Newsletter #207 — February 11, 2024

Reader Suggested Links

Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.

• Left / Right Conflict
  The GOP’s True Priority — An article that tries to make sense of the collapse of one of the most promising bipartisan negotiations in recent years – the one that combined aid for Israel and Ukraine with border security measures.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Why Israel Is Winning in Gaza — This article offers what appears to be an authoritative account (from an Israeli perspective) of the military aspects of the ongoing war in Gaza.
• Left / Right Conflict
  Trump Came for Their Party but Took Over Their Souls — An analysis of the way in which Trumpism has completely supplanted the previous policy priorities of the Republican Party.
• Disinformation
  The Weaponization of "Scientific Consensus" — Another threat to the accuracy of our perceptions about the world we inhabit, "scientific" efforts to distort scientific findings.

Colleague Activities

Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.

• Saving Democracy
  How We Could Lose Our Democracy — We prepare for disasters by understanding how they could happen.
• Saving Democracy
  Americans’ Views on Protecting and Improving Our Democracy — Key findings from a national survey of 1,005 registered voters Conducted December 21-24, 2023, conduced by Hart Research for More Perfect.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  Civil Rights: A Most Righteous Hangover — Ashok Panikkar's reflections on how we took away the wrong lessons from US Civil Rights Movement, which has now contributed to the weakening of minority rights and Western democracies over the last few decades.
• Social Complexity
  Pluralism, Plurality, and the Generation of Collective Wisdom — Ideas about how the generation of collective wisdom can enhance the work of the New Pluralists and others interested in escaping the destructive hyper-polarization and stagnation.
• Social Complexity
  Co-Intelligence Institute Writing and Blog — Focusing on Intelligence, wholeness, systems, complexity, process and participation. Lots of stuff here!
• Big Picture Thinking Projects
  Sources of Wisdom — From the Co-Intelligence Institute's Wise Democracy Project. They suggest ways to comprehend a bigger picture – that can help us think about how to incorporate more wisdom into our governance processes.
• Saving Democracy
  Faces of Democracy — A campaign of election officials and poll workers to strengthen U.S. elections

Beyond Intractability in Context

From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.

• Disinformation
  The For-Profit D.C. Firm Staging America’s ‘Grassroots’ Movements — An astonishing window into the shady world in which "bad-faith" actors manipulate our politics and inflame (and, sometimes, generate) conflict and animosity.
• Class Inequity
  Meritocracy and Its Discontents — A review and summary of two new books that delve into the debate over whether the meritocracy has had a positive or negative impact on society.
• Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
  When It Comes to Dating, Ambition Might Matter More Than Politics — More reflections on the tensions that are making it harder for men and women to form stable successful families.
• Class Inequity
  Incompetent Elites Make Trump Look Appealing — A big part of the reason why grassroots citizens are increasingly hostile toward society's elites -- those elites are failing to earn their lavish compensation.
• Media Reform
  The problem with social media is that it exists at all — A report on an interesting study that reveals that people would actually be willing to pay to remove social media from their lives and the lives of their friends.
• Class Inequity
  The Grand Canyon-Sized Chasm Between Elites and Ordinary Americans — The report on what is likely the United States' biggest and most consequential political divide -– the one that separates elites from the rest of society.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Building the Palestinian State With Salam Fayyad — An interview with the Palestinian leader who, perhaps more than anyone, tried to bring peace and prosperity to the West Bank.
• Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
  The male college crisis is not just in enrollment, but completion — Statistics on the gigantic gender gap favoring women that has opened up in higher education -- a gap that, if it were reversed, would be causing considerable alarm.
• Education
  What Do American Universities and Communist Political Systems Have in Common? — A critical look at higher education that draws disturbing parallels between today's culture of higher education and communist regimes.
• Communication Complexity
  Journalism's Ivory Towers — A look at the the many ways in which increased reliance on college trained journalists is altering the nature of news coverage and undermining media trust.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Only America Can Save the Future — A partial antidote to today's pervasive pessimism -- an optimistic look at the United States' long-term strengths and prospects.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  Color blindness remains the best form of antiracism — An argument for the principal alternative to today's antiracism strategy -- one based on colorblindness.
• Psychological Complexity
  The Founders’ Guide to Happiness — Thought-provoking reflections on happiness from somebody who is spent a great deal of time trying to understand what the United States' "founding fathers" thought of the subject.
• Massively Parallel Peacebuilding
  How U.S. Cities Can Get Rid of Violent Crime — With respect to urban crime, a case study showing how massively parallel problem-solving works in the real world.
• Race / Anti-Racism
  Breaking Down America’s Workforce — A report on a detailed demographic analysis that reveals how very far we are from the ideal of "proportionate" representation of the various identity groups in the US workforce.
• Countering Misinformation
  What I Wish More People Knew About American Evangelicalism — For a time in which evangelicals are, especially on the left, widely demonized, an article that tries to explain the positive impact that this movement has had on the lives of so many people.
• Israel / Hamas War
  "They see hiring Hamas terrorists as a mark of diversity" — From an Israeli expert on UNRWA, an interview that explains the unusual nature of UN assistance for Palestinian refugees and how the nature of that assistance has contributed to the conflict's intractability.
• Communication Complexity
  Is Political Advertising Obsolete? — An examination of the complexities of political communication that asks hard questions about the efficacy of ubiquitous political ads and whether other forms of persuasion might be more effective.
• Psychological Complexity
  Collision with Reality: What Depth Psychology Can Tell us About Victimhood Culture — An exploration of the complex psychological issues that surround being victimized and thinking of oneself as a victim.
• Superpower Conflict
  Interview: Sarah C. Paine — A look at global history and the current geopolitical situation from the perspective of someone who has spent a career studying great power conflict.
• Class Inequity
  Rob Henderson: Social Class, Elite Virtue Signaling, and "Luxury Beliefs" — An essay exploring the sociology of "luxury beliefs" and the way in which those beliefs signal status and virtue while undermining societal problem solving.

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About the MBI Newsletters

Once a week or so, we, the BI Directors, share some thoughts, along with new posts from the Hyper-polarization Blog and and useful links from other sources.  We used to put this all together in one newsletter which went out once or twice a week. We are now experimenting with breaking the Newsletter up into several shorter newsletters. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

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