“Self-justification is clearly a central human activity, and so the Other is deomnized: they had it coming, they started it, we acted in self-defense … and the horrified bitter resentment that this attitude inspired in the demonized Other was extremely intense and vocal. Most assailants could not face up to it, but rather evaded it, slipping to the side somehow, into excuses of various kinds, a sharp desire to have the whole situation go away.

It was this desire, to avoid any admission of guilt, to have it all go away, felt by people who wanted above all to believe that they were good people and justified moral actors …” (Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora, p261, italics original, bold added)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about political communication, and in particular the reasons why we are currently very polarized in the United States. While there’s a lot that goes into it, I also think there are some fairly well known (but typically ignored) psychological mechanisms that may help describe our situation.

The current book I am reading helped with a minor breakthrough – it is Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora. (great book, go read it, ’nuff said). There is a nasty civil-social conflict in the book, with two uncompromising sides, and at one point the above analysis is made. The book was written in 2015, so it’s not directly discussing what we are seeing now, but close enough.

To me the key question for our current political discussions is how we view and treat the Other. If we don’t understand where they are coming from, we tend to stop trying at some point (usually very early on) and simply demonize them. They are clearly WRONG, because they can’t see it my way. All sides in our current debates (plural) are guilty of this. Whether it is Trump. Or guns. Or the environment. etc. etc. etc.

As human beings, we WANT to be “right.” We want to be justified in our actions and our political opinions. We don’t want to admit our part in the problem. And in many cases this leads to resentment on the Other side, and a cycle that culminates in demonization on both sides. And it’s a nasty cycle to break.

Let’s take a controversial example: LGBTQ rights. If you are on the left, these are human rights, and saying anything less is an affront to all human beings. If you are on the religious side of the right, these are morally unacceptable behaviors being pushed on society, and saying anything less is an affront to your religion and to your god. I am being purposefully extreme here, but perhaps not really — I personally know people on both extremes of this particular discussion. So what’s the answer? If we’re being practical, it is someplace in the middle. To my friends on the left — if you slap the conservative side of society in the face with your rights, don’t expect them to understand. I fully realize that dramatic action can be necessary to obtain rights, and frankly I sometimes endorse it. But if you take dramatic action, and throw things in peoples’ faces, don’t be surprised if they push back. And on the right, one of the hardest things for a religious person to realize is that everyone does not share their religion, and that at least in our society, those who don’t have equal rights. This is hardest on strongly held moral beliefs, where you may truly feel that what another person is doing is wrong. Once again though, the situation will not improve unless you try to see it from the other person’s side. What might cause others to engage in this evil? And what if they don’t think it is evil? How do we reconcile rights and morality?

I often talk about the importance of seeing things from the perspective of others, and this is certainly one of the hardest things that I challenge myself with on a regular basis. For example, what makes someone vote for Trump, and continue to support him? And what I continually remind myself is this: the typical Trump supporter is NOT insane. I just don’t have the information to understand them and their perspective.

But today I’d like to add in this: it’s not just logical beliefs/perspectives that we are talking about here. We also need to remember that there are psychological mechanisms at work which have a tendency to drive us further and further apart from the Other. And if we don’t actively work to control those (on all sides), we quickly move beyond the rational and into deeper conflict.

Bottom line: don’t expect the other side to be rational until you examine your own behavior, not just theirs.