You do not seem to be addressing the misaligned incentives—such as politicians often being incentivised to exaggerate and perpetuate divisions, rather than address them. Observe how in controversial areas (e.g. gun rights vs gun control) common sense reforms that have broad public support still tend to not happen.
You raise a good point. This story does not contain politicians who profit from playing factions against one another and maintaining polarization. It might make the story a bit more applicable to our world if there were villagers who gained social influence from being the champions of each side while never engaging in negotiation or brainstorming, and who subsequently lost that power once the villagers learned how to do those things for themselves. I may go back and add that in; thanks for the suggestion!
As for our own world, I predict that as people see just how possible it is to find common ground and build on it, they will lose their susceptibility to the polarization efforts of politicians. By learning how to establish mutual understanding and trust instead of fearing each other, they will become more willing to vote their own faction’s politicians out of office and will therefore be able to hold their politicians accountable. The politicians will be forced to do their jobs effectively in order to keep their positions.
As for our own world, I predict that as people see just how possible it is to find common ground and build on it, they will lose their susceptibility to the polarization efforts of politicians.
But to what extent the divisions are driven by genuine desire to address the issue(s) vs just a raw “us vs them” drives (think—divisions between fandoms of rival sports teams) where the actual issues are just an excuse to think “we are better then them”?
Think of a spectrum between a world with overabundant resources where trying to hoard them is stupid and “learn to be friends with everybody” is the right strategy vs a literal zombie apocalypse scenario where anybody even thinking of being friendly to the zombies endangers not only themselves, but their whole community, and hoarding is essential to survival. The reality of this world is that for quite a while resources tended to indeed become more abundant, resulting in “we are all in this together” mentality tending to win over “us vs them” one more often than not, but if somebody is truly in zombie apocalypse survival mode, there is fairly little you can do to convince them to embrace “zombies”.
The first step is most important. You don’t have to start by convincing someone there are no zombies. You just have to show them that you’re not going to let any zombies get them. Sometimes that means making small concessions by agreeing to contingencies against hypothetical zombies.
You can tell someone that there’s nothing in the dark basement, but to get them to make it five feet in to the light switch, sometimes it’s most effective to just hand them a crowbar for defense.
People need to feel safe before they can think. I consider this technique an Asymmetric Weapon version of empathy mindset: making people feel safe helps them feel comfortable suspending their assumptions and reevaluating them.
Yes, unfortunately you have to figure out how to do all that when there are politicians they consider to be of their side screaming “look, zombies, zombies!!!” and the people you are trying to claim down suspect that you might also be a secret zombie...
Ah, that’s where the anti-zombie shibboleths come in handy. People who are afraid of zombies “know” that zombies can’t understand the values of regular, living people. (The zombies being a metaphor for a distorted view of one’s ideological opponents.)
All I have to do is describe why being alive is good and being a zombie is bad, and that proves I’m not a zombie. That calms people down, to the point where we can explore some possible advantages of zombiehood and disadvantages of having vital function, and what we can do about that without losing what we value about breathing, having a heartbeat, et cetera.
Any expert on conflict resolution can tell you that one of the first things to do is to paraphrase and validate someone’s concerns. I can tell you that if you dig deep enough existentially into someone’s values, there’s usually something to understand, and even agree with on some level, even if you don’t agree with the methods they use to pursue those values.
As for the politicians spreading panic, they aren’t literally standing around screaming at people all the time. There is plenty of opportunity to help people feel safe enough to think. The main problem that I occasionally run into is when a person just gets into a loop of regurgitating information, like they’re a one-person echo chamber. Those people tend to be on the older side, and I don’t think they’re prevalent enough or capable enough to try and shut down intelligent discussion.
P.S. Granted, the poem doesn’t describe the process by which people are inspired to negotiate with each other and actually solve their problem. In real life I expect that process can be made easier by… having people read the poem. We’ll see if the satire is effective.
You do not seem to be addressing the misaligned incentives—such as politicians often being incentivised to exaggerate and perpetuate divisions, rather than address them. Observe how in controversial areas (e.g. gun rights vs gun control) common sense reforms that have broad public support still tend to not happen.
You raise a good point. This story does not contain politicians who profit from playing factions against one another and maintaining polarization. It might make the story a bit more applicable to our world if there were villagers who gained social influence from being the champions of each side while never engaging in negotiation or brainstorming, and who subsequently lost that power once the villagers learned how to do those things for themselves. I may go back and add that in; thanks for the suggestion!
As for our own world, I predict that as people see just how possible it is to find common ground and build on it, they will lose their susceptibility to the polarization efforts of politicians. By learning how to establish mutual understanding and trust instead of fearing each other, they will become more willing to vote their own faction’s politicians out of office and will therefore be able to hold their politicians accountable. The politicians will be forced to do their jobs effectively in order to keep their positions.
Does that make sense?
But to what extent the divisions are driven by genuine desire to address the issue(s) vs just a raw “us vs them” drives (think—divisions between fandoms of rival sports teams) where the actual issues are just an excuse to think “we are better then them”?
Think of a spectrum between a world with overabundant resources where trying to hoard them is stupid and “learn to be friends with everybody” is the right strategy vs a literal zombie apocalypse scenario where anybody even thinking of being friendly to the zombies endangers not only themselves, but their whole community, and hoarding is essential to survival. The reality of this world is that for quite a while resources tended to indeed become more abundant, resulting in “we are all in this together” mentality tending to win over “us vs them” one more often than not, but if somebody is truly in zombie apocalypse survival mode, there is fairly little you can do to convince them to embrace “zombies”.
That’s where the deconstruction method comes in:
Make them comfortable.
Make them think.
Make them choose.
The first step is most important. You don’t have to start by convincing someone there are no zombies. You just have to show them that you’re not going to let any zombies get them. Sometimes that means making small concessions by agreeing to contingencies against hypothetical zombies.
You can tell someone that there’s nothing in the dark basement, but to get them to make it five feet in to the light switch, sometimes it’s most effective to just hand them a crowbar for defense.
People need to feel safe before they can think. I consider this technique an Asymmetric Weapon version of empathy mindset: making people feel safe helps them feel comfortable suspending their assumptions and reevaluating them.
How does that sound?
Yes, unfortunately you have to figure out how to do all that when there are politicians they consider to be of their side screaming “look, zombies, zombies!!!” and the people you are trying to claim down suspect that you might also be a secret zombie...
Ah, that’s where the anti-zombie shibboleths come in handy. People who are afraid of zombies “know” that zombies can’t understand the values of regular, living people. (The zombies being a metaphor for a distorted view of one’s ideological opponents.)
All I have to do is describe why being alive is good and being a zombie is bad, and that proves I’m not a zombie. That calms people down, to the point where we can explore some possible advantages of zombiehood and disadvantages of having vital function, and what we can do about that without losing what we value about breathing, having a heartbeat, et cetera.
Any expert on conflict resolution can tell you that one of the first things to do is to paraphrase and validate someone’s concerns. I can tell you that if you dig deep enough existentially into someone’s values, there’s usually something to understand, and even agree with on some level, even if you don’t agree with the methods they use to pursue those values.
As for the politicians spreading panic, they aren’t literally standing around screaming at people all the time. There is plenty of opportunity to help people feel safe enough to think. The main problem that I occasionally run into is when a person just gets into a loop of regurgitating information, like they’re a one-person echo chamber. Those people tend to be on the older side, and I don’t think they’re prevalent enough or capable enough to try and shut down intelligent discussion.
Does that all make sense?
I ended up writing a satirical poem about politicians exaggerating and perpetuating divisions in order to profit from conflict. What do you think? https://ginnungagapfoundation.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/your-party-is-not-your-friend-or-the-new-library-and-the-old-baseball-diamond/
P.S. Granted, the poem doesn’t describe the process by which people are inspired to negotiate with each other and actually solve their problem. In real life I expect that process can be made easier by… having people read the poem. We’ll see if the satire is effective.