‘There are two types of people in the world: those who divide the world into two types, and those who don’t’ (Gloria Steinem at the 2016 Sydney Writer’s Festival, amongst a good few other people).
Whilst Gloria Steinem had her tongue firmly in her cheek, she was pointing to a common and potentially dangerous way of thinking—the false dichotomy. This is a rhetorical device: that is, reduce the world to two simple and opposite states, one of which can be easily disregarded, meaning that the remaining state is the only possible explanation of the world.
The dichotomy part is clear: there are two opposing views or states. The ‘false’ part is less clear: the alternate states or options are often caricatures, a limited or exaggerated characterisation of what is happening. There is some misdirection going on here; look at the argument between the two options, not whether the options are valid or realistic. There is no nuance in this argument, no room for grey. Gun control is either a reasonable extension of personal choice or overreach and interference by Government that is creating a police state; to get better public schools, you must raise taxes.
This reduces public debate to a stand-off or worse a slanging match where the discussion is a trade of insults rather than a genuine engagement with the substance of an issue or a discussion that seeks to find a joint solution to a complex problem. Lines are drawn; positions taken; it is the intellectual equivalent of trench warfare.
The danger of this emerging habit of seeing a polarised world is magnified by our awareness of our confirmation bias: that is, we selectively find evidence to support what we already know is true and ignore contrary evidence.
Confirmation bias has become even more of an issue now; we are overloaded with information and potential sources of information, so we filter our inputs according to our unstated and often unrecognised biases. Some of the very partisan nature of the public debate in the US in the lead up to the 2016 election has been attributed to the news in the age of the internet. I can choose my news sources, which are becoming more partisan and selective, and so only see the world through people who share my world view. George Saunders (‘Who are all these Trump supporters?’ The New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2016 Issue) characterised the development of ‘Left Land’ and ‘Right Land’ where ‘each of us constructs a custom informational universe’ and the two domains ‘draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems’.
We also know that our brains are plastic and we are continuously making and strengthening neural pathways (The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, Penguin, 2007). These two factors mean that we can create and reinforce a world view that is partial and based on incomplete evidence and over time come to believe even more strongly that this is the right view.
This then is a strong argument for nuance and emergence – we need to be open to new evidence, pay attention to the source of the evidence and actively seek those areas where there is convergence and solutions that serve the greatest number of people. The risk of creating significant (and artificial) divisions in our community is increasing and just because of the way we see the world. In an age of increasing complexity and diversity, a narrowing of our world view does not serve us individually or collectively.
