Cultural Polarization and the Future of the United States: Schismogenesis

 It is a wondrous day when one encounters a book that provides a new and totally refreshing outlook on we human beings and our history.  Such is the impact of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.  The authors argue that the conventional wisdom on human history has been based mostly on assumptions and guesswork, but now recent archeological research has allowed a more defendable picture of what humans have been up to over the last twenty or thirty thousand years.  As a result, we can congratulate ourselves on having been a much more interesting and clever species than previously thought.  Here we will focus not on the overall findings in the authors’ work, but on one particular type of social interaction between societies that was identified as being part of our historical past. 

We are introduced to the concept of schismogenesis,

“Back in the 1930s, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson coined the term ‘schismogenesis’ to describe people’s tendency to define themselves against one another.  Imagine two people getting into an argument about some minor political disagreement but, after an hour, ending up taking positions so intransigent that they find themselves on completely opposite sides of some ideological divide—even taking extreme positions they would never embrace under ordinary circumstances, just to show how much they completely reject the other’s points.”

We know this can happen with individuals.  What is of greater interest is the notion that the same sort of response can take place between societies.

“Bateson was interested in psychological processes within societies, but there’s every reason to believe something similar happens between societies as well.  People come to define themselves against their neighbours.  Urbanites thus become more urbane, as barbarians become more barbarous.  If ‘national character’ can really be said to exist, it can only be as a result of such schismogenetic processes: English people trying to become as little as possible like French, French people as little like Germans, and so on.  If nothing else, they will all definitely exaggerate their differences in arguing with one another.”

The historical record suggests that this response is innate.

“…what is it that causes human beings to spend so much effort trying to demonstrate that they are different from their neighbors?  Recall how, after the end of the last Ice Age, the archeological record is increasingly characterized by ‘culture areas’; that is, localized populations with their own characteristic styles of clothing, cooking and architecture; and no doubt also their own stories about the origin of the universe, rules for the marriage of cousins, and so forth.  Ever since Mesolithic times, the broad tendency has been for human beings to further subdivide, coming up with endless new ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbors.” 

It seems our ancestors were quite willing and capable of traveling great distances.  They would be aware of what was going on in nearby regions.  Differences between neighboring societies would not be due to isolation, but rather, develop by choice.  Information and technology might propagate, but culture, much less so.  In fact, cultural comparisons yield the conclusion that societies are best understood by observing the cultural attributes they reject.  The authors attribute this viewpoint to Marcel Mauss.

“For if everyone was broadly aware of what surrounding people were up to, and knowledge of foreign customs, arts and technologies was widespread, or at least easily available, then the question becomes not why certain culture traits spread, but why other culture traits didn’t.  The answer, Mauss felt, is that this precisely how cultures define themselves against their neighbors.  Cultures were, effectively, structures of refusal.”

The authors provided much material to support this critical aspect of human history.  For our purposes, the characteristics of the ancient city-states of Sparta and Athens provide the most accessible example.

‘Schismogenesis, you’ll recall, describes how societies in contact with each other end up joined within a common system of differences, even as they attempt to distinguish themselves from one another.  Perhaps the classic historical example (in both senses of the term ‘classic’) would be the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta, in the fifth century BC.  As Marshall Sahlins puts it:

“Dynamically interconnected, they are then reciprocally constituted…Athens was to Sparta as sea to land, cosmopolitan to xenophobic, commercial to autarkic, luxurious to frugal, democratic to oligarchic, urban to villageois, autochthonous to immigrant, logomanic to laconic: one cannot finish enumerating the dichotomies…Athens and Sparta were antitypes.”

“Each society performs a mirror image of the other.  In doing so, it becomes an indispensable alter ego, the necessary and ever-present example of what one should never wish to be.” 

Can one think of a present example of two interacting societies that seem to be defining themselves according to the belief the other represents an “ever-present example of what one should never wish to be?”  Unfortunately, the example that comes to mind is the polarization that has occurred between red and blue regions in the United States. The color designation of these regions represents broad differences that go far beyond politics.  In the spirit of the above comparison of Athens and Sparta, here are a series of questions about the United States to which both sides consistently provide different answers. 

Were we created as a secular nation or as a Christian nation? 

Do we have a duty to aid the least among us or are the least among us deserving of their fate?

Is education a fundamental right for all or is it a commodity to be determined by market forces? 

Is healthcare a fundamental right for all or is it a commodity to be determined by market forces? 

Do people of color suffer from discrimination or do whites suffer from discrimination?

Should global warming be addressed, or should it be ignored?

Is abortion a woman’s right or should it be forbidden?

Is our governance based on majority rule, or is it not?

To use the phrasing of Marshal Sahlins, “one cannot finish enumerating the dichotomies.”  Each side views the other as an “ever-present example of what one should never wish to be.”  Schismogenesis seems to be at work as each side, when in power, goads the other by promoting policies the other deems highly offensive.  At least one side is arming for and threatening violence and throwing around the “secession” term.  And the divide continues to grow.  Will it reach a point of no return?  If so, what comes next?  We have had one bloody Civil War already.  History provides no encouragement.  Athens and Sparta waged war on each other.  Nations with irreconcilable mixed populations such as India subdivided and separated, but only after millions were murdered.  If it is believed there is no path to reconciliation, then each side will strive to become the victor in whatever form of conflict follows.

Somehow the escalating polarization must be moderated.  People have often claimed that a serious threat to our nation would force us to come together and collaborate.  We now have two serious threats: the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.  Neither have helped because neither is generally viewed as sufficiently serious—yet.  The pandemic could get much worse; climate change will get much worse.  How bad must it get before the pain suppresses the animosity?  Will that happen before the nation comes unglued?

You can learn a little about a lot of things or you can learn a lot about a very few things. Guess which is the most fun.