The two pictures that define America today.
As an American who's job is to teach kids about civics, both of these pictures disgust me on a visceral level. And both pictures aptly sum up why I am so motivated to launch this project. In this post, I'll detail the hypothesis that serves as the foundation for the idea, and why I believe this goofy experiment has the potential to actually FIX the myriad of complex, seemingly unsolvable problems that ultimately led to those two pictures above.
Yes, I really believe this idea can change the world for the better.
But before I begin, I want to talk about self-doubt versus irrational self-confidence. There's nothing special about me. I'm of average intelligence, went to a community college, I'm not rich, and I'm just so-so at jiu jitsu. And I'm only marginally funny. So why the hell do I think I can change the world?
Because of YOU.
My blog data suggests forty people will read this post within two days of posting. Based on my experiences with barefoot running, ultrarunning, and my sex and gender blogs, I know half of you will take this message to heart. Half of that half of you will actually DO something with the information. Half of the half of the half of you will take this idea and do something bigger than what I'm trying to do here. And some of the five of you in that last group will be wayyyy more effective people than me.
Based on past experiences, I also know ten of you will share this post on your favorite social media platforms. And a quarter of the people who see the post on those people's social media will share it.
Such is the power of sharing ideas through the megaphone that is the Internet.
I know I can directly make a difference in the lives of about ten to twenty people right here in Montrose, Colorado. But YOU can play a critical role in amplifying this idea to YOUR sphere of influence, and some of those people will continue the amplification.
Fold a piece of paper 100 times and you reach the moon. Same deal here. Never doubt your ability to make a real difference. And if this hypothesis turns out to be correct, together we WILL change the world.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
The Hypothesis
The positive benefits of a tribe to individual members, the collective tribe, and wider society increases as a function of sociopolitcal diversity.
In non science-geek speak - tribes get wayyyy better for everyone when they have a bunch of liberals, conservatives, and everything in between. The reason is deceptively simple - people who have different world views, when working together as a cohesive unit to accomplish specific goals, are better a creatively solving tricky problems. The inverse is also true. The less diversity a group has, the worse it is at solving problems.
For those who are interested, I've written two posts in the past that were early attempts at exploring this idea, which ultimately led to this hypothesis. The first post on my old "Sexpressionists" blog came first and discussed how liberals and conservatives manifested in Dave Grossman's "Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves" essay. The second came from my "El Diablo Man Camp" blog and discussed the importance of tribes. That second post was the genesis of the idea behind this actual project. That was the theory; this is the experiment to test the application of the theory.
Why Is Diversity of Sociopolitical Ideology So Important?
We're starting to collect some really good reliable, valid data that suggests liberals' and conservatives' brains are different. The gist - they see the world in radically different ways. Take any issue and observe liberals and conservatives arguing - gun control, for example. They'll just talk past each other and make no real attempt to *understand* each other. Popular explanations usually explain this by claiming they're stubborn, stupid, naive, or gullible. But science suggests they're just wired differently.
This is intriguing from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. If we are indeed wired differently, WHY did that difference evolve? Per the rules of natural selection, it had to serve some utilitarian survival purpose. After all, every one of us is here because we're part of a very long, unbroken chain of human ancestor who managed to live long enough to get a little action at least once.
Based on anthropological evidence, we know humans clawed our way to the top of the food chain not because we're strong, fast, or have a wealth of natural weapons. Compared to every other apex predator, we're rather pathetic physically. Even with tools, we still kinda suck:
There IS one thing we do exceptionally well, however. WE WORK TOGETHER.
Humans are exceptional social animals. Further, our ability to carry out specialized tasks within a group setting allow a "tribe" of humans to do damn near anything possible. Anything from persistent-hunting a gazelle to developing a device that allows us to access the entirety of human history on a device that fits in our pocket have all been achieved by humans working together.
But why does sociopolitical diversity matter so much more than say, racial diversity? Or socioeconomic diversity? Or having a mix of cat people and dog people?
As it turns out, sociopolitical identity is a great predictor of the specialized roles required for a tribe to survive and thrive. Why are most cops and soldiers conservative? Why are most teachers liberal? Turns out career choice and politics is pretty closely correlated. Yay science!
Sidebar - it's important to note I'm framing this as a dichotomy - you're either liberal or you're conservative. This is merely for simplicity. Sociopolitical ideology exists on a spectrum. Maybe even a grid if you measure add in libertarianism and authoritarianism. The point - I'm intentionally oversimplifying this concept.
When applied to a hunter-gatherer tribe, conservatives generally maintained order within the tribe and protected the tribe from external threats. This explains why conservatives are easily triggered by fear appeals and often see threats where no threat exists - that was the role conservatives played to keep us safe. Liberals served a far different role - they maintained harmony within the tribe and helped the tribe interact with other tribes, which for our ancestors, also included adding new members of the tribe to acquire some genetic diversity. You know, prevent inbreeding and such. This explains why liberals are always wanting people to get along and always willing to welcome outsiders into the tribe - they made the tribe successful.
This idea also allows to to predict how tribes that lack sociopolitical diversity fail. An all-conservative tribe will be overly aggressive, which might get them into trouble with the law. Further, since they have no good mechanism to maintain intra-tribal cohesion other than their shared fear, they have a tendency to readily turn on each other. Which is precisely what we saw from those pro-Trump insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol.
All-liberal tribes fail for much different reasons. Because they have no mechanism to police themselves OR recognize when outsiders may be a threat, one "bad" member of the tribe OR one "bad" outsider who joins the tribe can do a ridiculous amount of damage. Which is precisely what we saw from those pro-BLM rioters who burned down the police station in Minneapolis.
In either case, people join leftist or rightist movements because they make us feel good. Moral superiority is a powerful motivator. Righteous indignation and hatred directed at the other side releases a whole lotta dopamine in our brains. But so does smoking crack. Once you fall down the rabbit hole of hyper-partisanship, rock-bottom is the only thing that's going to save you. And the rock-bottoms we're seeing happen right now, today, are pretty damn bad.
Sociopolitically-diverse tribes simply don't do stupid stuff like that because the different members of the tribe keep each other in check. The social bonds formed by virtue of being a part of the tribe and working towards a mutual goal give them the ability to understand and, importantly trust each other.
So in summary, liberalism and conservatism is complimentary, not adversarial. Liberals and conservatives NEED each other, and they need to be able to work together. For our ancestors, they worked together to survive. For you and me, we need to work together to, at a minimum, prevent police stations from being burned and Capitol building being overrun. If optimized, we can create and operate tribes that will allow us to really thrive. THAT is what I'm doing with this project.
Black Sheep
This entire hypothesis brings up an important issue - if sociopolitical ideology is biological in nature, is it genetic? Is it a function of learning? Does it develop because mom ate a particular flavor of Doritos when she was pregnant?
I haven't actually reviewed the literature on this issue, mostly because it doesn't really matter for the practical application. I simply haven't had the time, and a proper lit review takes weeks of intense digging. BUT. Anecdotally, we know it's entirely positive to have two uber-conservative parents to give birth to a flower child. And we know liberal hippie parents give birth to a very conservative child.
The point - there's a regular flow of new liberals and conservatives being born regardless of the ideology of the parents. You know - black sheep.
Sidebar - this idea of sociopolitical ideology being biological and seemingly unpredictable means we can never eliminate one side or the other. Any such attempt can, will, and historically HAS failed. In America's current "culture war", everybody loses. For myself personally, that fact alone means I have no choice but to test this idea.
What Evidence Do We Have That Sociopolitically-Diverse Tribes Work?
On the theoretical level, there's a concept discovered by psychology and used in the education field called "cooperative interdependence." AKA - The Jigsaw Classroom. The idea is simple - give a diverse group a goal, then give each member a part of the solution. It forces them to work together to solve the problem. In the process, the shared goal results in the people having to get to know each other a bit, which allows us to see them as an individual versus a stereotype.
Another sidebar - stereotypes appear to be biological in origin, also. There's a mental shortcut so we can quickly assess strangers to determine if they're friend or foe. It's worth noting conservatives are almost always genuine when they say they're not racist - their brains are usually just reacting to strangers differently than liberals. Which is probably part of the reason the Jigsaw Classroom is so damn effective - it allows participants to get to know each other personally so they're no longer perceived as strangers.
We see this concept play out in different real-world scenarios. The American military is a phenomenal example. Soldiers are pretty diverse and they have to work together to accomplish a shared goal. For the most part, we see very little overt bias in the military in units smaller than a company, which is comprised of about 150-200 individuals. That number is significant. We call it "Dunbar's number", and it predicts the maximum number of "friends" we can have and still know each other really well. Once we go above that number, our brains simply cannot process all the social data, and relationships weaken significantly. Functionally, this means our tribes cannot be bigger than about 150 members.
This is the fundamental psychological problem with communism and socialism. We're not willing to make personal sacrifices for people we don't know well, especially complete strangers. Liberals have a little capacity for this, which is a function of their innate desire to expand the tribe. But for conservatives, this is a non-starter. They're unwilling to share the tribe's resources with people who may harm the tribe.
We also see a temporary version of this type pf sociopolitically-diverse tribe pop up in the aftermath of natural disasters. When the shit hits the fan, survival suddenly becomes the only priority. So tribes spontaneously form, people take roles their ideology would predict, and humanity overcomes tragedy. Basically, the natural disaster temporarily strips us of the comfort and security of our cushy modern world. Unfortunately, as soon as the danger passes, we revert back to divisiveness because there's no longer a good enough reason to work together. This entire project is predicated on the idea that we can artificially manufacture a goal that will intentionally bring sociopolitically-diverse people together.
Finally, we saw this concept work in our jiu jitsu gym in San Diego, and we've seen it work in our gym here in Montrose. For those unfamiliar with the sport, it's a form of ground fighting that simulates breaking limbs and strangulating each other to death. Not only does the sport require cooperative interdependence, but given we spar (roll) at near 100% intensity several times per week, it also requires a high degree of trust to not hurt each other. In the words of our coach Charlie Kohler, "It's the only sport you'll find cops and criminals having fun together."
That's paraphrased, by the way.
A Word on Leaders
Our popular conception of "leadership" is pretty bad. Or more accurately, the people we hold up as leaders today are actually terrible leaders. In the most basic terms - a good leader is anyone who can effectively empathize with anyone on the sociopolitical spectrum, understand what they need, develop mutually-beneficial solutions to tricky, complex problems, then effectively sell the solution to the tribe.
Bad leaders who we sometimes hold up as "good" leaders, on the other hand, are only effective at leading a slice of the sociopolitical spectrum. They don't understand others who are not like them, ergo they cannot develop solutions to problems that help everyone affected. Every president we've had in my lifetime falls under this category.
Solid leadership requires quite a few characteristics, but this ability to empathize and understand is an absolute necessity. At a later date, I'll write a post on WHO should be placed in leadership roles and what characteristics then should possess.
If you're curious is YOU would make a good leader, I've devised a really simple test. Pick any issue you feel strongly about. Can you effectively argue against yourself? If you can, odds are good you've got good leadership chops.
In Conclusion...
So that's it. This is the underlying hypothesis I'm going to use to try to make our world a better place. I've experimented enough with these ideas to absolutely know it will work for this project. For it to actually make a real difference beyond our tribe and community, it's absolutely necessary for at least some of you, the bravest of you, the real leaders, to use this idea in YOUR life. It's a tough sell, though, because it requires you to work closely with people who may not share your world view. There will be people who read this and against all logic, still believe their particular world view is the only right world view. And they'll go back to burning down police stations or storming Capitol buildings. If we want to save our society, we have to put down that crack pipe that is partisanship and really commit to fixing our broken world.
If this idea resonates with you, or if it doesn't resonate but you know someone who it will resonate with, please share. You can play a hugely important role as part of the megaphone that'll spread this idea. Also, join our Facebook group where we discuss this project and the underlying hypothesis: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelabmontrose
~Jason
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