Member-only story
Beyond Left and Right: 6 Polarities that are more meaningful
Simplistic binary thinking can’t navigate our complex world.
No one is impartial. Confirmation bias leads us to prioritize information that appears to confirm our pre-existing presumptions. Optimism bias leads us to assume that no matter how bad things get, we will personally be one of the lucky ones. In-Group bias leads us to trust or support people we know more than strangers, even when the strangers are more qualified. The lenses through which we interpret the world around us determine much. Sometimes, the solution to a problem begins with taking a step back to look at it from a new angle. This may be especially true when one way of framing information, such as the tribalism of political loyalty, seeps into and colours our perceptions of every other aspect of our lives.
The political divide has widened to a chasm. No place is safe. Go online to talk about anything mundane from gardening to comic books and vicious partisan brawls can break out at a moment’s notice. The (only theoretically) demilitarized zone between political factions is as strained as it has ever been. The other side has increasingly ceased to be recognized as fellow citizens with slightly different ideas about how best to move forward together. Bipartisanship, the idea that different approaches may have…
