

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