The last few postings have attempted to contextualize the polarization plaguing the nation’s political arena. Through the citation of various evidentiary information, they attribute this division among Americans to the inability to address various incubating problems and issues. This posting looks at an underlying cause for this inability.
Now, not all readers will agree with what follows, but this posting makes a case that the all-encompassing factor – the root cause of incubation – is identity politics. According to Ezra Klein:
… everyone engaged in American politics is engaged in identity politics. This is not insult, and it’s not controversial: we form and fold identities constantly, naturally. Identity is present in politics in the way gravity, evolution, or cognition is present in politics; that is to say, it is omnipresent in politics, because it is omnipresent in us … It runs so deep in our psyches, is activated so easily by even weak cues and distant threats, that it is impossible to speak seriously about how we engage with one another without discussing how our identities shape that engagement.[1]
When one starts talking about what is natural, one cannot solely depend on the social sciences in general or political science specifically to provide sufficient grounding for any such claim. And surely, the reportage of a journalist (with all due respect to Mr. Klein) does not make the case either. So, perhaps the ideas of an American neuro-endocrinologist, Robert M. Sapolsky,[2] can be of sufficient gravitas in this field to help convince a sceptic.
But before sharing his thoughts, can one assume that a social arrangement, be it a church congregation, a labor union, a governmental jurisdiction, a corporation, etc., counts on some minimal ability for the participants of the arrangement to feel empathy among themselves? Afterall, scarcity is part of the human condition – not to mention a condition of all organic life – that leads to inevitable conflicts.
To weather social conflicts, one main factor that allows for solution or compromise seems to be, at some level, the ability of those involved to feel what the other parties feel in relation to the conflict at hand. And if so, that begs a question: What causes humans to feel empathy for others?
A lot is involved, but one important factor is whether the other party to a conflict or any interaction – be it a person or group – has some sense of being an “us” as opposed to being a “them.” If that’s true, to what degree does that feeling need to be felt? Well, ostensibly that would be to the degree one can ascribe the idea of mutuality. And that sense of mutuality has to be strong enough to motivate the person to do the work necessary to engender empathy.
Sapolsky explains the mind’s machinations, both biologically and cognitively, and it turns out that empathy does not come without effort, it takes work to engender it. Yes, empathy, under the right conditions, seems to come naturally, but only if certain factors are met. To understand this, one is helped by placing oneself in incidences where empathy is expected – such as in situations of injustice.
Here's one. As one can guess, actual observation of deprivation or exploitation of a victim more easily solicits empathy. Say that one sees a person’s life being snuffed out by a policeman putting his knee on that person’s throat, as opposed to when one hears of the same incident without the assistance of a video. The former is less work than the latter in engendering empathy and even more work is demanded if one hears some abstract diatribe about how minorities are mistreated by those in authority.
As one goes from one exposure to the other, as just described, the work becomes harder and, therefore, less likely to be exerted. A lack of direct experience, Sapolsky reports, acts to diminish one’s ability to be empathetic or the likelihood of it taking place. And along these lines, he claims,
It is an enormous cognitive task for humans to overcome that, to reach an empathetic state for someone who is different, unappealing … That is straight out of Us versus Them … showing how extreme out-group members, such as the homeless or addicts, are processed differently in the frontal cortex than other people … [The] tragedy of the commons versus tragedy of the commonsense morality, where acting morally toward an Us is automatic, while doing so for the Them takes work.[3]
Or, for example, to quote this natural scientist use of nonscientific language, when it comes to empathizing with the plight of the disadvantaged, the rich “suck.”
Why? Because the experiences of the disadvantaged to these well-off people is foreign unless they themselves come from deprived backgrounds. His description of these rich people, in general, is even more self-centered and selfish than this quote indicates, but the reader gets the idea. In general, the more one sees victims as Them, one is more apt to believe the worse of them – they are lazy or dishonest or conniving – and that justifies any unempathetic bias the non-associated feels.
And when one can avoid seeing the individual – as when one hears but does not see the above described incidence of homicide – one can categorize the account as the homicide happening to a group, not a person. That also adds to one attributing the incident not happening to a person in one’s own identity group.
Often, one hears this being a problem of cognition when the solution would be education. At other times, the problem is attributed to feelings, such as one is lacking “brotherly love.” And this leads to a false dichotomy between emotions and cognitions. Sapolsky claims it is a shortcoming of both making the challenge of encouraging empathy more difficult.
A bleak picture, for sure, but Sapolsky offers some hope. Yes, one can easily see from the above that humans are doomed to a tribalistic social disposition if they cannot be sufficiently empathetic. Left to people’s own natural tendencies and allegiances empathy is limited to those who are immediately around as one grows up. Social arrangements under such thinking and feelings will not expand and that limits a group to few resources and stifles economic, cultural, and intellectual enrichment.
Spelled out this way, these findings don’t seem to bode well for humans. We have evolved to support our immediate social groups, a tendency that can be easily manipulated into discriminatory behavior, especially at younger ages. The good news, according to Sapolsky, is that there are always individuals who resist the temptation to discriminate and won’t conform to harmful acts based on othering or hierarchy.
… [Sapolsky] offers suggestions for how we might subvert social tendencies to conform and [instead] aim our behavior towards better social ends. For example, his advice to counter xenophobia includes “emphasizing individuation and shared attributes, perspective taking, more benign dichotomies, learning hierarchical differences, and bringing people together on equal terms with shared goals.[4]
And given this overall concern – that social arrangements depend on good doses of proactive instruction – this message needs to be taught and encouraged for the sake of a common good. In addition, the common good is essential not only for progress, but for maintaining what has been accomplished both socially and individually.
But what one can read between the above lines is: these tendencies can serve those who want to exploit the social/political landscape for their own ends. And its utilization, that of exploiting people’s proclivities to limit their concerns to their own identity, either by using direct language or code language, can prove to be effective.
One notion that seems to be prevalent among those who do not appreciate the challenge these natural tendencies pose is the belief that one needs to be taught prejudices. This is true, but not true. The above indicates a natural predisposition to hold the Them with at least suspicion if not out and out hostility. The teaching comes into play when it sharpens the targets of such disdain.
To counter this bias, one needs proactive instructional efforts aimed at revealing to students
· what is natural – the proclivity to divide the world between the Us and the Them;
· the inefficiency that such biases accrue; and
· the experiences of being exposed to as many Them as is possible in as many settings as is possible.
In short, what one needs to be taught is how to battle these divisive tendencies.
The Ogbunu quote above hints at the direction such lessons should take. This blog’s argument holds that in terms of civics instruction, federation theory directly addresses the aims that quote identifies and its postings have, to varying degrees, attempted to share information that helps teachers help civics students acquire the information that would lead to healthy levels of empathy.
One more point: Klein adds to his concern over this dysfunctionality by pointing out that by “wielding” a bias toward identity politics, people cover up many problems. They attribute problems to Them people, not to those individuals or to an Us. Police mistreatment? That happens to blacks. Exploitive labor conditions? That happens to immigrants from south of the border or the under educated. Poverty? That happens to the lazy. This proclivity ignores the details of how Those people are being mistreated much less defining Them as really being Us.
As such, the tendency “forces” an array of factors under that cover so that one is removed from what is at stake for those on the other side of some contentious, festering problem. It assists the general factors feeding the incubation that have led the nation to the polarization currently being manifested. But then what happens, a video appears on TV, and a multitude of viewers see for the first time what is really happening to an individual. And guess what? Empathy among many ensues.
[1] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY: Avid Reader Press), xx.
[2] Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017).
[4] C. Brandon Ogbunu, “Why Do People Do Bad Things?,” Greater Good Magazine, December 1, 2017, accessed March 14, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_people_do_bad_things . Emphasis added, AND see Anna Rita Manca, “Social Cohesion,” Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, 2014, accessed July 24, 2020, https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-0753-5_2739 .
