Life in 4D: Surviving Until (and After) Election Day
Living in 4D in a polarized world
Politics won our survey last week for radically moderate life advice, so here goes!
I’m going to do two posts this week, given the complexity of the topic. Today’s is about how to navigate politics over the next two weeks without losing your mind.
Thursday’s will be a very rough overview of how to think about policy and the political landscape from a radically moderate perspective.
There are no enemies here. We’re not being invaded. Politics is not war.
In each one I'm going to use our radically moderate framework and offer some concrete advice at the end.
Polarization is (Very) Bad for Us
The evidence is pretty clear that while Americans aren’t actually more polarized in terms of actual policy issues, affective polarization is, in fact, increasing. This means that while we’re actually clustered in the middle on a lot of policy issues (even those we hear described in hyperpolarized terms like abortion and immigration), we actively dislike the other side. We also tend to overestimate how much the other side dislikes us and overestimate how extreme people on the other side actually are.
And that’s in part because we have a deeply distorted sense of who the other side is. It’s really the elites who are hyper-polarized extremists. The rest of Americans are actually just, well, regular people.
In one sense, this is good news for radical moderates because it means that there’s hope for bipartisan and/or nonzero sum solutions.
But it’s also bad news because the more we think in affectively polarized terms the more we’re primed to think about the other side as enemies and the more our binary tribalism and zero sum thinking kicks in. And the more that happens the more elites can benefit from splitting us into polarized binaries. So even if we’re less polarized on policy issues than we think, affective polarization keeps us locked in Binary World when what we need is to think in 4D.
Because binary world is actually a fiction of our collective (and elite) imaginations, we really just need a mental shift to break out. And breaking out of binary world is exactly what we need to do for our mental health and the health of our communities.
How to Stay Sane Until Election Day
Explore the first dimension
Start (and stay) hyperlocal: local politics matters most for people’s actual quality of life; state politics is probably second. Federal politics is a deeply distant third. Not only that, but your ability to impact federal elections let alone federal level policies is vanishingly small. Focus your time, energy, and policy attention - particularly for the next week - on yourself and the people you care about. Check in with yourself, get a good novel out of the library, bring a friend a casserole, or just take a walk in the woods with a friend or your kids. Read up on some local infrastructure proposals or an upcoming community event. Unless you’re actually working for one of the campaigns you don’t need to be paying attention to polls or thinking about federal politics at all.
Dig into the second dimension
Map the existing landscape: this is where we get a bit uncomfortable and try to survey the landscape a bit more clearly. This is also where both complexity and humility kick in. When we think about our shared landscape we want to think about the other people we share it with, including the things we share with those people and the things we might not. The goal here is to try to figure out who your fellow Americans are, what they care about, and what part of the landscape they occupy and how that might affect their political choices.
You yourself know why you’re voting for whoever (or not voting at all) and your reasons seem perfectly clear to you (though they’re probably not actually that clear, once you dig in). But you don’t know why your neighbor is flying a Trump flag or why the lady at the end of the block has “Kamala” signs all over her yard. You *think* you know, but you really don’t. And it’s a classic bias in human nature that we assume that we have all sorts of good reasons for the things we believe and care about while other people who care about other things are either dumb.
Because we’re primed in some sense to assume the worst, it’s crucial to stop and try to understand where someone else is coming from. And the primary reason to do this this week is to save your sanity. Not bring about world peace. We’re 7 days from the election. You’re not going to change hearts and minds at this stage. The only thing you need to do for your own mental health and your relationships with people you care about is stop thinking that the other 50% of Americans are horrible and stupid.
There are no enemies here. We’re not being invaded. Politics is not war.
We actually agree on a lot of the most important issues. While the media and politicians have deep-pocketed incentives to make us *think* we’re at war with each other, it's just not true.
I like this thought experiment from Jim VandeHei at Axios: “In a given year, you meet scores or more people you spend enough time with to appraise their character. Think about them: How many do you think are decent, normal people who do volunteer work, help shovel after a storm, look out for family and neighbors?”
The chances are very good the answer is “almost all of them.”
Notice, I’m not expecting you to sing Kumbaya in the front yard with your Trump neighbor or invite Kamala lady over to dinner. It’s actually so much easier! Just repeat over and over again as you pass yard signs or bumper stickers: “they’re not the enemy and they’re not out to get me.”
Make this your new mantra.
You can take a deep sigh of relief and go do anything else rather than worrying your neighbor is going to literally or metaphorically garrote you in the middle of the night. Good news!1
Check out the third dimension
Identify the pits: Now that we’re reassured that the mass of Americans are normal good people, we can come back closer to home. The third dimension is depth and this is where you do a five minute assessment to identify your personal pits. What are the areas of politics and the types of media that sap your mental and emotional energy? What kinds of conversations, people, and spaces make you angry, anxious, or frustrated? What’s your biggest political trigger? Make a list and then create a plan to avoid them. If passing that house with one hundred yard signs and the offensive flags makes you want to crawl out of your skin, experiment with another commute route this week. If you compulsively scroll to a specific website to check polling updates, block those sites on your phone.
Most obviously, we should all avoid the pit of social media for at least the next three weeks, especially the comments sections. I think we can all agree that almost nothing good will happen there unless you manipulate your feed to focus entirely on baby orangutans or cats riding Roombas.
If you really can’t stay away from the news, focus on local news and limit your exposure to polarized and polarizing national media. You might find a new restaurant to check out or hear about a nonprofit that rescues ducks or something similarly wholesome and non-polarizing.
Remember the fourth dimension
Look backward for a bit: Time gives us great perspective. Remember that we’re still living in the best time to be alive, no matter what the media and politicians want us to think. Remember too that the U.S. has weathered extreme polarization before and likely will again. This election might seem cataclysmically important to us in this moment, but it’s probably pretty mundane in the grand scheme of things. I could be proven wrong, for sure, but what I do know for sure is that giving in to affective polarization and treating your neighbors like enemies is, in fact, how we build a future we emphatically do not want.
Accept variation and pluralism
This is repetitive for a reason. People have different values and occupy different parts of our shared landscape. They are under different pressures and have different life experiences that have shaped their worldview. They are very likely neither dumb or nor evil. They’re probably a lot like you in that they’re doing their best to navigate a complex and variable landscape with incomplete knowledge and a limited set of tools. So remember (again): your neighbors aren’t your enemy. Especially given how close this election is, no matter which side you’re on it’s very unlikely that a full 50% of Americans are either stupid or evil. What’s much more likely is that people just like you are doing their best and making mistakes along the way.
Always remember tradeoffs
Finally, remember that tradeoffs exist and look for non-zero solutions. We’re not going to solve our most pressing problems like healthcare costs and quality, immigration reform, and support for a robust economy by distrusting each other and instinctively rejecting solutions offered by the other side.
Remember too that the radically moderate principle of humility applies across the board. This framework might not give us perfectly clear answers simply because not all the information we might need is accessible to us in the moment. None of us are fortune-tellers and none of us can know what other people are thinking at any given point.
We do our best and make decisions the best we can. It will help if we remember that everyone is is doing the same.
Other Soothing Activities For Election Week:
Join the Polarization Detox Challenge for daily reminders and short exercises.
Organize or attend a screening of Undivide Us or stream it from your local PBS station.
Do something relaxing and stay away from politics. Check out the Funny Animals Reddit or take a long walk or go carve some (non-political) pumpkins or spend time with family (not talking about politics).
There’s a big world out there that has nothing to do with who wins the election. Remember that world and spend most of your time living in it, especially over the next week. You’ll be happier, your community will be healthier and maybe just maybe we can start re-building our shared landscape into something that reflects who we are as a people. But for now, deep breaths.
What else are you doing this week? How are you breaking out of toxic binaries and reorienting yourself toward our shared world? What am I missing? Which suggestion do you like best? As always, leave a comment and share if you like what you see!
Some readers might think I’m being dismissive here, but I’m really not. I understand that people think this election has existential implications and it might. I worry a lot about the foreign policy effects this election could have, for starters. And I understand that people on both sides feel as though their fundamental rights and even way of life are at stake. But the reality is that you can sacrifice your mental and physical health and all your relationships for the next seven days and it will have zero effect on the election. But thinking about your neighbors as enemies instead of fellow Americans will not only stress you out, but it will also actually increase the chances of awful things happening post-election. It’s a depressing example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So take a deep breath and do what you can in your own small space to make the world a little kinder or more beautiful. Leave the big stuff to spin out and do your best to not make things worse.
First comment in a Substack but I had to say thank you. I needed this perspective and your comment in the footnotes really connected with me.
Perhaps if more people thought in 4D we would see a deflation of hyper partisanship as the once lucrative environment that feeds it sees demand for its product dry up.