I saved this to read when I could give it full attention because it's so much everything related to what I think about all the time -- a "what is broken at the center of the human species" question that I walk with all the time. And I think, rereading the questions, that it's important to look at it as a species-scale problem rather than…
I saved this to read when I could give it full attention because it's so much everything related to what I think about all the time -- a "what is broken at the center of the human species" question that I walk with all the time. And I think, rereading the questions, that it's important to look at it as a species-scale problem rather than purely an American one. My dad is Russian and my husband is English and we've lived in a few different countries and the kinds of divisions/tribalism/identity we're talking about isn't any different. It's something deeper and I still don't know what it is.
I have been rereading Pankaj Mishra's 2017 book "Age of Anger," which is useful for context of these questions. There's a lot in there I have to backtrack and think about, but the brushstrokes of anti-elite populism and where it comes from (and how art and poetry, for example, can heighten a calling for national identity that relies on hate of an out-group) is the main thesis, and it covers several countries over several centuries.
Debate is something that can be valuable, but not with this kind of structure. I personally love having that in my background because it forced me to take the given question and learn to defend it from any angle. It's not the winning of debate that provides the deeper thinking; it's learning to see issues and values from a variety of perspective -- not just see them, but convincingly defend them. Maybe it's just me, but it taught me to always at least attempt to understand the other side of a question.
As always, so thoughtful (and another great book rec!)... really appreciate the nudge to expand my gaze here from merely being an American phenomenon to a human one!
No that your work has to be international! I just personally always need reminders that tribal tendencies are human rather than cultural. (One of the first books I read after the 2016 election was The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and psychologist Howard Cutler, and it forced me to look at that broader perspective because it focused a lot on the Rwandan genocide and the Serbian civil war in the 1990s and how people who were neighbors and colleagues one day could be killing each other the next.)
I saved this to read when I could give it full attention because it's so much everything related to what I think about all the time -- a "what is broken at the center of the human species" question that I walk with all the time. And I think, rereading the questions, that it's important to look at it as a species-scale problem rather than purely an American one. My dad is Russian and my husband is English and we've lived in a few different countries and the kinds of divisions/tribalism/identity we're talking about isn't any different. It's something deeper and I still don't know what it is.
I have been rereading Pankaj Mishra's 2017 book "Age of Anger," which is useful for context of these questions. There's a lot in there I have to backtrack and think about, but the brushstrokes of anti-elite populism and where it comes from (and how art and poetry, for example, can heighten a calling for national identity that relies on hate of an out-group) is the main thesis, and it covers several countries over several centuries.
Debate is something that can be valuable, but not with this kind of structure. I personally love having that in my background because it forced me to take the given question and learn to defend it from any angle. It's not the winning of debate that provides the deeper thinking; it's learning to see issues and values from a variety of perspective -- not just see them, but convincingly defend them. Maybe it's just me, but it taught me to always at least attempt to understand the other side of a question.
As always, so thoughtful (and another great book rec!)... really appreciate the nudge to expand my gaze here from merely being an American phenomenon to a human one!
No that your work has to be international! I just personally always need reminders that tribal tendencies are human rather than cultural. (One of the first books I read after the 2016 election was The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and psychologist Howard Cutler, and it forced me to look at that broader perspective because it focused a lot on the Rwandan genocide and the Serbian civil war in the 1990s and how people who were neighbors and colleagues one day could be killing each other the next.)