In these increasingly divided times, preserving the spirit of bipartisanship and civil discourse has become more important than ever. Only by choosing cooperation over division and treating those we disagree with respectfully can we find common ground to create a united society. We must strive for mutual understanding and foster a culture of diverse perspectives and collective progress.

Many studies and models have shown a trend of growing polarization. (DeSilver) (Andris et al.)Increasing numbers of people are unwilling to communicate respectfully with their perceived enemies. Throughout history, people have always divided themselves into factions; but in the internet age, it is easier than ever to avoid coming into contact with anyone with whom you disagree, as people lock themselves into digital echo chambers filled with only assenting voices. (Smith)

Fundamentally, I have always believed that almost everyone, in their heart, is trying to do what they think is right. Among the greatest flaws of the human psyche is the Strawman Fallacy. People on all sides continually, unconsciously, cast their enemies as inhuman monsters, motivated only by cruelty. People say that environmentalists hate progress, that the wealthy hate the poor, that pro-life activists hate women, that pro-choice activists hate children, or, that old chestnut, that the terrorists hate our freedom. I don’t think that any of those things are true. I think that probably the reason that some people are against abortion is that they believe that the deaths of fetuses count as murder, and other people are okay with abortion because they believe that they don’t; that is, after all, the reason that they give, when asked, and while people often jump to conclusions, or make mistakes, or succumb to bias, or fail to notice things that they don’t want to notice, I think that most people very rarely lie.

Communication is not a form of violence, and it has neither a winner nor a loser. The point of talking with someone about a topic on which you disagree is that one of you might have something to learn from the other. The reason why we settle disagreements through arguments and evidence, rather than games of chess or ritual combat, is because arguments and evidence possess the useful property that they are available in greater prevalence and quality when used to support an idea that is, in fact, correct; the course of a battle goes towards the mightier, but the arc of a dialectic, though it is long, bends towards truth. There is no ‘winning’ an argument, and the only way to ‘lose’ one is to fail to learn. When one treats conversation as a war and arguments as soldiers, nothing is achieved but carnage.

It is always important to remember that you might be wrong. Whatever it is that you hold as the core principle of your heart, whatever pillar of belief you hang your ideals upon, there is someone in the world who believes exactly the opposite, and there’s no way for either of you to know, not really, which one of you is right. However certain you feel of your moral convictions, there have been people throughout history who were just as certain, and who acted on their convictions to do things that you would find abhorrent. The point of a democratic society is that even though we can never all agree, we can still work together.

DeSilver, Drew. “The Polarization in Today’s Congress Has Roots That Go Back Decades.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 10 Mar. 2022, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/. 

Andris, Clio, et al. “The Rise of Partisanship and Super-Cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, 21 Apr. 2015, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0123507. 

Smith, Marc A. “Mapping Twitter Topic Networks: From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 20 Feb. 2014, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/02/20/mapping-twitter-topic-networks-from-polarized-crowds-to-community-clusters/.