The Paris shootings shocked the world and signaled deep polarized views. Why are views so polarized everywhere?
Polarization today is more acute than ever in all societies; protests in some, extremism in others. Syria is already in civil war, whilst 45 percent of people in Scotland voted for separation from the United Kingdom. Factionalism, fanaticism and nationalism arise when people become insecure about their jobs, health and security.
The World Economic Forum has identified 10 top trends for 2015. These are (1) deepening income inequality, (2) persistent jobless growth, (3) lack of leadership, (4) rising geopolitical competition, (5) weakening of representative democracy, (6) rising pollution in the developing world, (7) increasing occurrence of severe weather events, (8) intensifying nationalism, (9) increasing water stress; and (10) growing health concerns, plus an emerging concern on immigration.
This long list can be simplified into three sets of divisive issues ― economic (inequality, unemployment and lack of leadership), climate and environment (pollution, weather change, water stress) and social (geopolitical tension, weakening democracy, nationalism, health and immigration).
Poverty, unemployment, natural disasters, civil strife all give rise to insecurity, which is perhaps why 86 percent of the people WEF surveyed thought that there is global lack of leadership. After all, when communities are insecure, it is the great statesmen or stateswomen who stand up to provide the vision, confidence and trust to pass through difficult times and hold people together.
We get instead almost total disconnect between citizens and their governments. The WEF has perceptively identified: “we have 19th-century institutions with 20th-century mindsets, attempting to communicate with 21st century citizens”. Small wonder that representative democracy is weakened when it is defined as the absolute freedom to elect or reject leaders with short-term agendas, pandering to popular opinion of the moment.
Politics is supposed to be the art of the compromise, but in a global society, deeply divided by ideology, culture, religion, class or generation, it is not even clear that compromise will work. Occupy Hong Kong and the youth movement is an example where society is so polarized along generational lines that both sides talk past each other. In Bangkok, such protests were solved by a military coup.
Technology has been a major disruptor of the status quo. It is very cool to have the latest smartphone, but information is delivered so fast that there is as much disinformation and distortion of public opinion through Twitter and Facebook as manipulation by media channels. But governments cannot provide the leadership when they genuinely do not know better than the latest opinion polls or what Big Data is telling them on the web.
No less a statesman like Henry Kissinger, in his latest book “World Order” bemoans the absence of leadership today. He identifies perceptively that in the Age of the Internet, every Netizen thinks that, having access to all kinds of information, justice and freedom can be demanded and will be available instantly on autopilot. The young forget that what exists today is a confluence of history, culture, institutions and geography.
Technology has cut short the time to think, reflect and act. Every decision is evaluated by instant likes and dislikes, making opinions absolute, rather than relative.
Man is a social animal. We live today in crowded space, made tolerable only because we are tolerant of each other. Absolutism and extremism in any religion, creed or culture can lead only to absolute or radical outcomes.
It is already an accepted fact in biology and botany that monoculture makes for system fragility. The most stable systems are those which are open, diverse and adaptable, which allows for simultaneous competition and cooperation of different ideas, action and pathways.
In technology as in real life, there are no absolute winners or one single path to God or Nirvana. What works is fuzzy logic, the ability to bridge different technical standards, rules or systems. Fuzzy logic is about tolerance ― for different standards, values and beliefs.
The need for humility and tolerance is greater than ever, because the familiar path of the past is no longer an adequate guide for an uncertain future.
The Fourth Estate ― the media ― used to play an important role as the channel through which relatively independent and informed opinions are presented for the public debate. But as the commercial basis of print media is being taken over by the Internet, the Web has become a jungle of commercial or issue-biased information, which in turn reinforces extreme views and action, particularly for the innocent young.
An open society is one in which the system and society is tolerant of differences of views and opinions, but is moderate and humble in response to such differences.
There are of course limits to moderation and tolerance. When someone inflicts violence on others and threatens public security, then there will be consequences. Extreme views have a tendency to generate an arms race of escalating violence and retaliatory action. No one wins from escalating infliction of violence on each other.
When individuals take the law into their own hands, there is no rule of law. The law and the state can only do so much in restraining individual anti-social behavior. The heavy hand of the state bureaucracy can have lots of unintended consequences.
Which is why family and community are so important in reinforcing the respect of values of mutual recognition, mutual respect and tolerance of the fact that we are different, we should be different, and we can and should all live together respecting each other’s values and beliefs.
Inequality has led to the breakdown of family and community values. Parents busy with trying to make money or just living day to day neglect their young, delegating their education to others, including the Internet. Should we be surprised if some of them end up being influenced by extremist views and take antisocial action?
Time for parents and communities to take ownership and responsibility for their children’s and their own future.
By Andrew Sheng
Andrew Sheng is writing on global issues from Asian perspectives. ― Ed.
(Asia News Network)
