Some thoughts on why we're so polarized and incapable of constructive dialogue...

Human experience comes down to two things: problem solving and storytelling.

Problem solving is the cybernetic process of communication and control in the pursuit of goals.

Storytelling is the sense-making of our experience as problem solvers through goal-directed behavior.

Cybernetics is the idea that in the pursuit of some goal (docking a boat) we have to constantly adapt to our environment (wind, rain, tide) and adjust course (steer) to achieve that goal.

What we take in and how we react to it is a circular feedback process, and we judge our success by how close or far away we are from our goal. This process operates at every level of life — the goals just shift based on local context and conditions.

At the human level, each of us pursue our own goals and sense-make for ourselves. We individually construct an interpretation of our experience according to our own central nervous system and consciousness.

It’s only in relation to other human beings that we have to contend with the goals of other individuals. And it’s there where shared or competing goals are determined.

Socially, we’re aided by shared languaging (the totality of our intercommunications) and the emergent culture surrounding us, which further scaffolds, frames, and constrains our individual experience of sense-making.

Our personal realities are relative, subject to the localized information available to one’s consciousness in each moment. But through languaging and conversation, we explore our intersubjective experiences of the world together.

Conversation is used to explore potential solutions to perceived problems. If an intersubjective, shared meaning can be established, a foundation for collaborative sense-making and storytelling can be built upon. Agreement might be found.

However, if the “maps of meaning” aren’t agreed upon, the definition of the “problem”, defined as one’s distance from the imagined goal, also can’t be agreed upon and collaborative progress won’t be made.

The conversation will be deemed unproductive and impractical relative to one’s goal and violence will be inevitable.

When each party’s perspective is based on the belief that “facts” exist, independent of observers, it leads to entrenched positions. Reason no longer works.

New “facts” aren't accepted because the framing of those facts is entangled in the subjective scaffolding of the individual and the emergent cultural context they’re embedded within.

The other observer is embedded in a different “reality.” The information of their intersubjective experience is only accessible to them and like-minded others.

Good faith conversation between parties with opposing viewpoints remains our only hope for resolution, but no shared agreement should be expected.

The distance between consciousnesses and their sense-making, the perceived problems to be solved, and the culture that enmeshes these experiences, is too great.

But we have to keep trying.