Why we need a revolution of the spirit to overcome polarisation

We know that we ’ re polarised. We know how families rowed over Brexit and friendships foundered on it. We know that Democrats despise Trump, and that the contempt is generously reciprocated. We know that the Left will sooner shout at the Right than talk with it — and vice versa. 

I know it well from the public row that erupted over my views on the British Empire two years ago. At the end of November 2017 an article by me was published in the Times here . There I presented what I thought to be the moderate view that we British have things of which to be proud — as well as ashamed — in our imperial past. I didn ’ t claim that the British Empire did more good than evil, nor did I call for its revival. Frankly, I thought that my view was too bland to be objectionable.

But I was wrong. Within a matter of days, I became the target of three mass online denunciations, accusations of racism and white supremacism, and no-holds-barred verbal abuse. The effects were unnerving, but most shocking were the sources — not illiterate trolls, but university students and even professors at some of Britain ’ s most prestigious institutions of higher education.

Since then I have had several opportunities to engage with what these professors have to say, and my consistent experience has been that they don ’ t read or listen carefully and give no evidence of being inclined to learn. Instead of the give-and-take of reasons, they deal in misrepresentation, caricature, and sneering. If you doubt it, look at my exchange with Richard Drayton, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King ’ s College London, here .

So, we do have a problem: we ’ re polarised, deaf to political opponents, more ready to shout at the other side than to hear it. “ Profound disagreement about politics,” writes James Mumford, “ [has] morphed into hatred of people”. To this barren ideological logjam his new book, Vexed: Ethics beyond political tribes (Bloomsbury, £16.99), offers a perceptive response in fresh, conversational prose.

He observes that Left and Right tend to operate in terms of intellectual “package-deals”. Typically, Left-wingers support assisted suicide, sexual liberation, and reverence for the environment, while Right-wingers promote marriage, the sanctity of life, and personal responsibility. Within each of these ideological packages, however, Mumford spots some glaring inconsistencies.

Thus, for example, the Left has traditionally championed the poor and the vulnerable in society — and still does so in the name of “inclusivity”. In today ’ s Western culture, with its cult of youth, one of the most excluded social groups is the elderly. As Mumford writes, “ It began with marginalisation from a position of authority in wider society, then became a withdrawal to the stifling circle of the immediate family, then alienation from the family itself and the subsequent isolation, ending with banishment to care homes.”

Naturally, this is experienced by older people as “ a deep sense of being a burden”. And yet it is in this cultural context that so many on the Left lobby for the legalisation of medical assistance in committing suicide. Were that to happen, staying alive would no longer be the default position. Simply carrying on would be seen as a choice requiring justification. The onus would fall on the elderly to explain why it is that they choose to continue being a burden, when they could choose physician-assisted suicide. Where ’ s the “inclusivity” here?

Meanwhile the Right, at least in the United States, is famous for its championing of the “sanctity of life” in relation to unborn humans and for its fierce, occasionally violent, opposition to abortion. And yet this same Right is equally famous for its championing of the right of private citizens to bear arms —  even machine-guns — and its implacable opposition to gun control.

The paradox —  or, let ’ s be frank, the contradiction — is incarnated in Gail Gerlach. On 23 March 2013 Gerlach, a plumber from Spokane, Washington, shot the thief of his car in the back of the head as he drove away, killing him. Claiming to have been in imminent danger himself, Gerlach was found innocent. Nevertheless, the very same man is a passionate anti-abortion activist. A member of the lobbying group “Pro Life Rocks”, Gerlach once posted this on the internet: “ [I]t is a human right to have life, and no one ’ s right to take it away at any stage… No one would be safe if we cannot protect the right to life.” Maybe they really don ’ t do irony in Spokane.

In pointing out the internal inconsistencies that afflict the ideological packages of both the Left and the Right, Mumford does us all the very important service of opening up the possibility of thinking again. One of the signal marks of our polarised political life is the soul-sapping deadness of language that trots about in dog-eared clich é s — second-hand thoughts, picked up thoughtlessly, thoughtlessly passed on, and thoughtlessly hurled across the divide. The merit of exposing the incoherence of our political assumptions is that it could jump-start us back into intellectual life, provoking us to rethink what we thought we knew, perchance to notice en route that the other side really does have a worthwhile point or two to make.  

Mumford thinks that “ moral imagination ” is the key here — the power to exercise a certain sympathy toward the other side, imagining oneself into their moral shoes. Vexed itself is an admirable, refreshing object lesson in such sympathy directed to both sides.

But I ’ m not persuaded that that ’ s the key. The key is what liberates the imagination to be sympathetic in the first place. And at least in the tougher cases, that lies in a revolution of the spirit: one that turns arrogant little gods, smugly drunk on their own self-certainty and self-righteousness, into humble creatures, deeply impressed by the limits of their own perception, their common accountability to the truth, and their need to learn again. To set the imagination free, we must first bend the knee.