The interview and book touch on a critical point. Politics in America has become toxic. Instead of seeing each other as Americans first and foremost, there is a clear tendency to view politics in moral terms. My side is righteous; the other side is evil. The consequence of that in-group identification is that we are no longer able to work together to improve quality of life for all.
Much of what my book is about is how easily we fall into team versus team conflict. And while teams are often good -- teams help us cooperate and do things together that we can't do alone -- when inter-group conflict rises above a certain level of intensity, it becomes very disruptive. And that's where we are nationally in the battle between left and right.One of the best indicators of our toxic political environment I can think of comes from a recent study on empathy. That study found that people were far less empathetic towards others that were labeled as different in political ideology. When we no longer see the common denominators in our shared existence, we are headed down a dark path. The tribal mentality that follows allows you to ignore the suffering of those in the other tribe and even relish bringing them harm.
Haidt highlights this tendency to demonize people on the other side of the political spectrum as responsible for our increasingly dysfunctional political system. Democracy is based on discourse, compromise, and participation. The discourse has become hateful. Compromise has been replaced by cut-throat competition and winning at all costs. Barriers to participation are being created to disenfranchise groups that do not tend to vote with our team. In the end, our democracy will be lost. We are repeating every mistake made by societies in decline.
On some level, the fact that people identify closely with a political ideation has become silly. We now have two political parties in America. There are the pigs that promise to help the rich and harm the poor. The pigs usually keep their promises. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Then we have the chickens who promise to help the poor, but rarely keep those promises. The bottom line is that no one should put an ounce of faith in either political party to do anything but help those at the top of the economic ladder because that is where political donations come from. Our democracy and economic system have been corrupted to the point that we are going to crash and burn.
Political divisiveness has also infected religion. There has been a cynical effort to conflate Christianity with political conservativism. It is a rather clever gambit because it allows a political ideology to be sold as endorsed by God. That is bullshit. It is yet another symptom of how toxic our political system has become when we want to believe that God smiles on a political party and you if you vote for it. God is not a Republican or a Democrat. The word for implying that God cares our political tribes is blasphemy. It shows contempt for the sacred by equating it with the profane. God does not serve politicians and the idea that any of our politicians serve God is laughable.
Ample proof of how much politics have contaminated religion can be frequently found on the pages of the Christian Post. While supposedly a publication for evangelical Christians, many articles and comments to those articles will make derogatory references to "lefties" and liberals even when talking about fellow Christians. Somehow or another, anyone that does not subscribe to the godliness of conservativism is a second class Christian or worse, not a genuine Christian at all. You cannot serve God and the things of this world, including politics.
Haidt suggests that both sides of the political spectrum are necessary for a healthy society.
My view is that left and right are like yin and yang. There's a quote I have in chapter 12 from John Stuart Mill, but this is really my credo: "A party of order or stability and a party of progress or reform are both necessary elements for a healthy state of political life." The big breakthrough for me was, once I stopped disliking conservatives and could actually see what they were right about, they showed me a lot of things that liberals were wrong about. But at the same time, I think there are some things that liberals are right about that conservatives have trouble seeing. Social reality is so complicated that, once you join one team or the other, you become specialized in detecting certain patterns, but you become blind to other patterns.In other words, both the traditionalists and reformers have a role to play, both in terms of politics and religion. When one tribe demonizes the member of the other tribe, all hell breaks lose.
Haidt also discusses the rise of what he calls the New Atheists. They believe that religion is the root of all evil and proselytize against those with religious belief. New Atheists inhabit both sides of the political spectrum and worship at the alter of Ayn Rand and other pseudo-objectivists. For all the talk of objectivism and innovation, they really worship wealth, privilege, and power. They are not interested in a separation of church and state; they want an end to church and state to focus on protecting them from the barbarian hordes at the gate.
Haidt overlooks the New Theocrats. They are the so-called Dominionists that believe God wants them to have dominion over society, wealth, power, media, and resources. In short, they are morally bankrupt and think you can serve God and Mammon. Their mantra is give them control over Mammon and they promise they will use it to serve God.
The only positive trend that I can see is the growing number of Christians that are disgusted with both political parties. For example, Scot McKnight discusses the trend among evangelical Christians in this post. That trend needs to continue so we can be a prophetic voice willing to speak truth to power.
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