Check out this fascinating thought-piece by U. Chicago Professor of Law and Political Science, Cass Sunstein in yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education dealing with the tendency of people to polarize into like-minded groups and become more extreme in their views over time — a phenomenon radically enhanced by but not dependent upon the Internet. (Sunstein is also the author of Republic.com 2.0). He writes:

It would be foolish to say, from the mere fact of extreme movements, that people have moved in the wrong direction. After all, the more extreme tendency might be better rather than worse. Increased extremism, fed by discussions among like-minded people, has helped fuel many movements of great value — including, for example, the civil-rights movement, the antislavery movement, the antigenocide movement, the attack on communism in Eastern Europe, and the movement for gender equality. A special advantage of Internet enclaves is that they promote the development of positions that would otherwise be invisible, silenced, or squelched in general debate. Even if enclave extremism is at work — perhaps because enclave extremism is at work — discussions among like-minded people can provide a wide range of social benefits, not least because they greatly enrich the social “argument pool.” The Internet can be extremely valuable here.

The one blank spot in Sunstein’s argument here (and admittedly it’s not within the scope or ambition of his article) is to identify a fixed reference point for what constitutes “better”, “great value” and “social benefit”. The examples he uses are virtually unarguable. I.e., 99.9% of people in modern America would support them (who’s against civil rights? who’s for slavery, genocide and communism?) OK, a few people — maybe more than a few — but definitely a small minority.

The point is, his examples are easy and thus not terribly illuminating. A meta-point is missing and it’s critically important to framing his argument. It is this: The very definition of “good”, if not fixed eternally, outside the sphere of limited human wisdom and volatile social debate, is liable to shift (sometimes markedly, sometimes subtly but inevitably and inexorably). There was a time — and there remain many places — where ‘good’ is defined very differently than it is in the West in the early part of the 21st century. We would do well to remember that.

Without such a permanent, unchanging reference point, the extremism Sunstein cites finds no antidote — no compass. Should society drift in ‘bad’ directions, we would be unable to bring it back without unwavering consensus on what to bring it back to. That is, doctrinal consensus on what constitutes ‘good’ itself. Please pardon what may sound like ephemeral philosophy, but ‘bad’ and ‘good’ mean nothing whatsoever without a concrete-like foundation in which to set them.

We find ourselves in a relatively prosperous, peaceful time in the West. (When compared with the vast sufferings of history — even fairly recent history, e.g., WWII — the current war barely rates mention.) We could just as easily find ourselves again in a time and place in which “good” means something that, were we to wake up to see it fully blossomed, we would find terrifying, alien and awful. To borrow a line from Dennis Prager, we are suffering from the “cut flower problem” (one might say the cut flower illusion) believing our society to be alive and fed by a common moral aquifer, when in fact it has been cut off from its taproot and is in fact slowly dying.

Sunstein continues, giving a nod to this point but not exploring it adequately, IMHO:

But there is also a serious danger, which is that people will move to positions that lack merit but are predictable consequences of the particular circumstances of their self-sorting. And it is impossible to say whether those who sort themselves into enclaves of like-minded people will move in a direction that is desirable for society at large, or even for the members of each enclave. It is easy to think of examples to the contrary — the rise of Nazism, terrorism, and cults of various sorts. There is a general risk that those who flock together, on the Internet or elsewhere, will end up both confident and wrong, simply because they have not been sufficiently exposed to counterarguments. They may even think of their fellow citizens as opponents or adversaries in some kind of “war.”

Again, Sunstein makes reference to terms such as “merit” and “desirable” without addressing where we are supposed to find definitions of those things, much less who gets to decide what they are. (Hint: not humans; we already blew that one). He is right to cite the negative examples and conclude that extremism can be deadly but he is incorrect in implying that the solution can be found in bland compromise.

The logical flaw in his argument is offered by Sunstein himself: if ‘good’ and ‘bad’ exist (and they most assuredly do) then compromise is anathema to any progress towards the former. The current divisive atmosphere then is not to be feared or retreated from, but embraced as precursor to greater clarity. If that were a man-centric argument, it would, I acknowledge, be horrific.

Many have made such an argument and offered as its fulfillment a new-and-improved, human-centric theory of truth. (Nazism and Marxism spring immediately to mind, though other examples are legion). Instead, the next logical question to address is not how to bring about a gray, mushy less extreme middle-way that achieves superficial, temporary calm over a seething cauldron of iniquity and corruption (the UN and EU seem appropriate examples here) but two other vital, if difficult, questions:

1) where to find goodness and truth and light in their permanent setting and

2) how best to persuade others that they are what they are (i.e., good, truthful and permanent)
(or more specifically that God is real, that He is who he claims to be and that his authority is the ultimate in progressivism)

There’s a final point worth making and I save it for last because it is least important. You do not need to believe it in order to agree that what I’ve written above is worth ‘double-clicking’. Stop here if you’re already in a calm, thoughtful place.

Because much of academia and the media are demonstrably leftist and secular — we are bathed in these ideas in the West to a degree that we no longer recognize them as such — those of us who have ‘defected’ and/or objected (the so-called ‘religious right’) are by definition aware, in a thoroughly intimate way, of a broader range of arguments and philosophies than those who accept the teachings of those establishments as ‘mainstream’.

We have heard what the academy has to offer. We have read and we continue to read what the mainstream media throws up. Why? Because we have to. There are few alternatives. We’re aware of what’s in the New York Times, what’s showing on CNN and what’s being opined in other leftist, secular outlets because they are dominant and conventional. We are in the world because we have to be. We also read our bibles and National Review. (They are not the same thing, to be sure!!)

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a knot over that first point, I readily concede that the ‘right’ is not always right, nor do we have a lock on truth — spiritual or otherwise. Far from it. We are human. We overstep. We go astray. What I am saying is that, in the main (and generalizations are vital if we are to think and exist) the elites in mainstream society are not aware of the deep thought, wisdom and logic behind conservative values nor do they give credence or time to God’s word. Rather, those pillars (the bible and conservative thought) tend to be mocked and caricatured routinely. Neither approach is conducive to discernment.

A brief anecdote, then I’m done.

Several months ago, on the old blog, a commenter challenged me to the effect that I did not give adequate time or attention to understanding the liberal, secularist position (or words to that effect). I was temporarily flummoxed. My self-critical instincts kicked in and, for a time, I took his argument very seriously. Did I read enough left-leaning opinions? Had I taken time and seriously considered their merits? Had I really taken a hard look at my religious convictions in more than an Easter-Bunny suspension-of-disbelief sense? And after a few days nursing this quandary, like Howard Roark had he been wearing a crucifix, I laughed…

I swim in a sea of these ideas. I grew up in a left-leaning zip code. I live in another at least as polarized in that direction. Our churches are empty and dying. Most of my friends are leftist-leaning secularists who think they’re mainstream because, where they live, they are. I went to a left-leaning college with (mostly) left-leaning, faith-scoffing professors (yeah, I know that that’s triply redundant). For years and years I read the New York Times and Boston Globe and a host of other demonstrably liberal papers cover-to-cover. I listened to NPR and watched CNN. I used to virtually worship Dan Rather and take at face value his scathing tirades against Ronald Reagan and George Bush. I never read the bible. I didn’t know what National Review or the Weekly Standard or Reason Magazine or Commentary or Human Events were.

Then, very tentatively, I started grabbing furtive bites of those things like after-dark chocolate and thinking and reflecting on them: hard and long and not without significant angst and confusion and even a tinge of regret that it would be so much easier if I simply dismissed them and got back in line with the crowd (at least locally). And then, gradually, without even wanting to, I changed my mind. I had to. I could no longer lie to myself.

And here, finally, is where I wrap my take on Sunstein’s thesis…

People undoubtedly fall into group-think and extremism. Sunstein is right. But they also are capable of hearing truth when it calls and of thinking and changing and “switching camps” when one of those bodies of ideas is found to be wanting.

Again, please hear me not as condemning leftists or secularists as people but as standing against leftist, secularist ideas taken straight up without considering the alternatives as long, as deeply or as seriously as I have considered theirs. In that, Sunstein and I are in total agreement: it’s important to consider other world views and philosophies and to think, pray and discern where and whether truth can be found in them. To the degree that it is sought only in acceptance by one’s fellow man, one will remain adrift. To the degree that society does not recognize fixed points of moral reference outside of itself and outside of time it too will drift — lightly at first, but eventually into the rocks.