Almost everyone I see or speak with asks this question, these days. And I don’t blame them: it’s almost overwhelming how many people are expressing anger – and how much attention the media puts on it!
So let’s begin with the awareness that whatever is happening of this sort is greatly enhanced by all the media attention it’s getting. You know how it is: give kids attention for what they’re doing and they’ll do more if it; let people who are feeling lost and scared see an example showing them that acting out is okay, and they’ll act out.
Then let’s accept that the media’s job is to focus on what’s not working, not normal. When we do that what they’re talking about begins to slip back into – oh yeah, this is a one-in-several-thousand “man bites dog” news item.
Finally, let’s remember that the old rules of polite conversation (once called “manners”) were to avoid talking about religion, politics, sex, or money – for a reason! People have always tended to disagree, and sometimes fight, about those subjects! But today, those tend to be the primary topics of conversation, in all circles.
Recognizing all that, hopefully some of the distress we’ve been carrying has been reduced a little…
All that having been said, we are truly seeing increased fragmentation and polarization in our culture – across all nations and states. And, believe it or not, it’s a totally natural process, the result of several dynamics in the cultural system.
First, the shear number of people has been growing exponentially for decades, and all research on mammalian populations tells us that increased population density leads to increases in: gangs (polarized groups), violence, infanticide and miscarriage, and property theft.
Second, the business model of corporate greed has been globalized – which encourages competition and aggressive behaviors in workers, and requires assertive reactions by consumers and regulators.
Third, the cultural values of “acquire, accumulate, control” associated with that globalized culture, have led to the destruction and exploitation of our shared resource base, and so the behaviors associated with scarcity are increasing exponentially.
Fourth, the communications links across cultural groups have dramatically increased. But this is also the case within ideological groups, making it almost impossible NOT to have one’s belief system reinforced – it’s possible to live in an ‘information cocoon” that never challenges any of one’s ideas, however far from the actual “facts” (or other peoples’ experience) they may be.
So, the conditions for fragmentation and polarization are fully in place, and continue to expand exponentially. (No, it’s not Facebook or Google’s fault; they’re simply part of, and designed in a way they must reinforce, the process.)
David Bohm talks about the roots of this dynamic in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order[1]. Bohm, a 20th-century physicist specializing in quantum mechanics, saw that the way we teach and learn about the world encourages us to separate it into fragments:
…the prevailing tendency in science to think and perceive in terms of a fragmentary self-world vies is part of a larger movement that has been developing over the ages and that pervades almost the whole of our society today; … tends very strongly to re-enforce the general fragmentary approach because it gives men a picture of the whole world as constituted of nothing but an aggregate of separately existent “atomic building blocks”…
He goes on to say that this tendency has broad implications for how individuals see themselves:
One might in fact go so far as to say that in the present state of society, and in the present general mode of teaching science, which is a manifestation of this state of society, a kind of prejudice in favour of a fragmentary self-world view is fostered and transmitted… (…mainly in an implicit and unconscious manner)… men who are guided by such a fragmentary self-world view cannot, in the long run, do other than to try in their actions to break themselves and their world into pieces.
So let’s begin with the awareness that whatever is happening of this sort is greatly enhanced by all the media attention it’s getting. You know how it is: give kids attention for what they’re doing and they’ll do more if it; let people who are feeling lost and scared see an example showing them that acting out is okay, and they’ll act out.
Then let’s accept that the media’s job is to focus on what’s not working, not normal. When we do that what they’re talking about begins to slip back into – oh yeah, this is a one-in-several-thousand “man bites dog” news item.
Finally, let’s remember that the old rules of polite conversation (once called “manners”) were to avoid talking about religion, politics, sex, or money – for a reason! People have always tended to disagree, and sometimes fight, about those subjects! But today, those tend to be the primary topics of conversation, in all circles.
Recognizing all that, hopefully some of the distress we’ve been carrying has been reduced a little…
All that having been said, we are truly seeing increased fragmentation and polarization in our culture – across all nations and states. And, believe it or not, it’s a totally natural process, the result of several dynamics in the cultural system.
First, the shear number of people has been growing exponentially for decades, and all research on mammalian populations tells us that increased population density leads to increases in: gangs (polarized groups), violence, infanticide and miscarriage, and property theft.
Second, the business model of corporate greed has been globalized – which encourages competition and aggressive behaviors in workers, and requires assertive reactions by consumers and regulators.
Third, the cultural values of “acquire, accumulate, control” associated with that globalized culture, have led to the destruction and exploitation of our shared resource base, and so the behaviors associated with scarcity are increasing exponentially.
Fourth, the communications links across cultural groups have dramatically increased. But this is also the case within ideological groups, making it almost impossible NOT to have one’s belief system reinforced – it’s possible to live in an ‘information cocoon” that never challenges any of one’s ideas, however far from the actual “facts” (or other peoples’ experience) they may be.
So, the conditions for fragmentation and polarization are fully in place, and continue to expand exponentially. (No, it’s not Facebook or Google’s fault; they’re simply part of, and designed in a way they must reinforce, the process.)
David Bohm talks about the roots of this dynamic in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order[1]. Bohm, a 20th-century physicist specializing in quantum mechanics, saw that the way we teach and learn about the world encourages us to separate it into fragments:
…the prevailing tendency in science to think and perceive in terms of a fragmentary self-world vies is part of a larger movement that has been developing over the ages and that pervades almost the whole of our society today; … tends very strongly to re-enforce the general fragmentary approach because it gives men a picture of the whole world as constituted of nothing but an aggregate of separately existent “atomic building blocks”…
He goes on to say that this tendency has broad implications for how individuals see themselves:
One might in fact go so far as to say that in the present state of society, and in the present general mode of teaching science, which is a manifestation of this state of society, a kind of prejudice in favour of a fragmentary self-world view is fostered and transmitted… (…mainly in an implicit and unconscious manner)… men who are guided by such a fragmentary self-world view cannot, in the long run, do other than to try in their actions to break themselves and their world into pieces.
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