Change and the Resistance to Change

Russell Sadler

We are, we are told, a deeply polarized country. We are polarized between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, moral fundamentalists and immoral secularists, red states and blue states, patriots and America-haters. This analysis, however, is misleading because it is so narrow it deliberately ignores a third or more of the adult population.

Neither the Republican or Democratic parties are majority parties anymore. Less than a third of registered voters are willing to admit they are Republicans. Slightly more than a third of registered voters are willing to admit they are Democrats.

More seriously, somewhere between one-third and one-half of eligible voters no longer bother to register to vote -- not because they are apathetic, but because they feel, with some justice, that no one listens to them and their votes don’t count.

So this “polarization” the chattering classes wring their hands about is limited to about half, perhaps two-thirds, the adult population that remains politically engaged. That is hardly the polarization of an entire society.

Yet there is clear evidence we are divided far beyond our politics. The fake “Culture War” contrived by self-described Conservative politicians is clearly touching deep cultural divisions that transcend our politics.

So what is causing our deep cultural anxieties if it’s not politics?

The unprecedented, unrelenting pace of change over the last 50 years is almost as significant as the changes themselves. Computers, email and cell phones free children from their parents’ control at earlier ages. Women are no longer economically dominated by husbands. The changing role of minorities and women threatens those who once controlled them. The findings of science and medicine threaten long-held customs and beliefs. The decline of the nuclear family threatens the bedrock faith of certain religious sects.

Why rely literally on the sacred texts of people who thought the world was flat or slavery a normal state when satellite photos and our own civil documents tell us otherwise?

Why buy goods or food from your own country when workers in other countries can provide them more cheaply? Why worry about making things when your country is so good at financing things and selling them instead?

With all the anchors up or dragging, the ship of state is adrift. Facing this unprecedented rate of social change, we are taxing our ability to adapt.

It is the way we choose to respond to these challenges is dividing us. We are dividing into two cultures -- the Control Culture and the Connecting Culture.

The Control Culture expects to gain control over Nature, over other people, over feelings. Control culture tends to be a warrior culture -- belligerent, competitive, macho -- and tends to be authoritarian with an emphasis on keeping people in line. To keep us in line, Control Culture erects walls, barriers and compartments where individuals are expected to fit in rigid hierarchies.

Connecting Culture expects to bring down walls and barriers in a effort to bring people, cultures and ideas into relationship with everything else. It is a movement from segregation to integration, authoritarianism to democracy, from World Wars to European Union, from national economies to global economies. Once rigid boundaries are falling everywhere. It is disconcerting, even threatening. It is not a predictable process, nor is it limited to America. A wall comes down in Berlin, a wall goes up on the U.S. - Mexico border.

This is not a conflict between religions, nations, the left and the right. If you look closely at the news, you will find this conflict in many nations. There is a fundamentalist movement in nearly every religious tradition. Old cultural traditions do not die without a fierce fight. And that is what divides us.

This notion is not original with me. This column liberally paraphrases the work of sociologist Philip Slater. In a 1964 article entitled "Democracy Is Inevitable," Slater and sociologist Warren Bennis argued that societies, corporations, even nations become unmanageable under hierarchical command systems as they get larger and more complex. The spread of democracy as a form of the sharing power and information -- The Connecting Culture -- is inevitable because it is the most efficient way of organizing human relationships in conditions of constant change. Slater and Bennis went on to predict the fall of the Soviet Union before anyone else.

Slater’s recent article, “Why America is Polarized” is available at his website.

I’ll leave the reader to determine which politicians and organizations are part of the Control Culture or Connecting Culture. My point is that politicians are caught up in the transition as much as nonpolitical institutions. Politics is not the cause of our polarization. Politics simply reflects -- with immature viciousness -- a larger cultural polarization between the Control Culture and the Connecting Culture that is spreading around the world during the last 50 years. Any real solutions to the cultural problems that trouble us must transcend politics as well.

By Russell Sadler April 09, 2006