tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post1959505209791306323..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: "Teach us to care and not to care" *skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-61328866842557892472020-11-23T12:02:09.676-08:002020-11-23T12:02:09.676-08:00Thank you, Amod -- I had not seen Mason's book...Thank you, Amod -- I had not seen Mason's book. A <a href="http://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2020/09/the-peaceful-transfer-of-power/" rel="nofollow">recent post</a> of yours also made me look at Achen and Bartels ' book Democracy for Realists. I commend both of these to anyone else reading these comments.<br />It is hard to dissociate the current "polarization" -- a word I am becoming more and more wary of as overuse wears it smooth -- with the specific social and cultural conditions created by social media and the internet more broadly. This, I think, is a problem, since the most obvious "explanations" are rarely the only valid ones, and in any case social media is in danger of becoming the preferred scapegoat for all societal problems, to the point where I now wonder whether the intelligentsia, at any rate, will not soon be more "polarized" over whether social media is the cause of polarization, than about progressivism and conservatism. It certainly seems to be a case of the medium being the message. I am genuinely uncertain of just about everything here, except that what we need is not less disagreement, but <i>better</i> disagreement.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-26655509232328429162020-11-16T19:12:15.613-08:002020-11-16T19:12:15.613-08:00Thanks for this. Since this election I've read...Thanks for this. Since this election I've read Lilliana Mason's <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html" rel="nofollow">Uncivil Agreement</a>, which examines how Americans have increasingly taken their political views as their identity, in ways that long predate the 2016 election. In one of the later chapters she notes that Americans have become increasingly politically active and engaged, and while (unlike Aśvaghoṣa or Śāntideva) she does not see such engagement as bad on principle, she thinks it's a bad thing in the present context because it is tied so closely to hatred and a desire to see one's own team win. (One of her more striking findings is that people are not getting that much more polarized on <em>policy</em>, but on <em>identification</em> with their side and negative views of the other, irrespective of policy.) Amodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15978621252917667363noreply@blogger.com