There are certain topics in my life that I am inexplicably more attracted to than others, topics that shine in my mind like street lamps in the dark, that I flutter around, transfixed. One of those topics is culture, specifically of the 21st century American kind. I am obsessed with understanding the waters America swims in, their depths, currents, temperatures, sources and destinations.
You cannot be a student of our contemporary culture without being fluent in the language of fragmentation. It is a cliche to write “our nation is divided” nowadays; it is also a cliche to lament this. Everyone, it seems, wants to follow “E Pluribus Unum” and has solutions to achieve it. But our solutions are becoming futile and desperate, like someone stuck underwater who keeps trying to breathe.
The media outlet Vox, for example, published an essay last week titled “How Meditation and Psychedelics Could Fix Tribalism,” in which author Sean Illing argued that science attests to the positive influence of obliterating the self and expanding one’s consciousness (i.e., meditation and its crazy uncle, psychedelics.)
Illing argues that viewing individuality as illusory could eliminate us-versus-them mentalities that entrench us along ideological battle lines. How could we wage war against “the other side” if there is no such thing as sides, perspective or even individual cognition, but only the All behind it all? In this view, Republicans and Democrats actually belong to a Oneness that encompasses all things, which is the true reality, truer than our possession of particular selves.
Meditation and psychedelics, Illing contends, are equally fruitful ways of tapping into this cosmic force — the more we tap into it, the less we see life as tribal warfare.
Meditation aside, Illing’s desire to legitimize the use of psychedelics is a troubling one; he admits as much and states that he does not want everyone to start dropping acid. We as a culture are solution-deficient. This is how I interpreted Illing’s essay. Vox published the essay because it found Illing’s ideas to be worth contemplating. I think his ideas are a gateway to more ludicrous ones.
Illing’s problem, which happens to be the more general problem of our culture, is that he proposes solutions to the wrong problem: us-versus-them narratives. Many today see this as the biggest leak in our national pipeline. I have a different view.
Us-versus-them narratives are impossible to avoid; every single worldview smuggles that point into its plot. Every worldview favors those who believe in it and consequently disfavors those who don’t. It is a natural side effect of believing that the truth is embodied in a particular system of belief.
Yet many people today view this as oppressively exclusive and would rather side with inclusivity. These people think that you can have a worldview free of metaphysical bias that does not split people into believers and non-believers. But look closer — does this view not still tell the same story?
There are those who champion inclusivity and those who do not. There are those who think the way to accept and love people is to not care about what they believe and those who think the exact opposite. The belief that inclusivity is the highest good is just that — a belief — and is subject to the same laws that any other belief is, namely disagreement. As it turns out, in the heart of the belief that purports to end all tribalism, there is an “us” and a “them.”
When we see us-versus-them narratives as the chief culprit for our divided nation, we misunderstand the nature of belief. Any worthwhile worldview will be aware of the complexity of people — that something ineffably keeps us from rising to true unity either at work, the dinner table, the neighborhood or the nation.
Here then is my thesis (a little late in the game, I know): Rather than looking for the cosmopolitan worldview, we should look for the worldview that teaches us to respect and upholds the dignity of our enemies. We should look for the worldview that gives us resources to love (in action, thought and word) those people who will inevitably disagree with us, for disagreement is a fact of life as these past few years have painfully revealed.
Scott Stinson is a UF English senior. His column appears on Mondays.
