209 – Can We Forgive Each Other Politically
The nation is getting more divided, and the entertainment media keeps pushing us further apart. When this is all over, can we really go back to being neighbors?
Today we examine an episode of the Twilight Zone called "The Shelter," in which a neighborhood dinner party turns into a siege when one man, why built a bomb shelter, goes inside his bunker during a missile scare. Unfortunately nobody else in his neighborhood had the foresight to build a bunker as well, and his closest friends and neighbors ask politely, at first, to be let in. Then, they show up with a battering ram. The episode raises a question that video essayist Steve Shives recently posed to his audience: once you've seen how ugly people get when their backs are against the wall, can you ever really go back to being neighbors?
From there, we pull in psychologist Jonathan Haidt's research on the moral foundations that actually divide conservatives and liberals, which turns out to be less about race or class warfare and more about two deeply held, competing values: purity and equality. We connect that divide to the economic collapse quietly wiping out the digital middle class, the corporate cash flooding both political parties, and the very real possibility that the "meteor" in this metaphor isn't a politician, it's a CEO with a government contract and a one-page op-ed calling for war.
Note: as podcasters who take no political sides, we do not support or condone political youtubers. We are merely using a biased source of commentary to pose a very real, very important question that we will all face together after our current political heat has died down: how in the world can we ever go back to trusting each other?
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDcK0RkSaA8&t=61s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zEbK4VPNO8&t=816s
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/jonathan_haidt_on_politics_and_emotion
https://onbeing.org/programs/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-of-self-righteousness-oct2017/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226986623_Moral_Emotions