Analyzing Polarization

I came across this article from Op-Ed News which crystallizes the resolution of polarization.  This article provides a cogent discussion of the dynamics of polarization as well as how to integrate diverging cultural beliefs beyond just reaching a hollow, unsatisfying compromise.  Since I am often engaged in debate with my conservative friends, I found Andrew Bard Schmookler's almost decade-old editorial about understanding the dynamics of polarization quite helpful.  

The Dance of Polarization
How a Culture Breaks Down into Warring Half-Truths
by Andrew Bard Schmookler

http://www.opednews.com/...

Continues...

Prefacing his decade-old article, Schmookler provides the following caveat:

And it (the article) was suited to a happier time when one might presume goodwill on the part of people from both sides of the divide.

Today, regrettably, such dialogue is not the first order of business. One of the sides of our divide has been hijacked by forces whose "goodwill" can hardly be assumed. With those forces, the task is not to enter into dialogue but to defeat them.

He then gives examples of sociopolitical issues;  and events in our daily lives in which we find ourselves on opposite ends of a continuum of values and beliefs.  While his phrase "counterculture" might today be replaced with "progressive" his thesis holds true.

In conclusion he states:

The best resolution of our culture war is not to be found through our present mode of conflict. Neither is it to be found in mere centrist political compromise. The real challenge is for both sides to work together toward an integration at that higher level where opposites no longer seem so irrevocably opposed, where the expressions of our liberty and the requirements of our civilized order achieve a fuller harmony.

No easy task.  But the more quickly we can move out of our stance as partisan combatants into a position from which we can see how we are in this dance of polarization together, the sooner we can get to the real work.

"No easy task" is quite the understatement.  Especially when our media is dominated by a disproportionate swarm of venomous, ethically challenged hornets like Coulter, Limbaugh, et al.

What Schmookler posits assumes a level of spiritual/ego development that most humans in the twenty first century are nowhere near.  In fact, I would argue a regression of human wisdom particularly among the powerful who hold our Nation hostage today.

However, by conceptualizing the dynamics of polarization and by understanding how to resolve these chasms,  we can begin the work of approximating the ideal to which a few enlightened beings (Jesus, the Dalai Lama , etc..) have attained.  Thus, we might just win over a few of our conservative friends, and begin the slow transformation of a less entrenched/polarized society.