Political polarization: we hear about it all the time, we all see it, we all agree it exists, and we all agree that we are becoming more and more polarized as a society. Split into two (and only two - that's how polarity works) sides or teams, we find ourselves not only lacking common ground with "the other side," but increasingly unable to tolerate co-existing with it.
I don't think I'm only speaking for myself when I say that this state of affairs has gone from "intriguing phenomenon" to "very irritating but intriguing phenomenon" to "This is really fucking scary, please make it stop" in record time.
Much has been said about the mammoth role social media has played in leading us down this path. The customized algorithms bringing us tailored "facts," the curated bubbles of our social groups, the echo-chambers, yada yada. All true, without a doubt. I only forbear to elaborate on it here because I think by now we have all grasped how this works. Of course, social media isn't the only culprit. Broadcast and print media deserve their fair share of the blame. Business models have been based around stoking outrage to attract maximal engagement, and it works like a charm. NPR's "Hidden Brain" series on Morning Edition aired a podcast in October of 2019 that did an excellent job of breaking down how outrage has created feedback loops that magnify in intensity as they reverberate through society, profoundly impacting both mental health and human events. It was called "How Outrage is Hijacking Our Culture And Our Minds."
Even though it seems all of us have at some point fully understood that this phenomenon is happening, and even how it happens, the scary thing is that our self-awareness has done exactly nothing at all to stop or even slow down its effects. Remember internet "flame wars"? No one talks about them anymore. I think the reason why is because all public communication has become one raging inferno in which no one specific flame war can really be distinguished in isolation. Everything, one way or another, seems to tie right back to the one monolithic social/emotional/political/moral/spiritual war.
Wikipedia's definition of a "rageaholic" is "a person who gets excited by expressing rage, or a person prone to extreme anger with little or no provocation." Unfortunately, rageaholism is hardly rare anymore. One particular brand of rage, according to the aforementioned NPR podcast, is especially prone to release pleasure-inducing hormones, leading to addictive behavior: moral indignation. A fascinating discussion ensues on the evolutionary origin of such an adaptation; socially shaming or even casting out tribal members for wrong-doing served a valid survival function at some point in the deep past of our species. Studies show that, disturbingly, people are apt to punish a wrong-doer even when said wrong-doer no longer poses any threat; he's learned his lesson, paid retribution, apologized, served time, and is totally unable to transgress again. People choose to punish, researchers conclude, purely for the pleasure they derive from punishing. In other words, self-righteousness is a short hop to sadism.
When I say that political polarization is just rageaholism, what I really mean is that right now our extreme degree of polarization is directly proportional to how much our minds have been hijacked by outrage. In reality, the epidemic (pandemic) of rageaholism we are experiencing could not take the specific form of political polarization we now have, were it not for the deliberate framing and conscious, strategic, social manipulation taking place at some level. If that sounds conspiratorial, good. You're keeping up.
I don't believe that polarization is natural. In some ways, humans seem to act like robotic monkey-things that are very predictable, hack-able, and controllable. That's why we can fall prey to strange illusions - such as the illusion that an astoundingly diverse and numerous population full of unique individuals can be meaningfully sorted into only two categories. On the other hand, unlike robotic monkey-things, we are capable of remembering that we are actually a diverse population and that individually we are very unique and distinct from one another. Two categories simply cannot sum up our tastes, our values, our characters, and certainly not our worthiness. I don't buy that we have spontaneously self-sorted into only two groups. It's way too expedient an arrangement for those who aspire to control public opinion and mass behavior.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but we are now living in a nascent global totalitarian regime. Optimistically speaking, maybe it's still embryonic rather than nascent. It's not gonna be good for any of us, so we need to get over our differences and unite. For far too long, both sides have been played against the middle in order to grow the power of the corporatist State. Now that this aim nears completion, whichever side is more prone to rageaholism at the moment (as the two groups periodically take turns holding that distinction) is the most easy to control and they will be compliant. I imagine the plan runs thusly: the morally indignant rage of one of the two factions can be used to enforce conformism until the other side shrinks down to a manageable size, and once all dissidents have been sifted down into the dregs of society, they can be exterminated at will, while those who survive may continue as puppets and slave laborers until they outlive their usefulness. And if that sounds far-fetched, either start paying attention to what's happening right in front of you (preferable), or don't read my blog.
Rageholism has been eminently useful to would-be despots in sowing the division necessary to create the illusion of a bogeyman Other, which drives political polarization. The latter, in turn, has been the best possible fuel for rampant rageaholism. Rageaholics grace despots with blind obedience as long as the despots reward them with the opportunity to hold the whip of punishment (against the outgroup). This is a feedback loop. Which came first, the rageaholism or the political polarization? It doesn't matter. What matters is, how are we going to get out of this mess?
The famous Milgram experiment in psychology determined that most people, in any time period, are so loath to disobey authority that they will violate their own moral code, and knowingly punish the innocent when ordered to do so. Even when they feel such empathy for the person being hurt that they sweat and shake, or even vomit while meting out the punishment, they continue obeying. If this is how people can be induced to behave when their empathy is still fully engaged, what happens when rageaholism and righteous indignation is added to the mix, blunting or short-circuiting empathy? Human beings can be seduced into becoming sadists, can be hypnotized into losing all empathy for their fellow human being, and can even become addicted to punishing others. If political polarization has reached an unprecedented extreme, and it feeds into morally indignant outrage, and moral indignation creates an addictively pleasurable desire to punish and hurt... Doesn't this merit a sober contemplation of the moment we find ourselves in?
I can tell how captured and externally controlled someone's mind is just by paying attention to the emotional tone of their speech (or writing) rather than to the content. This doesn't mean that there is never a place for moral indignation, because there most definitely is. But it has to be authentic rather than addiction-driven. To determine which it is requires continual and brutally honest self-assessment. When someone has acquired the habit of approaching new people with rage and suspicion, when the only thing they know about a person is some sort of "cue" that tipped them off as to the person's "team membership," there is no doubt that mental illness has entered the room. I can see it coming a mile away. I grew up with it. I'm honed to detect it. And it doesn't matter if it's in real life or "just" on the Internet. Your brain doesn't know the difference. Once that association has been established between pseudo-moral outrage and a dopamine hit, a dependency has formed. You are the rage's creature. While you might be good at stifling your hatred in face-to-face interactions, you're like a dry drunk, white-knuckling it until the next fix.
Just like any other addiction, we are more likely to engage in rageaholism when we are having trouble coping with stressors in our life, especially if we have unhealed trauma in our past. Modern life is replete with sources of anxiety, all of which are hopped up on goofballs, super-steroids, AND crack since COVID-19 hit. In addition, we know that anonymity tends to heighten hostility and aggressive behavior. Oh, the innocent times when "road rage" was the only real example of that we could pinpoint. Now most of our social activity is remote and faceless: over the Internet, and, when in person, behind masks.
This article is too much of a bummer, so let me try to say something positive.
Nothing came to mind, but maybe next time.
Okay, basically, I just hope that if you have kindness to give, that you consider spending it on the person who really pisses you off. Because if you are only kind to the people it's easy to be kind to, are you actually kind?
I don't think I'm only speaking for myself when I say that this state of affairs has gone from "intriguing phenomenon" to "very irritating but intriguing phenomenon" to "This is really fucking scary, please make it stop" in record time.
Even though it seems all of us have at some point fully understood that this phenomenon is happening, and even how it happens, the scary thing is that our self-awareness has done exactly nothing at all to stop or even slow down its effects. Remember internet "flame wars"? No one talks about them anymore. I think the reason why is because all public communication has become one raging inferno in which no one specific flame war can really be distinguished in isolation. Everything, one way or another, seems to tie right back to the one monolithic social/emotional/political/moral/spiritual war.
Wikipedia's definition of a "rageaholic" is "a person who gets excited by expressing rage, or a person prone to extreme anger with little or no provocation." Unfortunately, rageaholism is hardly rare anymore. One particular brand of rage, according to the aforementioned NPR podcast, is especially prone to release pleasure-inducing hormones, leading to addictive behavior: moral indignation. A fascinating discussion ensues on the evolutionary origin of such an adaptation; socially shaming or even casting out tribal members for wrong-doing served a valid survival function at some point in the deep past of our species. Studies show that, disturbingly, people are apt to punish a wrong-doer even when said wrong-doer no longer poses any threat; he's learned his lesson, paid retribution, apologized, served time, and is totally unable to transgress again. People choose to punish, researchers conclude, purely for the pleasure they derive from punishing. In other words, self-righteousness is a short hop to sadism.
When I say that political polarization is just rageaholism, what I really mean is that right now our extreme degree of polarization is directly proportional to how much our minds have been hijacked by outrage. In reality, the epidemic (pandemic) of rageaholism we are experiencing could not take the specific form of political polarization we now have, were it not for the deliberate framing and conscious, strategic, social manipulation taking place at some level. If that sounds conspiratorial, good. You're keeping up.
I don't believe that polarization is natural. In some ways, humans seem to act like robotic monkey-things that are very predictable, hack-able, and controllable. That's why we can fall prey to strange illusions - such as the illusion that an astoundingly diverse and numerous population full of unique individuals can be meaningfully sorted into only two categories. On the other hand, unlike robotic monkey-things, we are capable of remembering that we are actually a diverse population and that individually we are very unique and distinct from one another. Two categories simply cannot sum up our tastes, our values, our characters, and certainly not our worthiness. I don't buy that we have spontaneously self-sorted into only two groups. It's way too expedient an arrangement for those who aspire to control public opinion and mass behavior.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but we are now living in a nascent global totalitarian regime. Optimistically speaking, maybe it's still embryonic rather than nascent. It's not gonna be good for any of us, so we need to get over our differences and unite. For far too long, both sides have been played against the middle in order to grow the power of the corporatist State. Now that this aim nears completion, whichever side is more prone to rageaholism at the moment (as the two groups periodically take turns holding that distinction) is the most easy to control and they will be compliant. I imagine the plan runs thusly: the morally indignant rage of one of the two factions can be used to enforce conformism until the other side shrinks down to a manageable size, and once all dissidents have been sifted down into the dregs of society, they can be exterminated at will, while those who survive may continue as puppets and slave laborers until they outlive their usefulness. And if that sounds far-fetched, either start paying attention to what's happening right in front of you (preferable), or don't read my blog.
Rageholism has been eminently useful to would-be despots in sowing the division necessary to create the illusion of a bogeyman Other, which drives political polarization. The latter, in turn, has been the best possible fuel for rampant rageaholism. Rageaholics grace despots with blind obedience as long as the despots reward them with the opportunity to hold the whip of punishment (against the outgroup). This is a feedback loop. Which came first, the rageaholism or the political polarization? It doesn't matter. What matters is, how are we going to get out of this mess?
The famous Milgram experiment in psychology determined that most people, in any time period, are so loath to disobey authority that they will violate their own moral code, and knowingly punish the innocent when ordered to do so. Even when they feel such empathy for the person being hurt that they sweat and shake, or even vomit while meting out the punishment, they continue obeying. If this is how people can be induced to behave when their empathy is still fully engaged, what happens when rageaholism and righteous indignation is added to the mix, blunting or short-circuiting empathy? Human beings can be seduced into becoming sadists, can be hypnotized into losing all empathy for their fellow human being, and can even become addicted to punishing others. If political polarization has reached an unprecedented extreme, and it feeds into morally indignant outrage, and moral indignation creates an addictively pleasurable desire to punish and hurt... Doesn't this merit a sober contemplation of the moment we find ourselves in?
I can tell how captured and externally controlled someone's mind is just by paying attention to the emotional tone of their speech (or writing) rather than to the content. This doesn't mean that there is never a place for moral indignation, because there most definitely is. But it has to be authentic rather than addiction-driven. To determine which it is requires continual and brutally honest self-assessment. When someone has acquired the habit of approaching new people with rage and suspicion, when the only thing they know about a person is some sort of "cue" that tipped them off as to the person's "team membership," there is no doubt that mental illness has entered the room. I can see it coming a mile away. I grew up with it. I'm honed to detect it. And it doesn't matter if it's in real life or "just" on the Internet. Your brain doesn't know the difference. Once that association has been established between pseudo-moral outrage and a dopamine hit, a dependency has formed. You are the rage's creature. While you might be good at stifling your hatred in face-to-face interactions, you're like a dry drunk, white-knuckling it until the next fix.
Just like any other addiction, we are more likely to engage in rageaholism when we are having trouble coping with stressors in our life, especially if we have unhealed trauma in our past. Modern life is replete with sources of anxiety, all of which are hopped up on goofballs, super-steroids, AND crack since COVID-19 hit. In addition, we know that anonymity tends to heighten hostility and aggressive behavior. Oh, the innocent times when "road rage" was the only real example of that we could pinpoint. Now most of our social activity is remote and faceless: over the Internet, and, when in person, behind masks.
This article is too much of a bummer, so let me try to say something positive.
Nothing came to mind, but maybe next time.
Okay, basically, I just hope that if you have kindness to give, that you consider spending it on the person who really pisses you off. Because if you are only kind to the people it's easy to be kind to, are you actually kind?
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