Five Foundations on Which to Forge Common Ground
Here’s a little thought experiment: take a die-hard MAGA Trumper, and take a staunch self-proclaimed progressive. Put them in a room together (please don’t actually try to do this). Would they even try to have a productive debate? Probably not, and that would be the end of it.
But let’s say they did. Let’s say they tried, hard as they might, to get to the root of their disagreement and find common ground. How deep would they have to go? Would they even feel like they were speaking the same language?
What we see of our political divisions, stark as it is, may incredibly be only the tip of the iceberg. Decades of ideological bubbling have left us living in different realities, with different moral foundations, different understandings of what the world is and what it should be. It is no one’s fault, really — in the digital age, keeping within a political bubble offers both practical convenience (with so much news and analysis available, who has time for the things they don’t agree with?) and the psychological satisfaction found in the company of like-minded thinkers.
These divisions have fed and fed upon themselves, leaving us surrounded by rhetoric selected for its ability to rile, and by politicians and thought leaders selected for their ability to preach that rhetoric to their choirs. It is an increasingly untenable situation, breaking down not only our peaceful coexistence on a societal level, but also our personal relationships, our friendships, and our ability to tolerate family.
If we are to try to forge common ground, then the journey begins with creating a common language, a framework for understanding the wildly different philosophies and worldviews that populate our political spectra, and the following is my attempt at doing so. It is a set of self-evident principles, written for anyone — left, right, or center — looking to build more positive discourse.
1. Power, in Any Form, Can be Misused
Underlying most any political grievance is the perceived mishandling of power. Too often, we often consider power to belong only to one party within a societal dynamic. Realizing its complexity, and realizing the broad range of conclusions that we might arrive at depending upon where we focus, is the crucial first step in understanding the perspectives and concerns of others.
Let’s take labor relations as an example. Large corporations and their owners have the potential to undermine competitors, exploit workers, and mislead consumers. But laborers, acting through unions, have the potential to deny consumers price and selection, create barriers to workers and entrepreneurs trying to enter a market, and even deny freedom and flexibility to the laborers they deign to represent. Bring in the government to regulate and control, and it may hinder the free enterprise and hurt quality of life for consumers as a result. Even the consumers themselves may have power to abuse — legal protections, for instance, may result in frivolous suits and actions taken, potentially hurting companies and driving prices up prices for others. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Concerns are not, and should not be, limited only to malicious abuse. Inefficiencies, after all, are the mismanagement of power, and the crux of many libertarian arguments against taxation and government overreach. Likewise, such concerns underlie many contentions with the free market — it is not only profiteers will seek exploit and harm those of fewer means, but that counting on their charity and goodwill is simply not a reliable or effective way of helping those in need. Such inefficiencies can impair quality of life and societal prosperity as much as outright abuses, and they too deserve attention.
Even freedoms constitute power, and even they may carry the potential of misuse. Being able to speak our minds and broadcast our speech, being able to carry arms for our defense, being able to assemble and rally en masse, these are all powers with which we are entrusted to varying degrees, all carrying the potential to do some harm. As with any power, the only way to check it is to put power elsewhere, be it to censors, to police, or to any other executors and enforcers of legal controls.
No matter what, power will find its way somewhere. All that we can do is be cognizant of it, and do our best to institute the checks and balances that we need to prevent harm. Where we see potential abuses will depend wildly upon where we are looking from and how we are looking, and for that reason understanding this common language for societal ill is a crucial first step in our coming together to understand each other.
2. Good Intentions Do Not Guarantee Good Results
All this nuance and complexity would seem to make working solutions hard to find, and it does. But through that difficulty, we can come upon our next basis on which to forge common ground — the realization that our positive intentions, even if well-informed, do not guarantee the results we want.
To understand this phenomenon, we can take a few examples from the strife of the American inner city in the last few decades. A common conservative approach to solving the issue has been to institute tough-on-crime policies to weed out bad apples, but the resulting waves of incarceration denied many their chance to escape poverty — sometimes unjustly — and left devastating voids in families and communities. A typical liberal approach has been to support those in need through assistance programs, but overly generous iterations of such programs created troubling incentives, allowing cycles of single parenthood, inadequate support systems for youth, and resulting poverty, to perpetuate. Each policy may have had positive effects as well, but these negative consequences create trouble and undermine progress, despite whatever noble intent the policymakers held.
And if we accept that positive results do not always follow from good intentions, then it follows logically that negative results do not necessarily indicate ill intention. This is a reality sometimes missed by activists, who may tend to presume that any broken system is so by design. Correcting that can not only help to better understand the roots of problems, it can also help reach those at fault for the trouble — they would likely brush aside grievances based upon accused malice, seeing no such malice in themselves, but might be more open to a constructively presented criticism.
The lesson of all this is to approach societal problem-solving with precision and humility. Our desire to do good and help others is essential, but it is not enough. Working policy demands tremendous attention to detail and the potential for error, thorough processes for construction, implementation, and enforcement, and sometimes even the lessons of prior failures.
3. Political Systems are Entropic
Even with the best-crafted policy, reform may be needed over time, and this is not just a matter of changing tastes among a populace. As flaws are found and exposed, more will know how to advantage of the systems in place, and more will be rewarded for doing so. The machinery will only wear over time unless it is changed or replaced. In physics, this is called entropy, the constant tendency towards disorder. In politics and society, it manifests as corruption.
Hearing the term corruption brings to mind images of smoky backroom deals and illicit scheming, but it is not always so nefarious. Corruption may simply be the result of people seeking what is best for themselves and those close to them, leveraging every possible resource and advantage at their disposal to get a leg up. As more ways of doing so are found, the most profitable will gradually reveal themselves, and the opportunities of seizing them will be taken by more and more people, whether or not it is good for the society that they do so. For this reason, corruption is inevitable, and it is in fact natural.
But this lack of necessary malice involved does not make the problem of corruption any less pernicious — quite the opposite, in fact. As society and technology evolve, new ways of gaming systems will inevitably lead to trouble, without any need for some grand conspiracy to start it. When foul play runs amok, as the saying goes, it is not the players we should be hating.
The constant and careful maintenance of our systems and our institutions is an essential part of a well-functioning society. As their flaws are exposed, so too are the flaws in our processes for handling them. If we stay alert, if we listen to each other and work effectively together, then we can solve the issues that come before us. If we fail to do that, then the cracks that appear will deepen and spread.
4. Unrealized Potential in Any of Us is a Loss for All of Us
In all this talk of potential for harm, it is important to have a common understanding of what harm, as a societal consequence, looks like. And if we look deeply enough, we may find something rather interesting — that the impacts of injustice and poor policy reverberate everywhere. It is in fact not only out of some moral obligation that we should seek to avoid harm, but out of our own ultimate interest.
To appreciate what harmful policy means, we should first look at what good can come of governance, and what moves society forward. All of our breakthroughs, all of our technological evolutions and revolutions, all of the improvements in our comforts and luxuries, all of the art and entertainment that we enjoy, all are born of innovation, invention, and ingenuity. The common thread throughout all positive contributions is the presence of talent and potential, but more than that it is talent and potential realized.
Now consider all of the talent and potential that has not been realized, the possibilities denied because of an unjust death, an unnecessary exposure to danger, a lack of free expression, a poor support system, and so on. The good that could have come from all this unmet potential is incredible, and we could all be reaping its rewards now.
The fail case, when society does not allow one to reach their potential, is far less than zero. Consider the criminal or the addict, bringing harm to themselves and others, damaging lives and communities. Or consider the disgruntled revolutionary, who has felt so abandoned and so disconnected from society, that they are driven to war against it rather than contribute. The negativity from any of these can spread dangerously, and the toll they take upon society can be tremendous.
The question of potential is most crucial when talking youth in society, and how to support them. For them, the possibilities are limitless, and the hazards are many. Ensuring that they have the guidance that they need, the educational opportunities that they need, the character and self-esteem that they need to succeed, ensuring that they are physically safe and protected, ensuring that they feel free to express their talents and abilities and ideas, this is perhaps the most essential task we face as a society.
Where we fail, the cost is not borne equally — the families and communities of those gone wayward will lose the most, of course — but it is crucial to see that it is borne by all. Building our future is not only a matter of allocation. The pie to be split is not fixed, and its size, flavor, and flakiness depend on how we nurture the opportunities before us today.
5. We Work Better If We Work Together
All of the above is a framework for understanding and approaching discourse, not a recipe for a perfect society. To derive from it meaningful solutions, I, for instance, would have to apply my knowledge of the issues at hand, my own political philosophies, and any ideas that happen to come to me.
Of course, the points I would arrive at are vastly different from the ones someone else might come to. Their ideas would be different, they would be aware of different flaws within our systems, different needs within our society. And that is precisely why we need each other, not to create to form some grand chorus all singing the same tune at once, but to challenge each other, complement (not necessarily compliment!) each other, and utilize our varied perspectives to create the best solutions, and the best problem-solving process, that we can.
Our current politics is a farce that is hurting us all, a raging, tribal tug-of-war that goes nowhere good. It creates a terrible environment for solution-making, where ideas are thrown about with partisan fervor before being either strong-armed into being or undermined away. It creates a woefully unresponsive government that allows corruption to fester. And it leaves so many behind, so many problems unanswered. We can do better.
Of course not everyone can get their way, but it possible that everyone can be heard. If we realize that we are looking at the same big picture from many different angles, then we can realize the benefit that sharing what we see, and really listening to one another, can bring. Even the most fringe voices, the most radical of radicals, might have their place, bringing attention to issues and concerns that others do not see, that we may all gain from being made aware of.
The digital age has granted us incredible opportunities to expand our discourse, to bring in voices that have not been heard and data the scope and depth of which has never been seen. And yet, we are caught up in the insanity of it, the addictive prospect of surrounding ourselves with agreement, the unbearable noise that comes from the loudest voices being amplified, and the sheer overload of rage-bait and tribal animus.
The journey to break through all this, and to come together to be the vibrant society we are capable of being, is a long one, and it is not a simple one. But perhaps these foundations may offer us a place to start.
