Anyone can see that we are living in a politically divided country — so divided, in fact, that it often feels like we inhabit two alternate realities. As each side gets more and more entrenched in its own camp, I wonder how we will find a way forward. Can the United States of America become united once more? Was it ever?
I used to teach US government to adult immigrants and refugees who were learning English while studying to earn their high school equivalency degree. It was a fun subject to teach because there were so many visual representations of government that I could incorporate into the class to support concepts and reduce language demands. I remember showing them a basic diagram of the political spectrum, much like this one:
The US government, I would explain, is made up of two primary parties that are both needed to keep us somewhere in the center of the spectrum — the sweet spot. If you swing too far left or too far right, bad things happen. I’ve seen variations of the political spectrum, for example, that label the center as “life” and either end as “death,” or the center as “freedom” and either end as “oppression.” I wanted my students to understand that democracy in the US depended on both parties working together in an ongoing cycle of give and take. While each side of the spectrum — left and right — represents a separate ideology and offers a different vision of how government should be enacted, both balance each other out in an effort to solve problems common to all of us. I would talk about how our founders developed a pretty incredible system and my students were eager to learn about it.
Today, it seems that our system is in the danger zone. We are increasingly more polarized and less prone to engage in productive civic discourse with those on the other side of the spectrum. While technology has given us an incredible amount of access to information and connects us to different parts of the globe, it has also made us more isolated and insular in our worldview, susceptible to the algorithms and echo chambers that prevent us from engaging with diverse perspectives. The very nature of our virtual discourse can distance us from those personal interactions that allow us to truly understand someone else’s story. What’s more is that truth is constantly being undermined through the spreading of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, to which greater portions of our population are falling victim.
It’s difficult to find the space to genuinely listen to each other in the midst of so much noise. We often discuss the right to free speech, but in an article on the right to listen, author Astra Taylor writes:
We’ve been slow to see that, if democracy is to function well, listening must also be supported and defended—especially at a moment when technological developments are making meaningful listening harder.
Whenever I struggle to find my place or direction in life (or become disillusioned by politics), I find it’s best to simplify — to cut out the distractions and narrow in on the basics. Like with my students, visuals can help. Here’s a more detailed view of the US political spectrum:
I like this visual because one of the first things you notice is the many ways in which the left and right preserve a balance in our government. The left, for example, looks to the future, while the right looks to the past. If I remove myself, for a moment, from my own political beliefs on specific issues, I can see how each orientation might be useful in certain situations. It makes sense. I think this idea of momentarily “stepping out” of your belief system is important.
In his TED Talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposes the idea that we are not born with a blank moral slate. Rather, we each possess five foundations that make up the “first draft” of our moral mind. Liberals and conservatives modify these first drafts in different ways as they experience life and go on to develop divergent manifestations of these same moral ingredients, illustrated here:
Liberals value care and fairness above all else while challenging the foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Conservatives, on the other hand, value all five foundations, but more so authority, sanctity, and loyalty, at the expense of the others. To have a healthy and stable world, Haidt argues, we need them both — the change towards a more just society that liberals seek to obtain and the stability of our establishments that conservatives seek to preserve. But he highlights a problem — our moral values unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth. In other words, the value system we develop predisposes us towards division, a fact that our current use of technology is only exacerbating.
To overcome this division, Haidt proposes moral humility — the ability to suspend judgement and extend empathy towards those who are outside of our group. He refers to it as “stepping out of the moral matrix.”
The Buddhist sage Sent-ts’an describes this process beautifully in Verses of the Faith Mind:
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worse disease.
This is no easy task. We all have things we are for or against, and many of us will defend or reject them passionately. Opening ourselves up to hear another perspective is an act of moral humility that combats the pride that blinds us. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C.S. Lewis is talking about a top-down positionality between God and humanity. We might also apply this idea to left-right positionality between liberals and conservatives. Just as the proud individual is blinded to the God above them, so might the proud liberal be blinded to the conservative on the right, or the proud conservative to the liberal on the left.
I think part of the solution lies in turning towards one another — in opening our eyes and seeing each other. In doing so, we might find a common ground to stand on. Any time I have overcome a blindspot in my life, it has been through getting proximal to the person I was blinded to and learning from their experience. We cannot show someone empathy if we do not see them.
In the video below, Brené Brown eloquently explains the process of extending empathy to others. She talks about the impact empathy has on those who are struggling as we come alongside them and identify with their struggle. It’s interesting to view this video with a political lens. How can we come alongside someone from an opposing political perspective who is simply looking for the government to help resolve an issue they observe, be it personal or societal? Maybe it’s the same issue we ourselves care about.
The effects of entering these personal spaces in a tangible manner are indeed powerful. This past summer, a group of students from the University of Pennsylvania participated in a traveling Political Empathy Lab (PEL) that put their empathy skills into practice through connecting across political difference. The students themselves represented diverse political leanings and the mutual understanding they cultivated with folks leaning opposite of them reveals the impact of empathy:
Research shows that people’s attitudes towards the opposite political party gets better if they perceive they are being genuinely listened to by a member of the other party.
One student discusses three important aspects of relating to others — belief, behavior, and belonging. Typically, if a group of people share a belief, they will also share a sense of belonging. In the absence of a shared belief, however, you can instead focus on your behavior to create a sense of belonging. The Political Empathy Lab showed that behaving in an empathetic way can foster a sense of belonging across differing political beliefs.
Showing someone empathy may even go so far as to persuade them. In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini writes about the reciprocity principle, which states that if someone receives a gift from someone else, it is human nature for the person receiving the gift to feel an obligation to repay the person who gave it to them. He goes on to describe many areas of life where this principle applies, including politics. Cialdini provides a great example of how Lyndon Johnson used the reciprocity principle to effectively gain support across party lines during his presidency. He writes:
Political experts were amazed at Lyndon Johnson’s success in getting so many of his programs through Congress during his early administration; even members of Congress who were thought to be strongly opposed to the programs were voting for them. Close examination by analysts, such as Robert Caro in his influential biography of Johnson (Caro, 2012), has found the cause to be not so much Johnson’s political savvy as the large score of favors he had been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of power in the US House and Senate. As president, he was able to produce a truly remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in those favors. It is interesting that this same process may account for the problems some subsequent presidents—Carter, Clinton, Obama, Trump—had in getting their programs through Congress. They came to the presidency from outside the Capitol Hill establishment and campaigned on their outside-Washington identities, saying that they were indebted to no one in Washington. Much of their early legislative difficulties may be traced to the fact that no one there was indebted to them.
I would wager that extending political empathy to our adversaries could do the same — showing empathy to someone and receiving it right back as a response. Living in a world with more empathy would not be that bad.
In fact, I recently learned about the Apple TV+ series Dark Matter, inspired by the book of the same name, which involves the main character entering a black box that contains doors to alternate realities. An opinion piece on media literacy and empathy describes one of the episodes from the series:
During one episode, he opens a door to find an idyllic world. People are living in harmony, technology is highly advanced and problems like poverty, war and pollution seem to have been solved. When he asks a person living in that reality how all this was accomplished, she lists three concepts: people agreeing on basic facts, committing to use technology in a way that does not destroy the environment or humanity, and valuing empathy.
We obviously have many problems facing our nation, and there are many avenues available for us to fight our way forward toward a better day. Yet I would suggest, as I did to my US government students way back when, that cooperating with one another is another avenue, one that we are taking less and less as our elected leaders and We the People become more divided.
I think we are misguided if we paint any one group as being composed of the same individuals. As with any group, there’s a great deal of variation. I can step outside of my moral matrix, as hard as it is, to know that there are good people who voted for Trump — family members, coworkers, neighbors, community members. There are people within my circle and outside of my political camp to whom I should try and show empathy, even as I should join the fight to stand up for those who will be negatively impacted by extreme right-wing policies. It seems a contradiction, but that’s what makes our system work. It’s the contradiction of the US system. We fight and we cooperate. If we remembered this, maybe we’d get more done, maybe we’d come back to the center, and maybe we’d find the balance that we all need.
