"Which Side are You On?"

How to live in 4D in a binary and polarized world

One frustrating thing about radical moderation is how difficult it is to escape the binary and polarized world we live in. In the book (in progress), I point out that this binary is actually an illusion that we’ve been forced into, both by the structure of our political debate and the tribalism that our brains support.

The real political and social world - in contrast to what the media, the structure of our two-party system, and our brains tell us - is anything but a binary. It’s a colorful, complex, and nuanced 4D landscape where people are making complicated and fallible decisions in real-time over long periods of time.

Despite our best efforts to redefine a radically moderate position that rejects the polarized binary altogether, people on both sides want to know which side we’re on. When the radical moderates among us protest that there aren’t (or shouldn’t be) sides in the way they want us to think about it, we’re dismissed as waffling or weak or shifty.

Even with this constant tension, there are some hopeful signs that avoiding the binary can actually be a very successful strategy. The first is a great article on YIMBYism by Matthew Yglesias in the housing market (shared with me by Danny Shapiro) on how increasing the supply of housing is succeeding - in fits and spurts - in large part because these reforms start local, stay narrowly focused on a particular problem - increasing affordable housing - and actively eschew any kind of political or partisan attachment. YIMBYs still aren’t immune to the pressure to polarize, with Yglesias noting that opposition to YIMBY reforms often takes the form of “tone-policing and concern-trolling where people express the idea that YIMBYs are doing this or that wrong, ideas that normally amount to ‘I wish you’d be less focused on your goal’ or ‘I wish you’d do more to align yourself with my camp in the polarization dynamic.’”

Rather than engaging directly with the ideas and whether they’ll work in practice to alleviate a serious human problem, people want to know which side the YIMBYs are on and whether their position is politically pure enough to engage with.

Another example from this week is an interview with the director of the controversial film The Sound of Freedom, who is now trying to distance himself from the way the film has been polarized and viewed as a right-wing tool, which he argues was never his intention. Whatever you think about the film itself (which does seem concerning, given its star Cavaziel’s support for QAnon conspiracy theories), it’s also a sign of our times that a relatively standard action film about human trafficking (however poorly imagined) has turned into a debate consisting of a series of dog whistles on both sides.

None of this is new. I did a long post in 2021 about our society’s desire to shove people into polarized boxes, using Dolly Parton as the perfect example of a radical moderate just trying to navigate a complex landscape without getting sucked into the polarized wormhole of modern life. Parton tries - and largely succeeds - in avoiding being polarized, but it takes a lot of conscious commitment on her part to continually push back against those who want to know - definitively - which side she’s on.

Despite the challenges, staying non-binary (in the radically moderate sense), can be a winning (albeit difficult) strategy, as the YIMBYs and Parton demonstrate. In my own work on maternity care reform, I found a path in the radically moderate middle by focusing on very specific kinds of problems that people were facing and working to make marginal improvements around the edges, building coalitions between liberals, progressives, conservatives, and libertarians, and focusing tightly on the outcomes; in my case, a better and less cronyist maternity care system.

I occasionally got pushback from people expressing frustration that my view on X, Y, or Z was narrowly arguing for one thing when it should be arguing for some broad political platform that’s itself quite polarized. But that was the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, people from across different political aisles agreed with my assessment of the problem precisely because I narrowly tailored it to focus on obviously dumb regulations that had serious and direct effects on the quality of care. When I did need to disentangle myself from the forces of polarization, it was relatively easy to refocus myself on the narrow, non-ideological goal in front of me.

Which Side Are You On?

All that being said, I’m working hard right now to answer the question of “which side are you on?” reasonably, moderately, but also radically. The answer to that question will be honest, but it will also eschew polarized binaries and will work to reframe the question within the reality of our radically moderate 4D landscape.

So here’s my Friday morning shot at the answer to “Which side are you on?”:

I’m on the side of making human lives better.

I’m on the side of pulling people out of the pits of injustice.

I’m on the side of finding ways to reduce violence and violent conflict.

I’m on the side of a world where fewer people have to make tragic and awful choices out of fear, addiction, or poverty.

I’m on the side of innovation that will provide humans more freedom to choose the kinds of lives they want to live.

I’m on the side of improving institutions so that people have the stability and predictability they need to plan their futures, take care of their loved ones, and create a meaningful life that aligns with their values.

What about you? Which side are you on?

As always, tell me in the comments! And subscribe and share; these are (so far) the main way I find readers.