Ampersand Answers: End-Stage Polarization

We have reached end-stage polarization.

David French

The Question: 

How do I help transform end-stage polarization? 

&mpersand Answers: 

David French is an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times. The words of today’s missive are from a headline on one of his essays. When I read them, I froze. 

In some of the academic circles which I am privileged to visit, the phrase ‘end-stage capitalism’ is one that’s used often, and decisively. A whole lot of blame is laid at the feet of that phrase. 

But I’d never seen end-stage polarization before. Have you? 

Polarization is the result of two equal and opposing forces. It’s polarity taken to its extreme. It’s also a supreme lack of flexibility, aka, rigidity.  

When a rubber band is stretched to its fullest extent, what happens? It snaps, moving from extreme into flexibility in a trice, with no transition. 

I believe we are all called to mediate end-stage polarization wherever we are. Can you be the voice of moderation? Of reason? Of kindness? In the face of extremis.  

There’s a dismaying trend these days of tossing people aside when they make one mistake. The thinking goes that if they can make one, they either have or will make others, and we have no time for that. Really? Don’t we? 

Because I don’t know about you but I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my almost seven decades, and I have needed the chance to make amends, to apologize, to start over, and to learn from those same erroneous choices. 

How you help is to make space for others (and your self) to be better, and do better next time, and when you find yourself in that extreme place, to haul yourself back from the brink of the abyss. 

What you withhold from others, you, de facto, withhold from yourself, dear one. 

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