FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP
There hasn’t been much good to come out of the Coronavirus Pandemic. But it has led me to catch up on a lot of reading. Two books I read, David Epstein’s RANGE, and Ezra Klein’s WHY WE’RE PARTISAN, hit me like a ton of bricks. Together, they explained to me… and I hope now to you… the connection between how we think, and how we are manipulated by media, into the extreme partisanship faced by modern America. The problem is, I am not sure we can get out of it. As Klein says, “Absent an external unifying force [Covid?] like a war, the divisions – or worse- that we see today will prove to be the norm, while the depolarized politics of mid 20th century America will prove the exception. And if we can’t reverse polarization… then the path forward is clear: we need to reform the political system so it can function amid polarization. I’ll leave it to younger folk to figure that out.
James Flynn, a New Zealand professor of political studies showed successful adaptors drew on outside experiences and analogies to INTERRUPT their inclinations to follow the same old patterns, the skill is TO AVOID those patterns. Detailed prior knowledge is less important than a way of thinking. A little training in broad thinking strategies can go a long way in calling BS.
Learning what is both durable and flexible is neither easy, nor fast. Strategies CONTINUE READING: FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing
