On Pessimism, Partisanship and Polarisation

Successive political, social, and health crises in western democracies – indeed in most of the world now – mean that staying abreast of current affairs can be a painfully depressing exercise. The ambient pessimism is so pervasive that our society’s problems can seem intractable, but this fatalism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that puts democracy itself at risk.

Rampant political partisanship feeds into this negativity, because virtually any pronouncement from any politician is not just subjected to scrutiny – which is perfectly normal in a functional democracy – but elevated as proof of how stupid/evil/dangerous the “other side” is. Partisanship has become so entrenched that a recent American study says that up to 49% of Republicans would be “displeased” if their child married a Democrat. Similar studies exist for people on opposite sides of the Brexit debate. Such results suggest that people in opposing camps don’t just have political differences, they actively dislike and distrust their political opponents. This is problematic because successful democracies require high levels of trust between their citizens (for trade, banking, or elections to work, for example).

Trust among fellow citizens of nation states has historically been fostered by collective identities built on religion, nationalism and patriotism. These collective identities can help create a sense of kinship between people who are actually very different and will probably never meet; they help compensate for the fact that individuals know such a vanishingly small proportion of their countrymen (especially considering the size of communities humans evolved to live in).

Unfortunately, these collective identities have been depleted and derided. During World War II, Orwell wrote that "the energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action….". These words ring more true now than ever, and unfortunately, at a time when citizens of western societies are feeling a sense of dislocation and alienation with their compatriots, our collective ability to understand the world around us has also been undermined by a completely fragmented news media environment.

The emergence of multiple competing news networks and access to international media (and sometimes propaganda) via the internet mean that populations no longer have a single narrative enabling them to converge on a common “truth”. Whether the mainstream news media is more or less corrupt or unreliable than in the past is debatable, but it is surely uncontroversial to say that there is a growing number of actors spreading misinformation; the advent of social media, streaming and podcasting platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Spotify mean that everyone is a potential broadcaster and these new media journalists are at least as susceptible to bias, audience capture, and corruption as legacy media.

Our innate negativity bias means that bad, infuriating or shocking news will appear more salient to us than good news. This is not new – there is a reason why the media’s business model has always been reliant on highlighting bad news – “if it bleeds, it leads”, goes the old editor’s saying, but a Pew study from 2021 showed that half of Americans get their news from Facebook, where the underlying algorithms are designed to push posts that generate the most outrage to the top of our news feeds. The inflammatory role of social media and what Yoram Peri calls “telepopulism” – people like Piers Morgan in the UK and Cyril Hanouna in France, who push simplistic takes on hot-button issues – does little or nothing to advance the public debate, on the contrary, it creates a perfect storm of negativity.

Into this morass step political opportunists who have no qualms about lying to feed our tribal instincts and desire for justice for their own political or ideological reasons. The chaos, confusion and uncertainty created by a splintered media environment means that many people simply no longer trust anyone (politicians, media or their fellow citizens) and collective action becomes very difficult. This is compounded by the fact that politicians are not incentivised to tell the truth because the political cost of admitting mistakes is so high. A generation of mainstream politicians has perfected the art of “storytelling” (communicating a message through anecdote or fables rather than facts and data) and the ability to talk without saying anything of substance for fear of controversy, while a new generation of “populist” politicians positively thrives on political incorrectness. Some don’t even try to maintain the illusion of credibility; “flooding the zone in shit”, to use Steve Bannon’s phrase, serves their own purposes because it also saps faith in the political establishment. In these conditions, anonymous Youtubers can seem as credible as established journalistic institutions, and notorious conmen can become media moguls… or even the president of the United States of America.

The public response to Covid restrictions over the past two years has been indicative of this. A nation’s compliance with such measures seems to be strongly correlated with the level of trust in that country’s political leaders, institutions and elites more widely. For example, on 31 March 2021, Emmanuel Macron announced new restrictions on movement in order to fight rising numbers of Covid-19 cases. Macron was slower to implement these measures than his European counterparts – despite higher numbers of hospitalisations and deaths – and they turned out to be less strict than those implemented by France’s neighbours. When this “lockdown light” was announced, surveys said that 70% of the population supported the measures but nearly 50% said they would probably not comply with them. Sweden, on the other hand, enforced no restrictions to speak of – they simply recommended limiting contact – yet Google’s Community Mobility Reports show that the movement of people in France and Sweden at the start of the pandemic was similar. The Swedes trusted their government and they followed the guidelines out of respect for their fellow citizens (as well as, certainly, a sense of self-preservation too).

If people believe that their fellow citizens (or worse, their political leaders) are gaming the system – whether that be through tax evasion or ignoring public health recommendations – then they are less likely to want to follow the rules, causing a negative feedback loop, a sort of cultural contagion of antisocial behaviour, thus making large-scale cooperation even more unlikely.

In her recent book, “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them”, American political scientist Barbara F. Walter argues that the two biggest factors that indicate whether a country is likely to descend into anarchy are the emergence of “anocracy” (a form of partial democracy, mid-way between a full democracy and an autocracy) and whether citizens organise by race ethnicity or religion, i.e. whether politics is focused on tribal rather than ideological grounds. While I am not saying that any of the Western European democracies are close to civil war (I would not be as confident saying that about the USA), the trend is concerning.

Lack of trust in one’s fellow citizens is a self-reinforcing dynamic. From a game theoretical perspective (and notwithstanding an individual’s fear of infection), it actually becomes almost irrational to comply with Covid restrictions if you believe that no one else is – you would be effectively punishing yourself for little or no personal or collective benefit. And yet, if a majority of people don't abide by the rules then the policy will fail, thereby justifying the sceptics’ behaviour. It is a vicious circle, a domino effect, and these dynamics seep into every area of society. For institutions to work, widespread buy-in is crucial; public services are dependent on a wide tax base, but if people think they are not getting their money’s worth they will not consent to pay tax. At some point this phenomenon reaches critical mass, and the legal system and law enforcement can no longer cope and the risk of societal collapse is very real.

As an antidote to this pessimism, and at the risk of sounding like a naïve techno-optimist, it can be useful to reflect on our situation and put things in perspective. To quote 19th century British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, “on what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”

In 1976, 50% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty; by 2015, that figure was 10%, despite the population practically doubling during the same period. In the grand sweep of history, inequality levels are far lower now than in the past, and we can only improve things if we have a proactive, empirical attitude towards economic policy. It also seems that there is a shift in the elite’s attitudes to inequality. Many of the Silicon Valley generation are committed to effective altruism or, like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and 231 other philanthropists, have committed to giving away 99% of their wealth before they die.

It’s not that there aren’t many terrible things in the world, but catastrophism breeds anxiety and resignation; rates of suicide and depression in young people are on the rise in western countries. Righteous indignation is satisfying on a visceral level, but it also often leads to knee-jerk responses that create even worse outcomes or cause us to focus on the wrong things. Even economist Thomas Piketty concedes that the negative tone of his book, “Capital in the 21st Century”, may have led to a certain resignation or fatalism – whereas nothing is pre-determined.

Likewise, ecological fatalism is counterproductive; if the narrative becomes that climate collapse is inevitable, it can become difficult to get people to focus on solutions that could actually help. As Howard Zinn said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.” Just as Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich’s predictions of overpopulation and mass famines were proved wrong because they were unable to predict future progress, we must have some humility about our inability to predict what future technology can bring. There are 8 billion people on the planet now – 8 billion brains – and if we can prevent our society from collapsing, the technological progress enabled by all these people working together – on nuclear fusion, water desalination, and geoengineering for example – will surely prevent the worst consequences of climate change.

However, optimism is clearly not enough to reverse the last few years of polarisation and avoid the worst-case scenario; we need new norms of journalistic integrity; politicians should get credit for admitting their mistakes, and while journalistic scrutiny is fundamental, the “gotcha moments” that many journalists favour are not conducive to healthy, productive political debate. Likewise, consumers of news media must also become more discerning, aware of their confirmation bias, and sceptical of what confirms their pre-existing beliefs; the goal of an informed citizen should be to actively seek the truth, whatever that is, not simply to buttress their existing beliefs. Jonathan Haidt argues that consumers of media need a helping hand; he suggests certain tweaks to social media algorithms that would help dial-down levels of political partisanship: for example, they could punish the most toxic, inflammatory, divisive behaviour by filtering out such posts at the expense of good-faith debate and constructive criticism; they could also make it compulsory to authenticate the largest accounts and most influential voices who have outsized influence, which would go some way to preventing foreign state actors from destabilising democracies.

Political reform may also be necessary in order to renew citizen engagement and regain enough public trust to enable the aforementioned paradigm shift. All revolutions are the result of elites being slow to understand the need for systemic reform. Sadly, the measured, rational debate necessary to implement such vital yet complex reforms are very difficult in the current media and political environment; demagogues’ promises of revolution, a Utopian ideal, or a return to former glories are much easier to sell.

In his latest book, political scientist Yascha Mounk describes modern, large ethnically diverse democracies as “the great experiment” in the sense that they are a recent invention, and so no one really knows how to make them work. All previously successful nations and empires were either undemocratic or ethnically homogenous. However, it is not because something has never been achieved before that it is impossible. In 2009, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested a consultation on national identity, which was predictably criticised on the left of the political spectrum as being exclusionary, racist even. I cannot be sure of his intentions, but I believe that trying to find common ground on what the national identity is (or at least should be) is a worthwhile aspirational goal.

Social science research has shown that people can form a group identity around the most pointless, arbitrary features, so why not imagine a national identity based on the most positive aspects of our culture, such as (for the sake of argument!) liberty, equality and fraternity? Even if we don’t always live up to the marketing material, having a stated goal makes it more likely to achieve. The far-right’s dream of an ethno-state is morally abhorrent – but bringing people together around a common identity is critical to achieving solidarity. Indeed, this is why historian Yuval Noah Harari believes nationalism is unfairly derided; he claims that nationalism need not be about hating outsiders but rather about caring for one’s compatriots. It is a social construct that enables us to collaborate with each other and build something that would be impossible to achieve on a smaller scale.

I am convinced that continued progress in terms of social justice and quality of life is possible, but I am also concerned that there are more ways to create a failed state than there are to construct a functional society that maximises human flourishing. History is replete with well-intentioned yet catastrophic revolutions; the desire to change society for the better is a laudable one, but people would be less willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater if they understood how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.