Socio-Political Polarization: A. The Impasse (Column 450)
A few days ago a friend sent me an article by Elizabeth Kolbert from The New Yorker that addresses socio-political polarization in the United States. Similar phenomena, of course, also exist here and in other places around the world. After I describe the article, I intend to present two insights that came to me this past Shabbat while reading it. In this column I will focus on a built-in tangle in polarized situations. It’s quite a simple point, but I think it’s illuminating. The second insight is no less illuminating, but unfortunately it has a somewhat mathematical flavor (though the math is fairly simple and only sketched from above). I therefore decided to separate it out and leave it for the next column, for the benefit of those among us who are sensitive to and/or allergic to this beloved and dear genre. It will go up very soon, so hurry up and read.
The Phenomenon
I assume we’re all aware of the political polarization that has been intensifying in recent years, in the U.S. as in Israel. People’s identities are increasingly centered around parties and political agendas, and relations between political camps are becoming more polarized. The feeling on both sides is “them” versus “us.” Much has been written about the phenomenon and possible explanations for it. It is attributed mainly to the influence of social networks and the ideological bubbles they create (I too have written about this in the past, for example in column 335, and elsewhere).
Kolbert describes polarization using various data about the situation in the U.S., and her description appears entirely symmetric, as the genre requires. Instead of summarizing, I’ll now bring a translation of extended excerpts from her piece:
According to a YouGov poll, sixty percent of Democrats see the opposing party as “a serious threat to the United States.” For Republicans, that figure approaches seventy percent. A Pew survey found that more than half of all Republicans and almost half of all Democrats believe their political opponents are “immoral.” Another Pew poll, conducted a few months before the 2020 election, found that seven out of ten Democrats who were looking for a partner would not date a Donald Trump voter, and almost five out of ten Republicans would not date someone who supported Hillary Clinton.
Even attitudes toward infectious diseases are now subject to partisan dispute. In a November survey by Marquette University Law School, seventy percent of Democrats said they saw COVID-19 as “a serious problem” in their state, compared with only thirty percent of Republicans. The day after the World Health Organization declared Omicron a “variant of concern,” Representative Ronny Jackson, a Republican from Texas, tagged the newly identified strain as a Democratic trick to justify no-excuse absentee voting. “Here comes the MEV — the midterm election variant,” tweeted Jackson, who served as White House physician under both Trump and Barack Obama.
How did America get here? Party loyalists have a simple answer: the other side went crazy! Historians and political scientists tend to look for subtler and more substantive explanations. In recent years, they’ve produced an entire library on the subject — books with titles like “Fault Lines,” “Angry Politics,” “Must Politics Be War?” and so on.
It’s easy to get the impression that our situation is quite similar — just replace Trump with Bibi. You’ll see that every issue reverberating in our airspace is divided into pro- or anti-Bibi (once it was at least on a right-left axis. Though according to the Bibists, as we know, anyone anti-Bibi is a leftist — cf. Sa’ar, Hauser, Lieberman, Bennett, and Shaked, among others).
She now moves to more concrete characterizations:
Lilliana Mason is a political scientist (yeah, right!!) at Johns Hopkins. In her book “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity,” she notes that not long ago it was hard to distinguish between the two parties, both demographically and ideologically. In the early 1950s, Black Americans were divided more or less evenly between the parties, as were whites. The same was true for men, Catholics, and union members. Meanwhile, the parties’ platforms were so similar that the American Political Science Association issued a plea to Democrats and Republicans to do more to differentiate themselves: “The alternatives between the parties are so ill-defined that often it is difficult to tell what the elections have decided, even in the broadest terms.”
The 1950s, Mason notes, were hardly “a time of social peace.” Americans fought — often in ugly ways — over communism, school desegregation, and immigration. Yet the sides were entangled with each other; that is, these battles weren’t fought along party lines. Americans, Mason writes, could “engage in social prejudice or promiscuity, but this was disconnected from their political choices.”
Then came what she calls the Great Sorting. Following the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and more, the G.O.P. [=the Republican Party] became whiter, more church-going, and more male than its counterpart [=the Democratic Party]. These differences, already significant by the early 1990s, became even more pronounced in the 2010s and 2020s.
“We’ve gone from two parties that are a little different in many ways to two parties that are very different in several powerful ways,” Mason says. As the parties sorted socially, they also moved apart ideologically, fulfilling the political scientists’ prediction. In recent election cycles, there was no mistaking the parties’ platforms.
In our time, party habits, race, faith, and even television viewing are correlated. (One study, based on TiVo data, found that the twenty TV shows most popular among Republicans were entirely different from those preferred by Democrats.) As a result, Mason argues, Americans are no longer juggling multiple, potentially contradictory group identities; they’re affiliating with one all-encompassing group that grants them what she calls a “mega-identity.”
When people feel that their “mega-identity” is challenged, they get angry. Politics at every level has been reduced to “us” versus “them,” a basic (and dangerous) dynamic in human political behavior. As Mason puts it, “We have more self-esteem real estate to protect because our identities are linked together.”
This is the point that matters for us here: in recent years correlations have formed between party affiliation and many other divisions. These days one can better predict your party alignment by race, affiliation, religion, and the like. That’s the meaning of the “mega-identity,” i.e., a package deal in which a person finds themselves identified with their group on every parameter — all the way down to TV viewing habits (the figure on differences in popular TV series is nothing short of amazing. I think this is far less pronounced here in Israel) and beyond. What remains most important is the struggle between “us” and “our enemies,” with victory as the focus (see, for example, the Trump quote brought below). Now it’s more important that “we” win and “they” lose than to advance the agenda and improve the situation in and of themselves.
Psychological Explanations
The explanations she brings for this state of affairs lean in psychological directions. She opens the article with a lengthy description of a social-psychology experiment conducted in Oklahoma, and later she cites conclusions by a Polish-born Jewish psychologist named Henri Tajfel, who showed that dividing people into groups, even on arbitrary and irrelevant bases, produces strong group identification across domains — that is, preferring members of one’s own group at the expense of the other group, sometimes in very ugly ways. She adds the phenomenon of social networks. As is well known, they divide people into identity groups that seclude themselves in a virtual space echoing mainly similar voices and facts that support them, while at the same time presenting the other voices and contradictory facts in a distorted and biased fashion, if at all. In this way they greatly reinforce social polarization and ideological radicalization (the echo-chamber effect).
These experiments often seem dubious to me, and the interpretations are usually agenda-driven and sometimes downright banal. Somehow one can always present (predictable) conclusions quite unequivocally and simplistically through an experiment that impresses in its simplicity. But there’s nothing new here; many have already written this.
Proposed Remedies
So what do we do? The only solution I found in her piece is a recommendation to try to step into the opponent’s shoes and understand their position on its own terms:
Several recent books on polarization argue that if, as a nation, we want to overcome the problem, we must start with ourselves. “The first step is for citizens to recognize their own shortcomings,” writes Taylor Dotson, a professor of social sciences at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. In “The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization,” Peter T. Coleman, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia, advises: “Think about and critically observe your own thinking.” “We need to work on ourselves,” urges Robert B. Talisse, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt. “We need to find ways to manage belief polarization within ourselves and our alliances,” he writes.
Clearly, if we all adopted this approach, the walls of the problematic echo chambers we inhabit would crack. This is a good suggestion (truly!) on the personal plane, but it’s hard to see it as a solution to polarization. The problem is precisely that most of us don’t tend to do this. It reminds me of the ultimate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: okay, stop fighting like children and understand that these wars are bad for both sides. If everyone behaves maturely and moderately, everything will be peachy.
The author herself is well aware of the limitations of this “solution” (see two problems she raises below). It’s no wonder that toward the end she offers dark prophecies about America’s future. One of her concluding lines is quoted from Stephen Marche (a Canadian writer and journalist):
Marche likes sweeping claims. “No American president of any party, now or in the foreseeable future, can be a symbol of unity — only of division,” he writes. “Once the common purpose disappears, it disappears,” he declares later in the same chapter. Unfortunately, too many of his statements sound true, like “When the crisis comes, the institutions won’t be there.”
I’m not sure I understood the article’s bottom line: what is her central claim? How does she explain polarization and what does she propose to solve it? Perhaps she merely aims to point to the impasse (which I’ll sharpen shortly) and to say there is no solution. In any case, from here on (including in the follow-up column) I wish to comment on two interesting points that arose for me while reading: the first is a tangle that makes it hard to exit a polarized state; the second is an alternative explanation (not in the psychological realm) for the polarization phenomenon. I’ll now focus on the first point.
The Author’s Lack of Self-Awareness
I must say I was rather astonished while reading, because after presenting the problem in a symmetric and balanced way, she proceeds to demonstrate and explain to us how Trump is to blame for everything. Here’s the first example:
Trump, one can safely say, has never read Tajfel’s work, but he seems to grasp it intuitively. During the 2016 campaign, Mason notes, he often shifted his positions on policy issues. The one thing he never wavered on was the importance of winning. “We’re going to win at every level,” he told a crowd in Albany. “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.”
Or even clearer in this passage:
The trouble with the self-partisan-healing approach proposed here [that each person try to step into the opponent’s shoes; see above] is twofold. First, those who have done the most to polarize America seem the least inclined to identify their own “flaws” and shortcomings. Try to imagine Donald Trump sitting at Mar-a-Lago, chewing a Big Mac and critically reflecting on “his thinking.” [No, Hillary Clinton — or the author herself — surely does this all the time.]
Second, the fact that each side regards the other as “a serious threat” does not mean they threaten to the same degree. The attack on the Capitol on January 6, the ongoing attempts to discredit the 2020 election, new state laws that will make it harder for millions to vote, especially in communities of color — only one party is responsible for these. In November, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a watchdog group, added the United States to its list of “backsliding democracies.” Although the group’s report did not explicitly blame Republicans, it came fairly close: “A historic turning point occurred in 2020–2021, when former President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the results of the 2020 U.S. election. Baseless allegations of voter fraud and the spread of associated disinformation undermined basic trust in the electoral process.”
There are two problems with the approach that suggests examining your own shortcomings rather than those of the other. Both basically stem from the notion that all the problems lie with the other side. Behold a balanced approach in which everyone examines themselves and finds their own flaws rather than beating their neighbor’s chest.
Again, I’m not sure this isn’t precisely her point (a friend insists it is). There is indeed a degree of absurdity in the expectation that someone convinced their rival is wicked will take the trouble to examine their own position reflectively and be generous toward the other. It’s a no-solution situation. But ultimately, after rereading, it’s quite evident she isn’t sitting in the UN Secretary-General’s chair; she definitely takes a side. Hence I think she herself displays here a glaring lack of self-awareness. In my view, the background is the characteristic left-liberal blind spot we know well here too. So I’ll say a few words about that.
Liberal Lack of Self-Awareness
More than once I’ve heard and read left-leaning people who honestly don’t understand what anyone could possibly want from them. They’re merely pursuing peace and pushing no agenda of their own (they have no “community,” nor “notables,” as I described in the previous column. They’re not a sector like Arabs, Haredim, religious-Zionists, and so forth. They are the framework within which everything takes place. The state — that’s me, and if in practice it isn’t, then it must have been stolen from me). I can’t avoid mentioning Aharon Barak, who didn’t understand what the right wanted from him — he merely “organized the public debate,” enabled it, and ensured everyone’s rights. He was convinced he personally had no agenda at all (unlike, say, Ruth Gavison. See here, and especially his explanations that try to paper over the lack of self-awareness reflected in his remarks).[1]
I get the impression that a liberal leftist often feels they are transparent, and that their values are shared by the entire universe. They carry no particular value-laden baggage that can be disagreed with (but just try telling them they’re an “empty wagon”). After all, everyone agrees that we need justice and to help the weak, and everyone agrees that peace is a supreme value and we must avoid war. So what’s the argument even about? From here follows their unselfaware view that whoever doesn’t act with them and agree with them (doesn’t care for the weak or doesn’t prevent war at any cost) doesn’t hold a different position — they’re simply wicked.
It’s like a child who doesn’t grasp that they too are a person with a particular makeup, not a neutral object by which all others are measured. Or perhaps a better example is those Israelis who speak Hebrew (like me, for instance) and are sure they have no accent. They’re neutral. An accent is something only speakers of other languages have. Isn’t it amazing that our Hebrew, of all things, is an accent-less language?! Is this not the Lord’s doing?!
Thus leftists will eloquently explain the danger of refusal to obey orders from the right, yet entirely justify refusals from their own side (see, for example, the introduction by Chaim Ganz to his book Obedience and Refusal — a truly stunning display of leftist unawareness). I, by the way, enthusiastically support refusals on both sides. Likewise, the values of tolerance and openness are always qualified under “defensive democracy,” which leaves them applicable only toward those who themselves embrace tolerance. But if that’s the criterion, then a person or group who holds only the value of tolerance is effectively unable to be tolerant toward anyone who thinks differently. This nicely demonstrates that when your outlook and its limits are invisible to you, your values become hollow.
The left’s sense of absolute righteousness — and, as a corollary, its fixed view of the right’s wickedness — is especially odd against the backdrop of its stated policy of self-examination and openness to other positions (Black people, Palestinians, the underprivileged, women, LGBTQ+, etc. — all their natural constituencies, of course). But try to find there a listening ear for non-liberal, non-left positions. You’ll have a hard time. Just to be clear, it’s not that the right is more open, but at least it doesn’t proclaim itself to be. Right-wingers generally don’t pretend to step into the other’s shoes. That’s their big failing — but also (a small) advantage. In that sense, it seems to me they’re at least more aware of their own blinders and echo chamber. Take the propaganda pamphlet known as the newspaper “Haaretz” (which admittedly also has good and useful things, including in exposing the wrongs of the occupation), for example — it constantly convinces its readers that it is open, diverse, and tolerant, addressing “thinking people.” I recall the years I subscribed; it was impossible to read its literary supplement. Reviews of a children’s book like Chipopo would very quickly get to the evils of the occupation and the right’s guilt. All the asides and obiters went in the same direction and were painfully predictable. What’s even more amazing is that those “thinking people” are also convinced that this is indeed the situation and that there truly is a variety of opinions from all directions there (well, I did already mention the echo-chamber effect).
From such a starting point Elizabeth can speak of a balanced perspective and of self-critique as a precondition for solving polarization — and in the very same article explain that Trump and his supporters are the root of all evil and therefore there is no solution and no future. The lack of self-awareness here is especially embarrassing, even relative to the typical leftist blind spot. Her accusations appear in the same article that tries to persuade us to examine primarily ourselves, to step into the other’s shoes, and not see them as wicked. The drawback of this approach, as the author immediately explains, is that if you do so, you might indeed stop viewing the other (=Trump and his supporters) as the ultimate evildoer. O holy blindness…
The Impasse
But perhaps the other really is wicked, no? Is it right to assume that in every case the two sides in a dispute are good-faith interlocutors? Certainly there’s no necessity for that. So what do we do when we’re dealing with a genuine evildoer? Must we still be generous toward them? Here the article offers no answer. I suspect that if you ask the author about Trump, she’ll surely tell you: what do you want? I examined the Trumpists’ positions and this is my conclusion. They really are wicked, primitive fools who do harm. We can’t a priori rule out the possibility that a side on the map is malicious and harmful.
One might argue that if we’re dealing with tens of percent of U.S. citizens, it’s not reasonable to think so. One person may be a manipulative, evil, harmful demagogue — but to accuse all their supporters of that is problematic. Yet can we rule out phenomena in which a broad public follows a charismatic, wicked manipulator? That’s certainly possible. On the other hand, the other side is equally convinced of this about you — so practically, what can be done? The author indeed offers nothing. But that’s the situation on both sides of the barricade, and that’s usually the situation around most political barricades today. Both sides truly and sincerely aren’t aware of their biases, and thus each is truly convinced the other is wicked and harmful. So the advice to step into the other’s shoes is essentially empty. It applies in cases where I don’t perceive my rivals as wicked — but then I’ll likely do it anyway. That’s not where the problem lies.
This reminds me of a personal experience. Nearly twenty years ago I used to travel from Yeruham to Bnei Brak every two weeks to give a class to yeshiva students and kollel fellows who were interested.[2] At that time the “haters-versus-combatants” feud at the Ponovezh Yeshiva began, and I felt that participants in the class were deeply involved in it. I asked them how they explain this astonishing phenomenon, whereby leading rabbis and students of one of the finest yeshivot in the universe, diligent and outstanding scholars, are engaged in hurling yogurt cups and power struggles like the emptiest of hooligans. How does this happen among the students, and how do the rabbis not stop it (or why aren’t they being listened to)?
To my astonishment, their answer was: because the other side are evildoers exploiting our desire for peace and our fear of Heaven to seize property and positions of power, and therefore we must not concede lest sin be rewarded. I don’t remember whether there were participants from both parties or only from one, and which one (I can never follow and understand that nonsense), but even if I heard only one side, I’m certain that’s what the other side also claimed in that ridiculous/sad quarrel.
My conclusion was that this is an impasse with no solution. You cannot demand of them: understand the other side, try to step into their shoes and grasp their positions, and then world peace will reign. Each of them explains that they already tried and examined and found that the others’ claims lack substance, since they are cynical, wicked, foolish, and harmful, and they will exploit our desire for peace and our willingness to yield, so we must not surrender to their forcefulness. You can’t even tell them plainly that in your opinion this isn’t the case, since — as explained above — it is certainly possible that in some disputes one side is wicked and harmful, and then perhaps it truly isn’t right to yield. This is precisely the political impasse I described in miniature.
An Interpretive Note
On another reading, one could interpret her article exactly along the lines I’ve described here. She herself understands that in most debates there are two legitimate sides and no saints and sinners, and therefore she proposes that everyone examine themselves rather than the other. The problem arises in cases where one side truly appears wicked and unjust. A friend argued that this is the article’s fundamental claim. According to his reading, her main point is that this is the root of the present predicament. And indeed, she offers no solution for such cases, since perhaps there is no solution. On his reading, her subject is precisely the impasse I describe.
However, in my view the article doesn’t merely point to the impasse — it suffers from it (just as the writings of Rabbi Shagar are not about postmodernism; they are postmodern). To me this is the same leftist lack of self-awareness I described above. We should remember we’re dealing with the frustration and bitterness of nearly half of American (and Israeli) voters. It’s not reasonable that they’re all simply wicked for no reason. If there is so much support for such a wicked manipulator (insert Bibi or Trump here), there is likely deep, genuine frustration (regardless of whether that person is indeed a manipulator, and that among their supporters there are, in fact, quite a few fools). Therefore, if one truly stands behind this recommendation, then one should apply it here as well: try to step into the other’s shoes (the Trumpist). But I didn’t find such a passage in her article.
In almost every heated debate, each side is sure the truth is with them and the other side is talking nonsense. Hence arises the view of the other as wicked, beyond dialogue. If in such situations she doesn’t recommend adopting her advice — to examine ourselves and not see the other as wicked — then to which situations does she apply it?! The hard cases are when it’s obvious to us that the other is wicked and there’s nothing to check in their positions. There the task is to ask whether perhaps we’re wrong after all. Therefore I insist on seeing this article as an expression of typical leftist lack of self-awareness rather than as a neutral academic argument.
So what, then, is the alternative? Is a situation in which I regard my rival as wicked/stupid/harmful truly a dead end?
Is There Anything to Be Done Despite It All?
It seems to me one can make a claim even about such a case: are you sure you examined it? Didn’t you decide this within your echo chamber without really trying to adopt the other’s point of view? In many cases we decide a priori that there’s nothing to examine and no opposing position. I tend toward (true) left-ness in this sense, since I hope that at least in most cases, if one checks seriously, one may discover that there is, after all, some validity to the other side’s arguments, and not everyone there is wicked, harmful, and foolish. But if someone refuses to examine and entrenches themselves in the claim that they did examine and, in their view, there is no real other side — then there really is nothing to be done. That is the essence of the impasse I’ve described.
Why examine even those who seem wicked to us? Two reasons can be offered:
- Practical. The other may be wicked and foolish and truly wrong, but we have no other way to move forward — unless there’s a possibility of a solution by force, which often doesn’t exist. This, for example, is how I view the Palestinian position. It’s clear they are the wrongdoers and mainly responsible for their situation, and I have no sympathy for them (as a group), but at present I see no way to move forward without accepting that this is their viewpoint and trying to reach an arrangement (if one is possible at all — at the moment it seems not).
- Moral. I don’t always see correctly, and it’s possible I’m wrong in my initial judgment. Here sometimes people raise arguments about unity and mutual responsibility, but in my opinion they’re irrelevant. If I’m wrong, then it’s my duty to re-examine — even if my rival is not of my people and I feel no special shared destiny or obligation toward them. I simply must check whether I have erred.
Incidentally, this is precisely what I didn’t find in the author. I didn’t find in her article an analysis of why such a large public follows a wicked manipulator like Trump. As I explained, if you don’t apply this recommendation to those you regard as wicked (intolerant, non-left, etc.), then it is essentially empty. A defensive democracy — at least when taken to the limit — is an empty democracy. Therefore I don’t accept my friend’s interpretation of her words; to my mind, this is an article that expresses typical leftist lack of self-awareness.
A Personal Note
Some of you may be surprised, but despite the decisiveness of my tone, I do try to act according to this (so-called “leftist”) recommendation (I’m sure many will say they’re not surprised at all, since I’m a known leftist). I truly try to examine whether there are real points worth considering or a presumption of merit even in my rival’s position, even if they seem foolish and wicked to me (up to Hitler and beyond). In many cases I even find such points. That doesn’t prevent me from forming a stance both on substance (regarding their positions and actions) and personally (regarding them themselves — wicked or righteous, foolish or wise).
As you can see even here on the site and in general, I am often accused of fanaticism on the one hand, and of excessive openness on the other. Some accuse me of severe leftism, others of extreme right-wing views. You’ll find accusations of excessive liberalism (Reformism, heresy) but also of conservatism and Haredi-ism (covert, more or less). Pathological hatred of Haredim and contempt for religious-Zionists. Reformism on the one hand, but also harsh and unfair criticism of Reform Jews. Mockery of missionary-style apologists and being a despicable apologist myself (proofs of God’s existence, yeah right; the fellow lives in the 12th century). The common denominator of all these accusations is that it’s hard to define my “mega-identity.” I think I don’t have one — or at least I try very hard to flee from it. Many of the battles I wage here on the site are against imagined correlations and template thinking. I argue that even if, heaven forbid, a certain banner (“mega-identity”) flutters over your head, that doesn’t oblige you to a package deal adopting an entire basket of positions. I repeatedly cry out hoarsely for examining each question on its own and forming an independent stance on each one. Get out of the boxes and “mega-identities” we are almost forced into.
I do observe, again and again, what I wrote above — that such a recommendation is not a solution to social polarization, since people don’t tend to do it. They act and judge by stereotypes and labels rather than forming an independent stance on each question. But I don’t despair. The more people who train themselves to think independently and not enter package deals, the better our situation will be. Needless to say, I’m very much in favor of polarization and extremism in their conventional sense — both in the positions themselves and in how they’re expressed. You can see this clearly on the site. The Chazon Ish, in his well-known letter, writes that extremism expresses love of truth and faith in the rightness of the path, while compromise often expresses mediocrity and lack of backbone. “Only donkeys walk in the middle,” as Moshe Dayan said. But at the same time, I strongly oppose polarization in the sense described here — that is, package-deal “mega-identities,” and division into “us” and “them,” or “us” and “our enemies.” That’s why I sometimes defend evildoers and accuse righteous people, and indeed appear extreme in my liberal positions (in those areas) or conservative (in others). The very mix of these positions is reassuring to me (check how many columns on the site include the phrase “imagined correlations”). It’s a decent indication that I haven’t fallen into the pit of the “mega-identity,” heaven forfend — and I’m happy about that.
Needless to say, this is how I see myself and my positions, but I’m sure many will disagree and accuse me too of lack of self-awareness, one-sided vision, and rash accusations toward other positions and people. Well then, we still have work to do…
Conclusion
The conclusion is that in situations where there is a wicked side, there is no solution. Perhaps the author herself meant this and perhaps not, but it’s a rather bleak and even despairing insight. As a general recommendation from a more self-aware perspective, I propose a slightly different suggestion. A broad phenomenon usually doesn’t express pure wickedness. Therefore, even where it seems that way to you, think again about the other side and try to understand how they see the picture. And even if there is wickedness, the path of war will not always bring you to a solution.
This is not a postmodern statement that believes in multiple truths, but a generous one that starts from the premise that people are usually not wicked — or at least not purely wicked. There is something real in their position beyond any wickedness that may or may not be there. Hence it’s not advisable to make do with a despairing view of the other as an evildoer from whom nothing good can come. Try to understand what drives them and what led them to think and act as they do. After that, each person can form their own view and decide whether the other is right or not — and even reach the conclusion that they are wicked.
In the next column I’ll move to the second insight, which may be no less bleak, but the discovery of it gave me great intellectual pleasure. It’s an explanation of the polarization phenomenon in terms of a mathematical algorithm. You’ll see that it’s an account unrelated to psychology, and I’ll end by pointing to an advantage and a measure of optimism that emerges from this explanation.
[1] Incidentally, those who read his words precisely will see he didn’t really say that she has an agenda, but that her agenda doesn’t fit the court (i.e., his own). The mockery and jokes made at his expense back then — as if he disqualified Gavison because she had an agenda — were imprecise. But on the substance, it’s clear that’s exactly what he thought.
[2] Needless to say, the class was clandestine, and there were even participants who suffered after it became known that they attended. And that was before my current “heresies.” At that time the problem was merely that in the Midah Tovah weekly sheets on the Torah portions there appeared, here and there, foreign words — heaven forfend (so my son was told at the Grodno Yeshiva when they asked him that I not show up there to study with him, and thus that class in Bnei Brak was born).
Discussion
Of course the statism Bennett talks about is that of the “State of Israel” and not of the “People of Israel.” Therefore he includes Arabs within it (what a stupid man, utterly lacking in self-awareness). He spoke about the need to prevent elections in order to save the “state” once again, never mind that this harms the “People of Israel” (in leftist terms, “nation” and “people” are the collection of citizens, a formal group without identity). The fact that he tries so hard to curry favor with the media, and that he adopts the language in which the formal institution—the means—the instrument—is what matters, “the State of Israel,” and not the essence—the goal—the thing for which this state was created—“the People of Israel”—tells our whole story.
If Bennett really believed in the right, then he would stand by Bibi (despite everything Bibi did to him), because he would understand that the purpose of the war against Bibi is to split the right on the way to power (divide and rule), and ultimately also to erase the People of Israel (this is the deep unconscious belief of the entire left today). And indeed they succeeded. They even managed to incite Rabbi Michi against Bibi. And that is why I am so angry with him in my comments.
I assume all the readers have read Two Wagons and a Balloon in order to understand how everything I wrote tips this story to the side of the right. On the left side there is a paradox whose belief in it (this is what is explained in the book Two Wagons) leads to madness, blindness, insensitivity, foolishness, stupidity, and in the end also evil on its part.
There is a limit to how much Rabbi Michi can try to understand both sides and stay in the middle. This is the limit. The limit of logic to which everyone is bound.
With the blessing: “Let sins cease from the earth.”
It seems to me that if the column itself is the lecture, then the last two messages (as well as most of Emmanuel’s emphatic messages) are in the category of practice exercises. Many thanks for the service.
There is no doubt that as long as the basic assumptions of the left/right, liberal/conservative, Haredi/religious/secular—regarding the other—remain as they are today, the polarization will only intensify.
Note: it seems to me that you did not dwell enough on one of the leading factors in this process: the influence of social networks, whose social engineering leads almost hermetically to the consciousness/identity bubbles you described above.
If I understand correctly, the solution you are proposing is a kind of education toward an alternative insight regarding the other. And I have no doubt that on the principled level you are right.
The problem is that, as you argued regarding the author of the article, there is an inherent circular problem here, which seemingly will prevent the willingness to open up even to the more sophisticated model you propose.
It seems to me one can sharpen the pedagogical direction of your proposal.
One must educate, from a young age, toward more complex and dialectical thinking. One can begin דווקא with dilemmas (moral and others) that are not divided along the lines of the polarization/identity described above. For example, dilemmas connected to shaming (not of sexual attackers, because here too the above biases have already infiltrated to a large extent). Or for example: dilemmas connected to “informing” on problematic behavior by friends (a dilemma many children encounter).
Teachers should require students to justify not only their own position (a legitimate one) but also the opposing position, and to conduct a productive dialogue between the two positions.
In our Jewish language: this is education toward dispute for the sake of Heaven (whether in its tolerant interpretation or in its relativist/postmodern interpretation).
From education in this model of thought, one can gradually move up the scales of polarization and further develop this ability.
Thus, for example, in an academic course I taught, which was close to the elections, I required the students to justify orally and in writing (there is something in the delay that writing provides that allows for deeper reflection) the position opposed to their own—and to try to persuade their classmates of it.
I agree with every word. Regarding the networks, I mentioned it and referred to a column that dealt with it. I just didn’t go into details here.
I’m glad. Though I would have preferred to be the teaching assistant and not the exercise.
Udi, as a film person you will surely agree with me that a first-rate educational tool in these directions is literature and cinema. Nothing compares with them in granting a comprehensive point of view, emotional identification, and deep understanding of the other side—even if not necessarily agreement. Just yesterday I told someone about the effect that Gur Heller’s Night Movie had on my understanding of the Palestinian position. And note well: understanding and empathy, not necessarily ideological agreement. But it changes the whole perspective and neutralizes the built-in violence.
However, we are assured that the political-social polarization will not deteriorate into severe violence, for at any assassination attempt they will order her: “Gali Baharav, who fired?” and the assassin will be caught immediately.
Regards, Feiga Sus
With all due respect, Rabbi! Why don’t you begin yourself and tell us what is good/right/justified in the mindset of Har Hamor?
To Yehoshua—many greetings,
Even Abraham and his young men already disagreed on this, for he said: “Do you see a light shining atop Mount Moriah?” and they replied: “We see nothing but myrrh” 🙂
With the blessing, “May the gates of favor be opened,” the binder, the bound one, and the altar
It is certainly proper to do so. If you look at what I wrote in the past, there were also things there in their praise, and my general position on them was formed after I thought also about the meritorious side.
A. A sharp column as always. Thank you very much.
B. In my immediate circle, which includes mainly religious Zionism, some Hardali and some classical and a bit truly Haredi, I do not see the phenomenon you described. That is, most of them accept values as a package deal (mega-identity), but they do not feel the polarization. They are all right-wing, but none of them supports Bibi, and the great majority of them appreciate the left for a variety of its actions, though they think it is mistaken in its general path. It should be noted that almost none of them uses social networks (except Instagram), but they are very involved in what is happening in the country, mainly through news sites. I am still in doubt whether to believe, with faith in the sages, that there is polarization, or whether this is a fiction that stems from sharpening positions for the sake of the media.
C. In my childhood in the settlements of Judea and Samaria, I always wondered how there was not a single right-winger who claimed that from a security standpoint it is better to hand over territory, or at least that there is no problem with it, and nevertheless argued that the Land of Israel should be in the hands of the People of Israel despite the security consideration. That frustrated me, so I tried to be such a person myself, except that I could not explain even as a hypothesis how handing over territory is not a security danger 🙂
D. In principle (I am not sure this is possible in practice), Rabbi Kook’s doctrine provides a solution to the tangle, at least to the issue of social polarization, if not to the matter of mega-identity. I mean that he sees even in the opinions with which he disagrees vehemently, the good side. Even if we claim that he himself cannot step outside and see a method that regards divisiveness, at the end of the day his approach will not lead to polarization, but at most to one-sided hatred. Of course, in practice the situation is sometimes different.
With God’s help, 8 Adar II 5782
The attempt to understand the considerations of one’s opponent is an application of the “principle of charity,” which assumes that the opponent’s words also have a side of logic, and they should not be seen merely as words of stupidity and evil.
Moreover, the fact that foolish and wicked demagogues succeed in “catching in their net” even innocent and decent people indicates that there are, after all, considerations of substance at the foundation of their method as well, except that the “spark of truth” is swallowed up in dross and nonsense that distort it.
The way of the House of Hillel, who would first explain the reasoning of those who disagreed with them, thereby proving to the neutral listener that they had grasped the opponent’s view thoroughly, and yet had found solid grounds to disagree. Such an explanatory approach helps persuasion a great deal. Bluster and insults give a wonderful feeling to the speaker, but impress the listener less. The words of the wise, spoken gently, are heard!
Regards, D.Y. Beit
Using NSO software, which gives detailed information about the conversations of one’s disputant, also greatly helps one get to the bottom of his mind 🙂
Regards, Feiga Sus
B. Interesting what nature reserve you live in. Maybe because of the absence of social networks.
C. This is the question of illusory correlations. It was from that very question that I set out to the whole matter of correlations (did Rabin have a mandate to return the Golan?). By the way, that is actually a hypothesis one can definitely understand.
Feiga Sus, I very much liked your recommendation of the software as a way to resolve social polarizations. That truly is charitable interpretation of a higher order. 🙂
With God’s help, 8 Adar II 5782
To Ramda—many greetings,
I do not know what the state of polarization is in America, where we saw violent riots from both sides that included serious harm to body and property. But in our tiny country, where “everyone knows everyone,” there is no family, workplace, university, or military unit in which all sectors are not integrated—right-wingers and leftists, Haredim and religious-Zionists, traditionalists and secular people—and everyone lives together in friendship despite the sharp differences of opinion.
Even in the Knesset there is a difference between the publicized debates, where everyone attacks everyone else in burning rage so that the voting public will see how energetic its representatives are, and, by contrast, “behind the scenes,” where there is much buddy-buddying and even fruitful cooperation between rivals on a thousand and one issues in which understandings and agreements can be reached.
In the media and on social networks, “people pour out all their rage,” but “in real life” the situation is much calmer and sides of fraternity and appreciation find expression. After all, they have already vented their anger into the microphone or keyboard, and one who barks does not bi— 🙂
Regards, Simcha Fish”l HaLevi Plankton
If we are talking about social and political polarization, I am interested whether Rabbi Michael has read Micah Goodman’s book Attention Disorder. There he gives a fascinating explanation of the phenomenon and connects it (not he himself; he only gathered several studies about it) to social media and the internet, which are built in such a way that they echo a person’s messages and cause him to shut himself inside his own opinions without the ability to hear the other.
It seems to me that this is the best and truest explanation, and it can be clearly proven.
I have read it. It is well written, as is his way, but not terribly innovative. This is an opportunity to ask you whether you read this column (to which you commented), because in this column I referred to a different column in which I discussed the matter of the network.
A. Regarding the right in Israel (and apparently in the world as well): since most of it is more religious/traditional, and therefore includes “extraneous” considerations of religion and the like, as opposed to the left, and especially the center, which comes “cleaner” and whose beliefs are relatively more based on reason—doesn’t that give reason to assume the left is more correct? For example, is it “by chance” that Hardal rabbis are sure that mixed service will destroy the army “from a security standpoint,” and by chance the messianic residents of the settlements are sure that this is what is right security-wise? (I took a side here, although I am not left-wing; I am a center person without ideologies.)
B. Regarding the left in Israel and the world: doesn’t the fact that in most of the world the left looks the same suggest that it is probably right? As opposed to the right, whose nationalism expresses itself differently in each country.
Granted, the left is naive (in my opinion), but aren’t its intentions better than those of the right? If the aspirations of the left throughout the world were realized, and everyone absolutely followed left-wing values, ostensibly it would be a utopian world of peace, etc., whereas if the aspirations of the right were realized it would be a world of nationalism and hatred of the other, no?
The aspirations of the left were indeed beautifully realized in the Soviet Union, in China, in North Korea, and in a few other countries.
When the public does not enjoy the fruits of growth, the willingness to be patient toward the opposing side declines.
You’re right. Correction: I mainly mean liberals/democrats, not that left.
But that is exactly the point. The dispute here is that one side (the right) says: there is objective truth. The other side (the left) says: there is no objective truth—which means there is no truth at all (the postmodernism that lies at the depth of leftist ideology). A riddle for the readers: what is the point of truth on the other side (the side of the left)?
One side (the right) says: I want unity in the People of Israel. The other side (the left) says: I do not want unity in the People of Israel because that is racism (it wants unity among the citizens of the state, which is an empty formal fiction). Riddle: how are we to bring about unity between the two sides within the People of Israel?
And both sides agree that all the problems of society and the state stem from the other side 🙂 So where is the polarization?
Regards, Dov Koteb
I also never understood this business of “emphasis” in my comments. When one thinks about an issue or an intellectual principle, one has to sharpen and clarify it. That is done by radicalizing the principle (applying it to edge cases). Part of this, for example, when dealing with sociological phenomena, is generalization. This of course serves several purposes:
1. Clarifying the issue. For example, I claim that the entire war between right and left in the West, and the war between West and East generally in the world, is the result of a collision between the line of the right and the line of the left in the upper worlds (concepts from Kabbalah, and these two lines are waiting for the arrival of the third line—the middle line—which will decide between them).
2. Predicting or foreseeing the future. On the assumption that most people act like a herd, then what is latent and hidden today among the intellectuals of a certain public will at some point in the future become the possession of that entire public. If, for example, postmodernism arose in the 1960s and belonged to a few people, today it belongs to most of the left-wing public in the West. Everything I wrote could have been predicted already back then. Everyone says to themselves that I am exaggerating: “The left aren’t like that. They are good people. They believe in objective truth. They are Zionists, etc.” But little by little that is no longer so. I have a first-degree relative who is such a crazed leftist who claims he is right-wing (indeed, he voted Likud in 2015), but became anti-Bibi (his family are kibbutzniks. In the end it affects him), and in the height of anti-Bibi madness he voted Meretz in the last election so they would pass the threshold. Good thing he didn’t vote Ra’am. Besides that, little by little words and thought-patterns are being heard that yesterday were not heard from moderate leftists. When I speak emphatically about the left I am foreseeing the future already today (assuming nothing is done to prevent or stop the process). After all, Ben-Gurion’s left is not Rabin’s left, and that is not Merav Michaeli’s left. What will tomorrow’s left be? I already noted that I suddenly heard from that same relative, in response to my claims about leftist hypocrisy, the claim of “whataboutism.” He learned a word from the crowd. Afterwards he began speaking about the Palestinians’ narrative. He was excited as if he had learned a cool new word from the crowd. Afterwards I managed to get him to say that there is no objective truth. In the next stage I told him that if so, by his own account his words have no meaning at all, because then no word in his language points to anything meaningful. He is simply emitting meaningless syllables (objectively. But non-objective meaning is meaningless. There is no point in developing language among human beings if it does not point to something shared by all).
Or for example, in the wonderful unity revealed yesterday in the vote on the citizenship laws. Only for some reason Gantz and Lapid decided to explain themselves as to why they support them: “It is a law important for the security of the state, and on matters connected with security we support it.” What happened? Is a Jewish majority no longer a worthy goal in itself? On the one hand they speak all the time about a state for the Jewish people and Zionism, and on the other hand in practice they are afraid to legislate or do something in practice that will give this expression. Zionism is a kind of mantra they repeat in itself.
Remember the story that Rabbi Shach asked before a large audience: “In what way is the left Jewish? What is Jewish about them?” The Lubavitcher Rebbe at the time protested his words. That is the way of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who believes in every Jew and in his Jewish point. And in the disputes between him and Rabbi Shach I would follow him. But even in Rabbi Shach’s method there is a point of truth (how nice—after all, that is what the article is about, no?) So one should ask in what case he would indeed be right. The left at the time was Rabin’s left, which no longer believed in the Land of Israel but still believed in the People of Israel. Was the Lubavitcher Rebbe also speaking about today’s left? Perhaps (he even tried to reach the heart of Bobby Fischer, who was an outspoken antisemite). I am not sure. And even if so, in what way is that expressed? Am I supposed to cooperate with someone just because from his perspective we share the same citizenship?
3. Emphasis stimulates people (especially those not accustomed to thinking) to devote thought to a subject on which they were spoken to harshly or emphatically. Just as spicy food whets the appetite of some people. Bland thoughts do not lead to any intellectual development.
I truly do not understand the need for moderation (lack of emphasis) in matters of thought. Moderation belongs to matters of action and public leadership, not to matters of thought. There moderation is a pose of people who do not think. What is the point of being cautious in matters of thought? Will someone die from it? Or perhaps, God forbid, you might make a mistake? Very good. That is how you will reach the truth faster. People who are cautious and afraid to think and to present extreme positions (that they reached after devoting thought to them) because of criticism of being “emphatic” will get nowhere. All they will have in hand is an empty pose.
In short, I hope the time will come when the rabbi stops with his remarks about my “emphasis.” I will not stop being “emphatic” because of that. Nor will anyone here on the site take a rifle and go outside to kill leftists because of my comments. I hope. This is a war over consciousness, not over the body. If there is a war over the body (a popular civil uprising), it will not be because of my emphatic positions. It will be when the left really crosses red lines of insensitivity, and that will happen on its own, not because of me.
With God’s help, Wednesday, on the section “upon his two shoulders for remembrance,” 5782
To Emmanuel—many greetings,
According to your claim that the root of right and left in their political sense lies in the “right line” and “left line” of the sefirot—then they have a root in holiness, and if so they deserve a little “respect” 🙂
Regards, Tzvi Tifarah
These questions do not belong here. I will address them briefly.
A. No person arrives without basic assumptions, and the lack of assumptions certainly does not mean that you are more logical or rational (more based on reason).
You forgot that “by chance” left-wing people are sure that this will not destroy the army, and at the same time are also sure that it is an important value of equality. And regarding the settlements, they are sure that this is what is right ethically and are also sure that there is no security risk in it. I did not understand how you managed to draw a distinction between right and left in terms of the intensity of the biases.
B. Not at all. It means that the left is a vacuum, and the absence of any thing is a vacuum. The absence of Christianity and the absence of Judaism look the same.
As for whose intentions are better, I am very doubtful. But that is an irrelevant discussion. The question is who is right, not who is righteous. One thing is clear: in a world that is entirely left, insane terror and unceasing violence will prevail. A moral and ideological vacuum brings people to frustration and violence and also to suicides. The naive utopia according to which the left brings peace is one of the more infantile ideas of the left.
That is demagoguery. We are talking about the liberal left, not communism. The question of why these two are both left was answered in Two Wagons.
Yes. The right line draws down the light of lovingkindness and the left line draws down the light of wisdom. And the middle line mediates between them. But the left side is also the sitra achra. Holiness is the side of the right, and the sitra achra draws nourishment from the deficiencies in holiness and has nothing of its own at all (and it is a help against holiness). Of course evil too has a role in the world. But one needs to know what is evil and what is good and what its deficiencies are, for evil was created in order to cause the good to correct itself, and afterwards it will disappear from the world. “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.”
In short, I am saying that the right is of first rank, and it needs to internalize this and begin to take responsibility for the People of Israel, otherwise the left will dismantle the People of Israel. There is no equality. The right is the one that should lead the people. The left is only the critical faculty, but it is not fit for leadership. There is no equality. There is hierarchy. The left was created in order to punish the right for its sins and bring it to correction, like the gentiles in relation to the People of Israel. And they too will be rewarded for this.
Progressives in America have a communist pattern. One must be blind not to see it. And following your comments, I think Western liberalism is neither right nor left. Right and left are derivatives of Westernness, but Westernness itself is neither right nor left (including liberal left).
A bright side of polarizations is that they are a quarter of the way toward separation. Perhaps in general the world should begin processes of agreed partition of a state into several parts, separate as much as possible (or completely separate), so that each group acts as independently as possible. For it seems that the hottest polarizations are within one state, and this is because completely different groups are crammed into one democratic vise (and also one budget), so that the “other” has influence “on me” or “on what’s mine.” In any overly sharp polarization one can (and should) place on the table the option of separation, and then each side will play according to the real cards in its hand (how much demand there is for it), and if they decide to divorce, they will decide. There are many technical problems of how to separate and how to divide the assets and capacities and friction zones, but even if one does not find a solution of complete separation, one can make do with approximate solutions of as much separation as possible. One hears many such voices.
If people supposedly cluster around different ideological positions but in practice around different sociological groups, then perhaps one should accept that and try to minimize the mutually forced influence between polarized groups.
I like to think in analogies. An analogy appropriate to the situation is, in my opinion, cell division. The two DNA strands separate, go to the poles of the cell (note this—to the poles), and it seems the cell stands before annihilation. But not so. The movement to the poles, and the breaking/splitting of the cell into two, four, eight, etc., is what ultimately preserves life in the system, adds and does not subtract. Only the process itself is slow, frightening, and takes time. We are trained (exactly so) to think and feel that war is terrible and that nothing in the world is worse than it, but in my view this is not so.
War is a tool in the service of humanity in order to reach new places that could not have been reached without it. From my Torah study I learn that this world is a world of separation, of polarization, and not of unity. Although all is one, and He is one and His name is one, within this unity the experience of life in this world is an experience of separation. This is lovingkindness all day long, as I understand it, because in exchange for God’s uprooting from within us, we became autonomous units with a distinct self. This personal self is forced, by the circumstances, to get along with other selves, but not at all times. Sometimes one must overcome another self, and one must always overcome one’s own selfhood.
After rather long years of general cooperation in the world, relative peace that enabled a great deal of progress and development, the time for dispute, for war, has arrived.
About war I learn from Hebrew: the root l-ch-m—meaning soldering/fusing, not separation. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and since then they have been fairly good friends. Germany did what it did to the world in general and to us in particular, and here we are—Israelis, Berlin, Milky, and it is the leader of the European Union(!).
Weapons of war—linguistically akin to kissing. Instruments of battle—linguistically akin to coupling. Penetration, breaching, conquering the heart, and again—life beats in the system, in exchange for some death. I hereby declare that I lovingly accept my death in the next war, מתוך belief that my death will faithfully serve the larger system called life. New life with new challenges.
The words of war, as Hebrew understands them, are words of connection, even if the connection exacts a price.
Everything in this world exacts a price. Everything.
But to turn us into zombies of peace, mumbling empty slogans all day in the face of reality, is a very bad thing. Sing a song to peace, certainly, but sing also to war. For there is a time for this and a time for that. And if, in a time of war, one tries to hasten peace, then we are found sinning against reality, and the price ultimately paid will be much higher than the initial price.
What I want to say is that there is no problem with polarization itself. It is simply a natural process that must come to expression once in a certain period of time. After all, one cannot live the past forever. Suddenly there is bitcoin, there is a new economic system, there is the internet, there are innovations, and the past has to go. The people of the past (that is my generation, people in their fifties, sixties, seventies) have to go. But they are not going. They are stuck in the windpipe of the future like a stone in a shoe. So one has to create some war, kill a few old people and a few young people, and create new life in the space that has opened up. The problem, as always, is with the pathetic attempts of people to hide the polarization, because I belong to the unifying side. It is that empty Lapid who never stops making people hated, hating, accusing, and cursing, and at the same time telling everyone how benevolent and unifying he is. Biden too, by the way, behaves like this.
I know it is not pleasant to hear words like “we’ll kill a few old people and a few young people.” But that is how it is. I did not create the system, and neither did you, Rabbi, nor the other readers. Dear God created the system so that war is a most important part of it. If one learns to see things this way, and looks at the tremendous progress that came with wars (in medicine, in technology, in transport of people or goods), then the whole system always operates toward adding life, renewal, and progress. And if at a certain moment things seem terrible or disastrous, one must not believe that appearance. It will pass, and afterwards things will be better.
I also know that you very, very, very much like to think logically, and to sweep aside all kinds of wild weeds of all-embracing spirituality like the one here. But that too is part of the system. You can accept it, and you can scoff at it.
For me it makes no difference. You are a dear person regardless of your response to these things.
And here I come to things I could never have believed I would ever write: my enemy, the typical left-wing inhabitant of the Land of Israel (or perhaps the typical Aelia Capitolina type), his life too is important and precious. True, “I hate them with utmost hatred; they have become my enemies,” but at the same time: “God has made the one corresponding to the other.” God made it.
Therefore the polarization is totally fine, even if it costs my life or the lives of those dear to me, God forbid, God forbid, God forbid.
This world is only one milestone on a very, very long road. That is my faith.
And you—the more you try to bridge the polarization, the more you will find yourselves increasing the price of the war to the point of missiles and uraniums.
Whatever will be—He is one and there is no dispute. It is only a small misunderstanding.
You mentioned this briefly in the column, but perhaps the problem of those who polarize is the transition from micro to macro, that is, analyzing the macro using the law of small numbers (your column on Kahneman and Breaking the Silence). A good example of this is Eliezer Melchiel’s criticism of David Grossman, who is not suspected in my eyes of deliberate blindness. See here as well:https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.2379699
Truly “Lights of War.” You blatantly ignore all the praises of peace and the severity of the prohibitions of murder in the Torah and Hazal.
I will only note that you are speaking of polarization in the sense of radicalization and moving away toward the sides, whereas I spoke of it in the sense of “mega-identity” and illusory correlations. The former is positive (even if not war surrounding it), and the latter is foolish and negative.
In principle I am entirely in favor, but it will not help. In the separated groups polarization will reappear until we reach units of a single individual, and then the “state of nature” will force us to organize again in groups. And so on and so forth. In the next column I will point out that polarization is built into us.
I absolutely do not mean matters involving violation of the above prohibition. Does either side think of forcing the other to remain its partner in one democracy? One can separate peacefully (even if under terms dictated by one side).
Sorry, this message was a mistake
With God’s help, Wednesday, on the section “upon his two shoulders,” 5782
To Tir and Gitz—many greetings,
According to your proposal to solve social-political polarization by separation, in the well-known method of “ten states for ten peoples”—what will you do with a family among whose children there are a leftist and a right-winger, a conservative and a liberal, a capitalist and a socialist, a Haredi and a secular person, a Hardal person and a religious-lite and a traditional one? Where will this family go, representing a considerable part of our people’s families?
And what will one do who is himself composed of several opposites: he is Haredi but a “dove” in the political sense, or religious-liberal yet right-wing, or someone who combines in his personality a conservative “tir” with a revolutionary “gitz”—to which state will he go? Perhaps to “Ramdaistan” 🙂
And probably, if the opposites are found in many people and publics, each side has value—there is importance to halakhic commitment, but there is also importance to the feeling of personal freedom; there is importance to free competition, but there is also importance to providing social security and help for the weak; there is importance to preserving the security of the state, but there is also importance to consideration for strangers, and so on.
The opposition and heated argument between the two poles is supposed to give rise to different forms of “synthesis” that will blend, in one dosage or another, the just demands of the two poles and bring about a proper balance.
After all, our entire existence on our planet is built on the balance between the force of gravity pulling us toward the sun and the centrifugal force pulling us outward. And thus, in the balance between opposite forces, we remain in an orbit in which we enjoy the light and heat of the sun but do not burn.
Regards, Shaykh al-Mashiach Farid Abu-Mazen
Paragraph 3, line 2
… but there is also importance to the feeling of personal freedom; …
The different children can be citizens of neighboring friendly entities. If there are many mixed-opinion families, that means the ideological polarization does not map onto social groups, and then separation is not needed in the first place. And the depth of separation can be graduated.
Exactly right. They are even more extreme than the communists. In communism there is a very strong kernel of truth, except that it requires a certain human development. Progressivism is all falsehood and emptiness. It is the only ideology in the world that has no point of truth in it, because its very ideology is that there is no truth (postmodernism), and therefore there is no meaning either.
Of course, what I mean when I say they are more extreme than the communists is in their ideology of “equality of outcomes” and not only “equality of opportunity” (which according to them does not really exist. In a certain sense of justice, indeed there is no absolute equality of opportunity, but one can aspire to it). In communism the guiding line is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” which really is the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But without fear of Heaven (which in communism was expressed in the fact that, according to it, there is no true collective but only individuals who joined together for the sake of better material lives, unlike the People of Israel), it will fall into the hands of the ego, and then it will be ten times worse even than swinish capitalism, as happened in the USSR, North Korea, China, Venezuela, etc. But equality of outcomes is simply the enslavement of human beings to completely alien other human beings. Progressivism is righteousness carried to an extreme, and therefore also evil.
Dear Hayota,
On the principled level I agree. But unfortunately there are two main problems here:
A. The consumers of significant literature and cinema (excluding entertaining literature and cinema, whose effect actually reinforces the exact opposite) are relatively very few—and therefore it is very hard to build on a move based on that.
I devoted most of my professional life to the attempt to reach a broad consumer audience; and for that purpose I agreed to serve “behind enemy lines” (10 years in Keshet broadcasts, the most commercial Channel 2), and to create prime-time series such as Mixed Jerusalem (a family with many disputes) and Arab Labor (challenging the stereotypes and the automatic hostility toward the Israeli Arab).
But I always felt that this was a drop in the sea, something one cannot rely on.
B. Even with literature and cinema of this kind—without mediation toward active “consumption” by the readers/viewers—the influence is very limited. And for that you need a dramatic revolution in the entire education system, one that would expose these works, and especially their significance, to the broad public.
How do you say the opposite of “you have comforted me”? “You have despaired me”?
I think the distinction between high and low is not sharp. Arab Labor really did wonderful work on this issue. It seems to me that drama is a bit more effective than comedy, because it aims more powerfully at the emotional world, and that is where the sought-for empathy is hiding.
Corrections: “Of course…”
“In their ideology of ‘equality…’ and not only of ‘equality…’”
“(which in communism was expressed in the fact that…)”
“It is simply the enslavement of human beings to other human beings who are strangers (after all, it is an ideology of extreme individualism; the equality for them is derived, among other things, from the fact that there are no rules, only individuals)….”
It seems to me that a large part of the process works in reverse: “they” mark our candidate/opinion, and therefore we will support it, and the more it is a finger in the eye of “them,” the more it will be our banner.
Therefore the attempt to step into the other side’s shoes is always doomed to fail. Because every choice that a side makes as a reaction is something lacking logic outside the history of the conflict. Since both sides make sure to adopt opinions that cannot be explained, and they wave around the irrationality of the other side, it is easy for them to feel they are right.
When that is the state of affairs, precisely non-rational figures will seize center stage, and provocations will become the consensus.
Not for nothing do people speak of how they “woke up from X” when they clearly fell captive to Y, as if they had replaced an addiction to alcohol with an addiction to heroin.
And thus the account of creation begins with a clear dichotomous separation between light and darkness and between earth and heaven. But on the third day the dry land began to sprout plants that need the rain of heaven; on the fourth day the luminaries in heaven began to shine on the earth, and even the night ceased to be absolute darkness. The sun assists the process of photosynthesis, in which oxygen is produced, needed by the animals that would be created on the fifth day, and in return they would produce carbon dioxide for the benefit of the plants.
And on the sixth day man will arrive, combining a material body with a soul from the upper world. He will unite in his governance the worlds of animal, plant, and inanimate matter. He will pasture and rule the animal world, and work and guard the earth and its vegetation. And on the Sabbath man will bring down spiritual abundance from the upper world to the earth and create in this world “a semblance of the World to Come.”
Polarization was created only in order to sharpen the need for both poles, a need that will bring about complementarity and mutual fertilization. To turn “polarization” into “for it was good” 🙂
Regards, Yaron Tzemach Fish”l Plankton HaLevi
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… to sharpen the need for both poles, …
So too in the “war of Torah.” There are fierce and stormy disputes. Precisely because both sides struggle for the truth dear to them, the tones rise and grow sharper. But when one looks in historical perspective, one sees that both sides were essential in order to reach the complex and balanced truth.
And in the words of Rabbi A. I. Kook (in Olat Re’iyah), that “Torah scholars increase peace in the world” precisely through their stormy arguments, which reveal all the complex sides of the complete truth. The birth-pangs of dispute between fragments of truth are the “labor pains” that bring great joy when seeing the complete “puzzle.” A dialectic that ends in harmony.
Regards, Nehorai Shraga Agami-Psissovitch
And the fact that today there are moral restraints in the Western world against releasing hatred leads to channeling it into other routes. As in Shauli’s proposal for civil war instead of a fifth round of elections. https://youtu.be/5eQBsWQfUxc
In his world it seems that the “division of roles” is reversed: the “left” supports boundless kindness both toward the deserving and the undeserving, while the “right” holds fast to the attribute of strict justice toward the nations of the world and the enemies of Israel.
Regards, Tzvi Tifarah
However, in relation to the “people of the right,” religious people and settlers, the “left” indeed holds to the attribute of judgment, in accordance with the order of the sefirot 🙂
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In our world it seems that the “division …
It should, however, be noted that although there is room for “the boiling passion of Torah” in response to outrageous thoughts and deeds, nevertheless Ravina concludes that “to teach oneself calmly is preferable.” Despite the storm of emotions, one should note that things said in an informative and respectful way, without crude bluster, persuade the “neutral listener,” who is the “silent majority,” more effectively. The words of the wise, spoken gently, are heard!
Regards, Nasa”f
To calm the storm of emotions, the advice of our Minister of Internal Security helps: “Drink a glass of water!” And “water” means nothing but Torah, which increases understanding of the different opinions and breathes hope for a better future. Not for nothing did our Finance Minister impose a tax on sweetened beverages. Nothing quenches thirst and truly sweetens life like waters of knowledge 🙂
With the blessing, “May calm be yours,” Simcha Fish”l Plankton, Yeshivat “Givat HaHumor”
A. Polarization in the context of hatred today is probably not all that extreme. Haganah people no longer kill Etzel people, and in America too the Civil War has already ended. There is somewhat of a sense that this falls under “Do not say that the former days were better than these.”
B. In the context of strengthening illusory correlations or strengthening the correlation to political positions—this is probably true.
I am not one of those who talk a lot about postmodernism, nor do I see myself as a great expert on the subject, but perhaps there is a hidden assumption in the public that there is no truth, and therefore there is no point in examining a position according to its correctness but according to its practical implications—people choose positions according to what will benefit my side, and that is the causal factor connecting positions that ostensibly should not be correlated.
C. The assumption behind the proposal to step into the other’s shoes is also part of the thinking that different identity is the cause of the dispute and there is no point in clarifying it substantively. Therefore I very much agree with your words here that the solution is based on substantive discussion, and as was said in the comments, on using the principle of charity toward the other’s words.
Haganah people were dozens of times better than the progressive left (which is really the leader of the left camp at the depth of things), which is much more fanatical than the communist left. They do not kill because they have no power. But in America during the riots after the George Floyd story, kill they certainly did. I recently read an interview with the son of one of the leaders of Lehi, who said that Haganah people were much better than today’s left because they too cared for the People of Israel and wanted to do what was right for the People of Israel according to their own vision and in their own way. Even about Rabin I think that was so (even if the buds were already in his time). Today’s left (in its conscious and unconscious religion) is anti-national and even more than that anti-Jewish. Wait for what is coming.
There is no need for civil war, and there must not be one. We need to learn the lesson from the period of the Second Temple, no? This war is a war over consciousness, not over the body. What does need to happen is to collapse the left psychologically. In any case it is already one and a half feet over the edge of the abyss of insanity. Only one more light push is needed and that’s it. What I believe will happen in that situation is that 60% or 70% of the left will become right-wing, because that is what they truly are within (the Jewish point will shine), and the rest—the mixed multitude among them—will come out, and they will launch a physical war (or cooperate with our enemies openly and consciously), and that will be their end in Israeli public life.
Two fresh examples
https://www.inn.co.il/news/540709
https://www.mako.co.il/news-politics/2022_q1/Article-7f28a867992ee71026.htm?sCh=31750a2610f26110&pId=173113802
The first example is excellent (“ideological disputes,” yeah right). The second less so, because there it really is personal and ethical, not ideological.
Here is another fresh example https://www.mako.co.il/news-entertainment/2022_q1/Article-471488f19a3ee71027.htm?sCh=31750a2610f26110&pId=173113802
How the Holy One, blessed be He, arranges everything according to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s posts
Here I do not see a connection.
No. That is just standard leftism.
The situation here in Israel—and in fact also in the U.S., though with somewhat different intensity—is different from ordinary polarization and war like that of terrorists and haters. Here the other side—as the rabbi noted—is autistic. And that is a problem. Autism (insensitivity) leads to foolishness, that leads to stupidity, and that ultimately leads to evil. The dispute today between right and left (which is really reflected in the war of “only Bibi” versus “anything but Bibi”) is not about land for peace or religion and state (nor even conservatism versus liberalism).
Today the war is that of conservatism (and also liberalism) against progressivism (what Rabbi Michi here calls left-wing liberalism, but that is not a good name. This is really a religion with coercion, whereas liberalism is freedom). That is, the war here is between the concept of the “collective” and the concept of the “individual.” Progressivism is a derivative of the religion of extreme individualism, in which there are no rules and they are fictitious (postmodernism). According to progressivism there is no such thing as the People of Israel or Jewishness, and these are racist concepts in their eyes. There is only the state and formal, empty Israeli citizenship. Therefore, from their standpoint Jews are equal to Arabs in every respect. This is an intolerable situation for one who believes in the shared destiny of Jews, especially here in a state built on the blood spilled by those who believed in this collective. And it also produces intolerable paradoxes such as affirmative action for Arabs at the expense of Jews in admission to universities, etc., and National Insurance (?!) for Arabs, and today this has already reached a peak with the legalization of illegal Arab localities and the non-legalization of such localities among Jews (although in truth it ought to be the other way around. But there is not even equality). Changing national-priority-area status (?!) in favor of Arab localities, etc.
There is an argument within Israeli society whether this society (the People of Israel) really exists or not. There is, of course, a correlation between this asymmetry and the asymmetry of the left’s lack of self-awareness, since it thinks it is merely arranging the rules of the game and does not understand that it too is a player on the field. How does the rabbi want there to be peace within a society when one side in the dispute thinks that this very society is a bad thing? According to its view, it should separate from it and that’s it. It has no business imposing its opinion and religion on the other side, which does believe in it. In short, the depth of the war between right and left today is whether the State of Israel will be the state of the Jews (not a Jewish state!!) or a state of all its citizens. That is, whether the Jewish people deserve a state of their own or not. Whether Jews may prefer Jews over foreigners (and certainly over the Arabs, who are a fifth column) as in a family, or not. The very concept of the family is also attacked by progressivism for the same reasons.
And of course the attack on Bibi does not really stem from issues of corruption (as is already agreed by most people. Even Gideon Levy of Haaretz has already written that the prosecution and senior security establishment figures are persecuting Bibi), but because he represents the leadership of the right—of the People of Israel. And Shaked and Bennett and Sa’ar—who do not understand that this is the real war—are indeed collaborating with the left, and we see that in the government they are the ones yielding to the left on matters of appointing judges and the attorney general, not the other way around. Why should the left care about authorizing some settlement in Judea and Samaria or settlement in the Golan Heights? That is small change, and insignificant relative to the question of who staffs the institutions of the state, which today in the senior positions are staffed by progressives (not liberals) or by those trying to curry favor with them (quoting the correct opinions, like the police commissioner who said the riots stemmed from inequality even though the Arabs already receive several times more than their contribution to the public purse. And in the end Naftali Bennett (!) repeated his words in some interview. And even Rabbi Michi (!!!) mentioned something on the matter). This is not accidental. Why should they care where people settle if in any case the state will not be the state of the Jews?
Now people will say these are only Meretz and Labor. But they lead the discourse and the language that the entire left and the media use. And therefore Lapid and the rest of his party members (Ram Ben-Barak) show—without being aware of it—that they too are progressives (they do not believe in the People of Israel). And even Gantz speaks about an equality law as an amendment to the Nation-State Law (and prefers the lives of Palestinian enemy civilians over Jewish soldiers—again, he does not believe in the Palestinian collective either, which bears responsibility for the actions of its army).
And we also see Bennett suddenly speaking at a ceremony about Ben-Gurion’s statism, and without noticing he includes Arabs in that statehood too (?!!!), and Sa’ar, who for some reason does not fight to appoint legally conservative gatekeepers but instead makes alliances with Hayut… And Shaked’s surrender on this issue is starting to show… They are not leftists. They are foolish right-wingers whose eyes are blinded by power (and Bennett himself is also a crook). “Useful idiots,” in Bolshevik terms.
Of course this whole paradox of the left stems from Russell’s usual paradox. The existence of the set of all non-strange sets (I no longer have the energy and time to show it here. Maybe that is what Rabbi Michi will speak about in the next column). Rabbi Michi wrote the book about this already 20 years ago (in Sivan it will be exactly 20 years).
So there are wicked people in our story—the left are the wicked ones (and everyone who joins with them).
Q.E.D.