Every single day while I do my thing on Facebook, I see a large number of posts that seem dedicated to spreading animosity between liberals and conservatives. Posts claiming that Obama is the equivalent of Stalin or that the Republicans are trying to destroy women populate my page daily. Consequently this has led to a culture war that is getting worse each day. Where at one time you could have fairly frank discussions about political issues on Facebook and other social media outlets, it seems like that has become more and more rare. Because I don't think this is a good thing I have spent some time thinking about why it happens. I figure if I can figure out why it happens and then share that, there is a chance that the culture of Facebook can change.
The reason I feel this is so important is because right now the U.S. is deadlocked between conservative and liberal hysteria and if something doesn't defuse it soon I fear we will rip our country apart. I don't want to see this happen so I feel like I need to say something. This post is not about assigning blame to either side or anyone in particular. In fact this post is an attempt to get people to understand their own behavior in a hope that they will take some form of responsibility and change the way they engage in debate.
I realize that I am not a perfect person. In fact up until about a year and a half ago or so I was quite happy to keep the culture war going. I knew I was right, I knew the other side was wrong, and I figured if I shouted long enough and hard enough they would eventually capitulate to my rightness. I don't know when exactly I realized I was part of the problem, but thankfully I did. Since then I have worked very hard to keep myself from falling into the many traps that are out there that keeps us arguing instead of working toward a solution. During that time there are a few things I have noticed that keep the culture war escalating and I feel like it's time we start addressing them as a nation. The following is simply one man's attempt to get people back to talking instead of attempting to shout louder than the other person.
To really understand why liberals and conservatives have a hard time getting along, we first have to understand how a liberal or conservative is made. We have to understand how people become liberals and conservatives because that is the first step in understanding their opinion. Ignoring things like background, schooling, exposure to mass media, and other factors only serves to keep us angry at each other instead of working toward a common cause.
Family, Location, and Peer Pressure
While there are exceptions to the rule, most people carry on the political view of not only their parents but of their larger social group. If you have ever looked at the history of political opinion across the nation you will notice that for the most part any particular area tends to favor one political view over another. In New England most everybody is liberal while in the south most everybody is conservative. This alone is a huge factor in shaping our political opinion. While yes there are people who "buck the trend" this is the exception and not the rule.
We all have a desire to belong. That is part of human nature and that is why peer pressure works so well on most people. When it comes to political opinion, peer pressure plays just a large of role as family does. For example if a majority of your friends are liberal and you say something that sounds supportive of conservative ideas there is a good chance you will get laughed at if not out right attacked in some way. While at first you might continue voicing your different opinion, if you continue to be ridiculed for it you eventually quiet down. Not only will you quiet down, but you will start to voice the "acceptable" opinion along with every one else. Over time, if you continue agreeing with people, you will eventually start agreeing with them as well.
This doesn't happen because people are bad, it happens because it is our base nature to enforce conformity in our social groups. This also isn't to say that people hold a particular point of view because they were to weak minded to disagree with popular opinion, peer pressure is a very strong influence in our lives. Trying to say it isn't is like trying to say gravity doesn't keep our feet on the ground.
This is not to say people are helpless to the dogma of the area they grew up in. I myself grew up in a family that was incredibly conservative. Not only that, I grew up in an area that was very conservative. On top of those two factors the dominant religion of my area was also extremely conservative. Yet somehow I wound up being a liberal while most of my friends grew up maintaining the conservative tradition of their family and region. I don't think I am "special" or "better" because of this, I just recognize that none of us are helpless to any particular point of view.
The Role of Eduation and Media
Along with family and the like, another key component of how political ideals are formed is through the information we recieve. As we go through the process of education we learn about many different things and one of the things we learn about is how our government works and the history of our nation. During this time we learn about the basic functions of our government, the role of the electorate and the history of our government. While I doubt it is intentional, teachers can't help but slip a bit of bias into this educational curriculum and this bias tends to reflect the political bias of the people who live in the area of the school.
This bias in education is not confined to one particular political view or another. In fact most bias in education tends to reflect the bias of the population in the area of the school. For example, if you live in a conservative area, chances are you will get a conservative bias taught by your teachers. I know I did. However, while yes, a conservative teacher is likely to teach a conservative bias, a liberal teach is going to do so as well. Again this isn't intentional, it's just the fact that we are people and we have opinions.
Along with the bias we learn during our education, we also learn a bias from the media. We recieve our information for a staggering variety of sources. There are news channels on TV, newspapers, periodicals, blogs, social media and more. All of this combines together to help us form an opinion. The thing is that other than national news outlets, most of the information we recieved comes from local news papers and word of mouth. While that has changed a bit because of things like cable televison and the internet, the fact is most of us still form a majoirty of our opinion from the sources closest to our homes.
What this means is that in a liberal area, the liberal news papers will carry a liberal bias. This isn't because they are horrible evil people who only want to present one point of view, it's because their readers only want a particular point of view. While there are rules that journalists follow, those rules have seen a lot of errosion over the last twenty or so years (which I will go into later) which of course has led to even more bias in our news sources.
While I could probably write a book on every little nuance of how we develop political opinions during our life, I figure at this point I have given enough information to create a basic understanding. The combination of family, location, and peer pressure combined with what we are taught and the information we recieve is a large part of how we form our political thoughts. Because of this people tend to share common values and ideals in a give geographical area. This is not wrong or bad, this is simply how things work. I will leave you with this to think about for now. The next part of this series of posts will be about why we can't get along.
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