"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."
"Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats [..] the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms."
- https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-prec...
"My hypothesis is that rightism is what happens when you’re optimizing for surviving an unsafe environment, leftism is what happens when you’re optimized for thriving in a safe environment."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory...
If you're trying to push as many people as possible to a "survive" mentality, I assume a divided and polarised community helps. Others are coming for your stuff! For your jobs, for your neighbourhood, for your status quo, etc. Make out that your opposition is some ultimate evil.
A more diverse political field and different voting system would likely help. Might stop single issues dominating the playing field? Bring back some nuance.
I think it's too simple to say "the media wants sensationalism" because we all collectively favour sensational content. It suits for-profit publishers, it suits politically active people, etc. But we're making it work for them. We can pretend we're above it, but if @dang let through all the Musk threads on HN, many here would turn full-time arguing in them.
Are you familiar with the expression "It takes a village to raise a child."?
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-o...
The American people have always been divided. Until semi-recently (~1960s) the political parties didn't sort themselves neatly on these divisions but over the last 30-40 years they have.
To be tribal/clannish/insider-outsider also seems to be an innate human trait.
Ezra Klein wrote a good book on both the (US) political history and various psychology studies on it:
Inequality causes crime in developed nationsp[0]:
> Comparing across industrialised societies, higher inequality—greater dispersion in the distribution of economic resources across individuals—is associated with higher crime and lower social trust. These associations appear empirically robust, and meet epidemiological criteria for being considered causal.
Inequality also has health impacts[1]. "The evidence that large income differences have damaging health and social consequences is strong."
0. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02779...