How To Save Thanksgiving: An Inside Look at Polarization & the Art of Conflict Resolution

Just in time to save your Thanksgiving dinner from turning into a war zone, FMC Fast Chats with renowned expert Peter T. Coleman, author of The Way Out: Overcoming Toxic Polarization. Take a listen and be in the know in 30-ish minutes.

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

We'll be discussing polarization and conflict resolution with the expert on the topic, Dr. Peter Coleman from Columbia University. Thanks so much for being with us, Peter. Here's what we want to talk to you about. There's just so much talk about polarization today, whether it's polarization in the news or society, we can't get away from the topic. So I'm really excited to be able to talk to you today to find out Really? How does this happen? Is it really easy to get people to polarize?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, so polarization itself in a 2-party system like we have in the US is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a necessary thing because you want to have well-informed, passionate people on different sides of an issue or a policy kind of, you know, conflicting with each other and pushing us forward. What we're in now is something I call a period of toxic polarization, which is kind of a qualitatively different kind of dynamic. Polarization is just something that happens in science. It's happened when groups move away from each other on attitudes or on beliefs or on feeling about each other. But we are in a period that is really about an almost 60-year trajectory of increasing contempt for the other side, you know, love for our side, vilification for the other, misperception of where the other side is. So we're stuck in a pattern that is a bit of a runaway train. And so this is a different kind of thing than typical polarization, you know, again, which is sort of more extreme differences on issues. This is to a place where we start to refuse to talk to the other side, we physically move away from the other side. Again, we feel this anger and contempt, you know, a majority of Americans over 65 believe that members of the opposite political party are the biggest threat to our country and to democracy, more so than climate change and guns, and, you know, Black Lives Matter, or social or racial injustice. It's them. And this is a, this is a, you know, a concern, because it leads to events like January 6th, to violent events like that. So, yeah, so this is a bad time. And you ask about, you know, how did we get here?

Yeah.

That's part of what the first chapter or two of my book is about. And it really just, you know, what I argue is that It's not one thing, right? It's a combination of things that have happened over time. Some major things like the algorithms on social media platforms and the internet, which tend to kind of, you know, sort us into different camps.

Yeah.

The entertainmentization and politicization of news, of mainstream news, so that you have, you know, this wider gap between what are considered facts and truth on either side. These are major structural factors that have changed us. But there are other, you know, political factors, gerrymandering, and, you know, more extremism in the political party process. And so there are a variety of things that have— can sort of, you know, basically feed each other. They kind of start to create these feedback loops that create a storm that pulls us apart. So it's not any one thing. It's a— it's how a combination of forces over time are leading to this place where we see them as a, you know, clear and present danger to democracy.

Mm-hmm.

And that's where we are today.

Because so much of it seems to be focused on blaming 24-hour news.

Yeah.

And while that may be a part of it, how much can we really blame them?

I traced this current trajectory of polarization back to about the mid-1970s. There's something called the 60 Minutes effect, which is the fact that local news used to be tedious local news. It was just sort of accounts of what was happening in your neighborhood or around the world. And then when 60 Minutes first started to make a profit, right, it was the first news show that actually made money and didn't lose money for the network. That's what was a tipping point when producers started to say, oh, this is— we can make money on this, so let's make it more sensational and more compelling and sexier and more provocative. And so there is this, you know, tendency now, the business model of mainstream news is to try to capture eyeballs, capture attention, and you do that through provocation. But the same is true on social media, right? Social media's basic platform is to the most provocative content, you know, what Facebook calls meaningful engagement is the stuff that goes viral. And so they tend to direct more people to that content, which is just, you know, another kind of dynamic. So it's, it is a combination of the fact that politics have taken a kind of politics-as-war turn in the— really in the '80s and '90s.

Okay.

That media and social media are these major accelerants of polarization. But then it trickles all the way down because, you know, people have— half of Americans have experienced political divides within their family. That means that we're becoming alienated from those that we grow up with and love. Um, and so, you know, it's not just top-down in terms of these major structures. It's the attitudes of Americans where we start to feel that they're a danger to us and we, you know, either avoid them or worse.

Okay. Is there something inherent in our nature that makes us want to choose sides?

Yeah, there is. I mean, yes and no. I mean, the truth is humans are, are collectivists. You know, we started, you know, in hunter-gatherer groups walking around the Sahel gathering food. And we needed each other. Everybody needed each other. We have a profound need for others. Um, but it's true that at some point, you know, we started to have these kind of groups, and once we started to stop moving around and collect stuff, then we wanted more group— more stuff for our group than their group. And there is something just in brain science that tells us that, you know, threatening images of an outgroup, someone that is different from us or that we don't— that we're unfamiliar with, It does trigger the— our amygdala, which is, you know, basically our fear center in our brain. And so we, we do have a tendency, which is a kind of survival mechanism, you know, an evolutionary mechanism, when we see members of outgroups to sort of get— have that triggered, that sense of fear or threat. But it's quickly overcome if we realize, oh, that's my neighbor, or, oh, that's my friend, or it's somebody I work with, or they're on my baseball team, you know. whatever it is, those things quickly are mitigated. So we don't— we have both tendencies to move toward people and then move away or against people. You know, we have all 3 tendencies. The question is, what are the kind of social conditions that we live in, right? But, but yes, I will say that the, the business models of media, of social media, of politics, and of other areas of business know that low-hanging fruit is fear and threat. And if you can get people outraged— there is recent research, neuroscience research, that shows us that when people feel a sense of outrage or a taste of possible retaliation, it triggers pleasure centers in our brain, which are the same centers that are triggered by narcotics or heroin. So there is an addictive quality to this taste of outrage that we get 100 times a day on social media, on mainstream media, from the people we talk to in our, in our clans, right, that aren't from the other side. So we're constantly being stimulated and addicted to these kinds of outrage dynamics. Um, and, and some of that is intentional, you know, some of that's being done, it's like baked into the business model of these, uh, media companies.

Is there any time in history where you can compare where we are right now Or has technology kind of blown us out of the water and put us in a new spot?

Well, so historians like John Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin have been comparing the political climate of the day today to the 1850s in America, which was just before our Civil War, because there are some parallels. There was a, a large secessionist movement, you know, something like 40% of Biden voters and 50% of Trump voters today say that they think we should consider— they, their group should consider seceding, right, and sort of starting their own country. So there's a significant secessionist movement. There's, you know, huge disinformation campaigns which parallel the 1850s. And then there's, you know, distrust in our electoral system and a disputed election. You know, some— something like 85% of Republicans still believe, still hold that the last election was stolen away from Donald Trump. So those are conditions When you add to that, that we have 400+ million guns in this country, 80% which are owned by the right, when you have people physically moving away from each other, we see this sort of sorting, not just into, you know, people move, Republicans and conservatives into rural areas and progressives into urban areas. But even within cities, we're seeing sorting into neighborhoods so that you have these clusters. And that's what research has shown us is a recipe for violence. When you have large groups of people that live near each other but have very little contact, when there is a dispute between them, it's much easier to escalate and vilify the other and move into violence. So yes, you know, the Civil War was bad.

Mm-hmm.

America has had bad patches before, but you have to today add on these layers of media and social media, which are accelerants of this kind of psychosis that we're in, these, you know, parallel universes that we live in. And so in some ways, we parallel the 1850s, in other ways, it's worse.

Do you see any, any kind of plateau happening anytime soon? When do we get to the tipping point here?

Yeah, well, that's a great question. That's the million-dollar question. I think that, you know, what I was surprised by, many of us have been surprised by, is the fact that COVID wasn't that, that COVID didn't unite us. There's a idea in peace studies, which is something called disaster diplomacy. When you have, you know, ethnic groups that are at war, and then a tsunami wipes out their region, oftentimes they put down their arms and they help rebuild, and it starts a different kind of dynamic. So you would think that COVID, the pandemic, that the economic downturn associated with it, that other kinds of crises that we've faced you know, the wildfires in the West, that these things would unite communities, but they're oftentimes now politically weaponized and they're used to further divide us. So, you know, that's a foreboding fact because it's the things that tend to divide are another enemy, a greater enemy, you know, particularly when there's so much division. Um, but we're not seeing these, you know, biological events or these natural events as bigger than our own internal divisions. We're using them as sort of evidence that the other side is evil or wrong or trying to harm us. So, yeah, so I, you know, and of course, January 6th likely could have, should have been a tipping point where people were like, okay, but you even see members of Congress that were there that day whose lives were threatened, kind of, you know, regroup and say, nope, it's not, you know, wasn't a problem, nothing to see here. So So it's, it is there, it is almost psychotic that that level of threat is disregarded for political gain. So yeah, I think we're, you know, hopefully nearing a tipping point. It may have to get worse before it gets better, but it's hard to know what that looks like. There are scenarios that people like Robert Keegan have been painting about the next election, whatever happens, being contested and being contested by armed groups. So You know, that would be horrible. It would be horrible for our economy. It would be horrible for, you know, human life and misery. It would be horrible. And, and once you tip into violence at that level, it's much, much more difficult to put things back together. So, that's one of the reasons I wrote this book. That's one of the reasons I'm talking to the media constantly is because I feel like, you know, Doris Kearns Goodwin and John Meacham are not alarmists. They're, you know, actually reasonable people that understand history. They're alarmed. And I think we should be alarmed. And we should take advantage of this time when we are kind of all destabilized and challenged coming out of COVID to seriously think about, is this the future we want? Do we want to run into a civil war? Or can we bring our communities back from the brink?

I'm wondering, because you teach these courses at Columbia, yeah, the students you're teaching have basically grown up in this environment. So how are your classes perceived? And is there anything you find surprising with the generation that you're interacting with?

Yeah, good question. I mean, so my students— so I tend to, I tend to teach graduate students, master's and PhD students, mostly, and, and they're from all over the world. And many of them are from places, you know, from war zones. And so then they've lived through times like this. where they saw, you know, people saw early warnings, and they tipped into violence. And so they're an anxious group, because they came here hoping that they would have a very different kinds of experience. And then they start to see the kind of buildup towards tyranny and buildup towards violence. So that group is definitely anxious. Yeah, younger people. I mean, again, I think when you've lived in a bubble for years and not you know, experienced directly things like war. Remember, a very small percentage of Americans went to Afghanistan, went to Iraq, actually experienced violence and war. And oftentimes, the rest of the country, particularly younger populations, very insulated from that. And so it's an idea, but it's not a reality. If you've been to places that are, you know, fragile states like Haiti or Gaza, These places are, you know, are desperate places. Violence and war are rarely the answer. They're unfortunately oftentimes one of the first, you know, choices that decision makers make, but they are basically— you choose that if you have an absence of an imagination about what else you can do. I share this message with my students. It does feel like they take it seriously. But when you've really not— when you've grown up in places that have been violent or dangerous, you get it. If you've been really insulated from that, it's more of an idea than it is a practical fear.

You did mention that some of your students come from war zones. I mean, would you not say that America today qualifies, or at least meets the definition of a war zone?

So we're not a war zone, but we're not a peaceful country. There are indices that, that measure you know, levels of peacefulness, you know, whether you're internally peaceful, you're peaceful internationally. And the US is way down because we put so many people in prison, in fact, more than any other country, right?

Yeah.

So we have a very punitive system. And we have high levels of gun violence and homicide and other kinds of, you know, violent crimes. We have high levels of discrimination and inequality, all of those things contribute to us getting very low rankings in terms of our peacefulness.

Okay.

We haven't tipped into war zone yet. You know, we're not defined as a conflict zone yet, but definitely the world is worried because we have for so long been this beacon of hope and possibility of, you know, how democracies can be functional and move forward and be promising. And there has been such a backslide on it that we're, you know, a lot of the world is really either concerned about us or just disengaging from us because we seem to not have the answer anymore.

So what countries are doing these things well? Where would I move to would be the question.

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, uh, again, it depends on what you're measuring, but so, um, there are— the good news is, so we have a, you know, one of the projects I have at Columbia is a project on sustainably peaceful societies. And there's a website which you can go to, uh, and, and click on it and it will show you a map of these societies, which are all over the world. And they're everywhere from Costa Rica, which decided in 1948 to really pivot out of a civil war and move and grow a peaceful society. But the Scandinavian countries for a couple of hundred years have been really leaders in this. And again, these are places that are not without, you know, challenges. They've had immigration challenges, downturns in their economy, rise of more right-wing groups. So they're not utopias, they're places that have challenges, but they're better able to navigate this. In Africa, Botswana and Mauritius are 2 of the most highly peaceful nations on the continent, but there's also New Zealand, you know, Australia is a more peaceful place. So there are pockets around the world, and these can be small societies or they can be large societies that are, you know, like the Scandinavian nations that agree to kind of work together and cooperate. So there are many good, you know, there are many lovely places, but even Canada, which, you know, is known as a more peaceful place, it's much less violent place than us. But I was on a call with a business group in Alberta this week, and, you know, they're experiencing particularly around COVID vaccination and, you know, vaccination mandates and mask mandates, major divisions in between the rural and urban divide and even within companies. And so they're, they're seeing polarization increase, becoming more vitriolic in their politics, becoming much more so in everyday life, particularly around protection against COVID. So it's not something that societies are immune from, but many societies are much more proactive and concerned when it arises. They don't prey on it as much as our businesses and our politics do.

Is there any correlation between how religious a country may be, or what that religion is, versus the state of peace versus war?

Yeah, that's a good question. So religion is a tricky thing, because sometimes religion is about tolerance and acceptance and forgiveness and community. And sometimes it is the source of the conflict, right? There is this place that we've studied, we've done, you know, sort of field studies with, in Mauritius, which is an island off of the coast of Africa, but it's the most peaceful nation in Africa. And it's an interesting place because it's a very religious place. High number of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Catholics, and others. And the vast majority of the population is very religious. What's interesting about Mauritius is that there is a strict taboo in Mauritius about proselytizing, about missionaries coming in and basically pilfering people from one religion— from other religions to theirs. That is not accepted. So what they appreciate is that people are spiritual, because again, there's a consciousness to that, and there are these kind of core values that most of the major religions share. But what they, you know, are careful to do is not challenge each other in terms of their numbers and in terms of their believers. Which is one of the things that, you know, you don't see in a lot of the world. There's still, you know, major missionary activity happening everywhere. So there are some conditions under which religions promote more tolerance, more acceptance, and more engagement. And then there are other conditions where it's weaponized. So like anything else, it can be weaponized and be the source of division, or it can be the source of great unity. Right now, I just came back from Vienna, at a meeting, and I met a group of people that are involved in the Middle East, in Israel-Palestine. And there's an initiative there called the Holy Land Initiative.

Okay.

And this came up because of the Oslo Accords. And the Oslo Accords were very secular, and they didn't involve religious leaders, which was one of the reasons why they had failed so abysmally. So these are major, high-level religious leaders that have come together And are really, you know, working as a group to try to, A, head off crises when they pop up, but B, really start to think about in the Holy Lands, which it's, you know, the 3 major religions are sort of focused there, how can religion serve a view and a vision of peace in the Middle East? So there, you know, there are groups like that that are immensely hopeful and impressive.

I'm wondering as you speak, when you were 5 years old, what did you think you'd be when you grew up? Because this is not you know, your typical career topic choice?

Yeah, that's— I like that question too. I mean, I think when I was 5 years old, I think I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a painter. That was, I think, my fantasy, although I do remember, like, you know, that changing from day to day. I also then wanted to be an army man, and then I wanted to be a fireman, and then, you know, I would like put on a different outfit every day. So, so part of it was wanting to be an actor, I think, but part of it was, yeah, I wanted to be an artist, and I, and I frankly, do think that I'm able to, in my work, tap into creativity a lot. I think being creative in what you do is, you know, is a great resource and it's a great opportunity and it's— to me, it's the most fun component of what I do. But I will say that I grew up in Chicago in the— I was born in '59 and I grew up in Chicago in the late '60s and it was a time in Chicago of great tumult. You know, there was— there were, you know, violent marches, protests. The Chicago 1968 Democratic Convention was there, and the mayor, you know, sent in troops to fight the protesters. And there, there was a big anti-establishment movement. And then Martin Luther King came there at some point and was organizing nonviolently. So there was a lot happening on the streets when I was, you know, 8 years old, and I was mindful of it. My— I had siblings that were 10 years older than I, they were involved in some of that activity. So it definitely was a time of like, this is not, you know, I was not in a bubble. I was living in a world that was really sort of, you know, on the— on edge. And that did, I think, wake me up to the fact that the world sometimes, you know, uh, gets chaotic, gets contentious, and you need to be mindful of that. So I think that has always stayed with me and affected what I do today.

So are you the guy your friends call to resolve marital disputes?

You know? That's a good question. Um, you know, I definitely have— I am called in at some times to help people think through things. And I think sometimes when there are difficult conversations that need to be had, I am seen as a resource for that. So yes, I was thinking about that today, that there have been particular times in my in my life when, you know, there's been an addiction in a family and somebody needed some confrontation and intervention, or there's, you know, as you say, been tensions to some degree with colleagues or friends. And, um, but I will also say, you know, there might— part of my life is as an activist. You know, I'm a, I'm a major activist for inclusion and anti-bias and anti-discrimination. So In that way, I cause conflict. I'm a gadfly. I, you know, I challenge our institutions to do better, because institutions get lazy unless somebody is sort of saying, this is unacceptable. So I go back and forth. In some domains, I definitely am seen as a mediator and a peacebuilder. In other domains, I'm, I'm pushing the edge.

Okay, what do you think your knowledge makes you a better activist?

I think so. I mean, again, it's— that's hard for me to say. But I do think that— I mean, you know, what I study is how, you know, community, families, communities, cities, nations change or don't when they get stuck in these long-term patterns, like the pattern of polarization. But also, we study societies that are deeply divided and/or violent, and then radically change, like Costa Rica did in 1948, came out of a bloody civil war and said, enough, we don't want this anymore, we're going to choose a very different path. Those cases are really interesting to me because it does show that you're not destined for violence and destined for protracted violence, but there are communities, nations that have come out of those times and pivoted. So we study those, and part of what I think about is how did, how did systems either stabilize or how do they change? So we study long-term divided societies and when they change, and we study sustainably peaceful societies that are robust and resilient and somehow are able to maintain that. I'm interested in both. And so my knowledge of change, social change, when it does happen, when it doesn't happen, Definitely, I think, contributes to my work as an activist.

So what is it that you think needs to happen to get America out of this toxic period? How will that change?

Well, so the good news that I talked about in the book is that, you know, we're— there are 2 or 3 conditions that help societies change. One is that you need to have a lot of miserable people, you need to have an exhausted group in the middle that is fed up, doesn't want the dysfunction anymore, doesn't want the fight anymore, really wants to figure out another way. So if you have that, and you have people that see it, that, that's on the left and the right, and we do have that, you know, I dedicate this book to the 86% of Americans that a group called More in Common referred to as the exhausted middle majority. We're just done with the vitriol and the dysfunction and the, you know, the stalemates. It's like, come on, America, let's go, you know. And so that group, I think, is ready for some kind of change. It's also true that when there are big destabilizing periods, when some kind of shocks happen to systems like COVID, like racial, you know, the spike in racial injustice, or at least a spike in awareness of racial injustice, economic downturns, at times like this, when people and families and communities are destabilized, It is a ripe time for people to make new decisions. So we see this, you know, there are 5 million people a month that are choosing to change careers, saying, I don't want this work anymore. I want to do something either more meaningful or more lucrative, whatever, but really stopping and asking themselves that question. And this has been happening for months. So there is a time of instability, which can be an opportune time to reexamine our assumptions. But the third condition is critical, which is that you need to know what to do. What are the alternatives? What's a different way to engage? That's why I wrote The Way Out. What The Way Out tries to do is use science. You know, we— I'm a social scientist, I'm familiar with and teach the science on social change and constructive conflict. And so what I've done in the book is sort of, sort of pick 5 areas, 5 principles of science that are particularly relevant for you in making your own choices, or for your family, or for your neighborhood, or for your community, or, you know, the nation. It's— they scale up because they're basic ideas in science, and they've been shown to be valid at different levels. And so what I try to do is sort of say, this is what science says would help, and this is what it looks like for you for your workplace, for your community, and ultimately for our nation. There are, there are ways that this can be enacted. So that's what's important, is that at this time of instability, anxiety, exhaustion, that people take advantage of it and say, what kind of life do I want for myself? What kind of life do I want for my children and grandchildren if I have them? You know, where do I want to move forward? How do I want to see us move forward? And do I want to just keep on the same wheel and fight the fight and lead to worse times? Or what can I do? And, and who also are the groups that are doing this? An important thing I, I talked about in the book is because the pattern we're on is similar to an addiction, it is a biopsychosocial structural problem. It's within my neurological structures about what I— information I process and don't process. It's in my psychology and my attitudes. It's in that my networks of relationships, people I do talk to all the time and the people I never talk to. It's in the social media, it's in other media, it scales up. So this is a problem that's bigger than us. And so it's difficult when you're an addict, or it's difficult when you're stuck in a pattern like this for you just to say, okay, I'm done, I'm gonna change, because we're pulled in by so many things. So one of the things I recommend is that you find other people in your family, in your workplace community, that are also exhausted and also looking for a pivot. There's a website that I would recommend your viewers go to, which is called the Bridging Divides Initiative. It's out of Princeton University. And it's a map of America. And if you zoom in on it, it's an interactive map. You can look at your town, your county, and find the, you know, several of the thousands of bridge-building groups that have sprung up in your community, usually to deal with local issues.

Okay.

It might be race relations, it might be political divisions, it might be, you know, ethnic divisions of other types. But there are thousands of these groups across the country that are at the community level, as well as groups in journalism and groups in, you know, around environmental issues, in government. There are these bridge-building groups, right, that you can sort of turn to and say, this is hard to do, can you give me some sense of how to do this? Or— Do you have a forum that I can come to to get a sense of how you do this? That's, I think, a really useful step for most people that feel like overwhelmed by this is too hard.

On that note, we need to wrap up. But with Thanksgiving coming up, it seems to be turning into the holiday people fear the most because it means getting together with people around a table. And you have to talk about something. And we don't seem to be able to talk about anything anymore. So do you have any advice or any tips? For how people can actually enjoy time together?

I do, yeah. And I'll give you a simple answer, which is that first of all, I think it starts by you thinking about you. You know, are you in a good place to go into these dinners, these meals, these gatherings with family and friends? Um, you know, are you, are you easily triggered? Are you easy— you know, do you feel toxic yourself? Are you exhausted and fatigued? You know, those things matter. And having some kind of mindfulness of that, of where you are going in, matters. But then the critical question is, if you have a brother-in-law who is always political and in your face and triggers things, and they tend to go poorly, then the question is, well, what do you want to happen? Like, what really would you like to see happen? Do you want to shame them and attack them and escalate things and, you know, therefore ruin the gathering? Or do you want to not do that at Thanksgiving? And in which case, I would reach out to them beforehand and say, look, you know, John, you and I do this every time we get together. Maybe we won't do that this year. Maybe on Friday, you and I will go for a walk. And we'll go for a walk outside together, which is one of the chapters in my book is the value of actually walking with political opponents outside side by side. There's— A neurological shift that happens to people when they move together, and it gives you a little bit of a connection that can help you have better conversations. So that's a recommendation I would make, is if you're anticipating that, try to not do it and ruin everybody else's Thanksgiving, but try to find a way and a time to do it that can be constructive and useful for your relationship with the other and for the whole family.

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