In a small town somewhere in Midwest America, a little girl used to like to play on the merry-go-round with a little boy from a few streets over.  Their parents would bring them by the park on Saturdays, and the two would play for hours until it was time for dinner.  As the children’s friendship grew (based on nothing more than a shared love of dizziness), the parents likewise began to strike up a casual relationship.

 At first, talk revolved around the weather, their kids’ respective success in mastering the English language, and other such non-corrosive topics.  One day, however, after a few months of this weekly pattern, the girl’s father and the boy’s mother found themselves at the park together, when the mother broached the topic of the current election cycle.  She asked some safe, general question that probably sounded like “So, what do you think about this whole election?”  He responded in a similarly agreeable manner with some comment about how the whole thing is just “politics as usual,” and they continued on with their conversation.

As time went on, though, different topics would increasingly break the harmony of their Saturday friendship.  A comment about women’s rights here, a lament over religious liberty there – until the girl’s father began to have the sneaking suspicious that his counterpart held a different ideology.  Of course, he did not phrase it this way in his own mind – he thought words like “morally reprehensible” and “radical” and “neo-Nazi.”  Eventually, this tension could not be sustained, and one afternoon saw a heated political argument that dissolved their relationship on the spot.

As they were driving home and the little girl was struggling to understand why she would not be playing with “that boy” anymore, her father similarly struggled for the right explanation.  Knowing that his emotional response to the situation must surely be based in moral righteousness, he finally found the right words:  “Well, sweetie, the friends that you have can make you a better person, or they can make you a worse person.  Sometimes, you have to stop playing with certain friends because they aren’t making you a better person.”  There:  That’s a reasonable explanation.

“But Daddy,” she responded, “You always talk about how we shouldn’t listen to Uncle David, and you still play with him!”  Well.  He didn’t have a response for that one.

Last week, I offered my perspective on the “culture wars” that define today’s political-religious discourse.  Put differently, I mindlessly ranted until my frustration was fully sated.

In response, a friend of mine shared an insightful interview with Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who has sought to understand precisely why liberals and conservatives behave the way they do.  He delves into what makes us perceive differences of opinion as absolute moral intuitions, and lays out some of the statistical differences between liberals and conservatives.  I am not sure I got this completely right, but I think his opening illustration is meant to show how conservatives have an innate aversion to Renaissance art.

Along with the clip, my friend noted that he “no longer thinks [complaining about polarization] does a lot of good, as you or I don’t have the time to devote that the 24 hour news cycle does.”  I completely agree.  In other words, so what are we going to do about it?

In his book, Haidt concludes that our ideological differences are not driven by some instinctual moral compass, pointing us to the right or left.  Rather, he argues that polarization is the result of a fundamental need to align ourselves with others  – groupishness as he calls it.  As we recognize ideological commonality with others, we increasingly place ourselves within the liberal or conservative “group.”

An interesting thought, and one that I think might lead to a couple of possible suggestions of how to calm the stormy waves of polarizing culture-war-mongering:

First, let’s embrace the groupishness.  Consider the beginning story:  The little girl points out the obvious flaw in her father’s reasoning – namely, family members are inexplicably exempt from the consequences of differing ideologies.  This is because family is one of the many ways that we enact our groupishness.  We may disagree on some pretty intense issues of politics or religion (as most families do), but at the end of the day, “we’re still family.”  Our intrinsic blood-connection to family keeps our differences from completely separating us.

The solution, then, is simply widening our notion of family.  Some of us do that in religious groups, which similarly allow us to maintain ideological disagreements while still living in community.  Push it farther, though.  If you can get along with someone in your family or your church who thinks differently than you, why not those in your neighborhood?  Your workplace?  Your country?  Ooh, what about the entire world?

It’s as simple as acknowledging the deep connection we all share as part humanity.  It may sound clichéd, but if you actually believe it, maybe you will start to change how you think about your liberal neighbor or the Muslim immigrant down the street.  It’s groupishness at the most extreme level.

Secondly, start this new dynamic with children at the youngest possible age.  The little girl in the story was not born to hate those who think differently from her; she had to be taught that.  If we are serious about changing the tone of discourse in society, it starts with how you talk about other people to your children, how educators teach them about political and religious differences, and how faith groups instruct their youth to engage with the Other.  FOX and MSNBC may have a monopoly on the 24-hour news cycle, but we have a monopoly on children – let’s not abuse that power.

Those are my thoughts.  How about you?  What are some feasible solutions to polarization?  What steps can we take in our everyday lives to make a change?