I am a strong proponent of discussion and agreeing to disagree. Coming to a compromise is difficult, even with level headed people that are firmly entrenched in their beliefs.
When it reaches this level, unfortunately, a fight to the death can be the deciding factor. It happens often in nature. Obviously, we view ourselves as above all other animals, so, we should know better... but sometimes nature takes over. The ID lives.
Coming to a compromise is difficult, even with level headed people that are firmly entrenched in their beliefs.
I don't agree with that assertion. Without exception, every temperate and prudent person with whom I've interacted -- personally and professionally -- recognizes that their position need not be one of "all or nothing;" thus they strive sincerely for genuinely win-win solutions. Every rube I've encounters, all of whom are indolently pusillanimous SOBs, on the other hand, dastardly conceive and construe everything binarily.
The problem is that your second group is the one that is the loudest and therefore attracts the most attention and influence.
Here's what really worries me: This in anecdotal only, but as part of my profession I speak at a fairly in-depth level with a lot of people I haven't met before. And it just seems like more and more often, some switch goes off, and they go off on a very binary, partisan tangent. They use words and phrases that you'd hear on conservative talk radio or left wing website.
And look at what is happening in popular culture: There is now nowhere to go to escape partisan politics, for a moment or two.
I could be wrong on that, but it just seems to me that this behavior is beginning to infect a larger percentage of our population.
.
it just seems like more and more often, some switch goes off, and they go off on a very binary, partisan tangent.
I've observed that too, but only among youngsters -- people ranging from 9th graders to college undergraduate degree seekers. I have occasion to observe it among that segment of society only a few times a year, and that only because I have for the past nearly decade consistently served as a speaker in "career day" and/or "preparing for college" seminars/discussions. Not all the audience members exhibit binary thinking, but enough of them do that I've come to expect I'll encounter it at each event.
Frankly, I'm not shocked,
per se, or even dismayed to see binary thinking -- particularly the unilateral form of it whereby they hear something that isn't presented in binary terms, yet they infer binary meaning of the remark -- from junior high school kids for they are novice enough that thinking with more rigor than that is something they haven't really mastered. Among high school students and collegians, it's a different matter.
I can't say I've ever encountered similarly jejune thought processes among my personal and professional peers, friends and associates. I may have, but not often enough or in such egregious form that it sticks out in my mind.
I could be wrong on that, but it just seems to me that this behavior is beginning to infect a larger percentage of our population.
I think you are correct that poor quality comprehension and analysis is pervasive among a material share of the U.S. population. What is not clear to me is whether the existential abundance of irrationality among the populace is indeed new. I'm not sure of how long this has been so for the following reasons:
- The Internet makes it possible to have at least an anecdotal/circumstantial awareness of a considerably more diverse slice of the population than one -- that is, one who wouldn't routinely encounter the uttered-with-apparent-seriousness remarks of hundreds of strangers -- could ever have obtained during almost the first fifty years of my life. More than ever before, people have and avail themselves of the opportunity to open their mouths and confirm they are the mental midgets that, before Twitter, Facebook, web forums, etc., in their quietude some may have suspected they were.
- Since perhaps the sixth grade, the course of my life has made somewhat or very well known to me, almost without exception, people who are proven high achievers -- personally, professionally, academically and socially -- either by dint of their being gifted enough that it comes comparatively easily to them or on account of their working resolutely to be high achievers. I'm savvy enough to know such people surpass the performance norm; thus I cannot infer their behavior, expressions and attitudes are in large proportion shared and manifest among society as a whole. They are people who, aside from afflictions like virulent forms of cancer or other such things, achieve and overcome nearly everything to which they set their minds. They don't give up and the tacks they undertake work.
I probably never had the highest regard for the lion's share of the population, but only in the past lustrum or so have I come to perceive that even so, I may have overestimated larger swaths of my countrymen than I'd have thought possible. It is equally opportune and disconcerting to discover that may be the case.
