I don’t know when sentences like the following started becoming fashion statements:

• I don’t talk politics.
• We don’t talk politics at our home.
• Who cares about politics.
• They are all the same (shxt).
• We can’t change anything.
• Let’s not talk about sensitive subjects.
• …

These days, many seem to be taking pride on not talking about political and socioeconomic issues of their societies, and instead talking about sports and celebrities. Not that anything is wrong with talking about sports and celebrities; but I just wonder how “not caring about the subjects that are important for the future and well-being of one’s own society” has turned into a virtue.

Of course, I am not advocating for political discussion at times and places where they are not appropriate, such as workplace or large social gatherings. But not allocating any time or place for such conversations, in my opinion, is a major contributing factor to the extreme polarization that we are currently witnessing, not just in the United States, but in many nations around the world.

Human brain has a tendency to ruminate; to cycle through the same thoughts over and over, further reinforcing them at each iteration. Then come the social media companies with their algorithms with intentional positive feedback, to keep delivering the contents that are consistent with ones thoughts and beliefs, elevating that natural reinforcement of the brain to new levels not seen before. So, absent any intentional interactions and conversations with people that may have different opinions than ours, we seem to be doomed to keep going down a rabbit whole of increasingly hardened thoughts and beliefs, with little chance of being exposed to anything other than what we agree with.

So, it is not surprising that with the reluctance of general population to discuss sensitive subjects (at proper times and locations), and the positive feedback provided by social media, we are now witnessing so much polarization in many different nations. This polarization has gone to such extremes that individuals subscribing to the ideas espoused by the different poles at the two ends of the spectrum, not only differ with or oppose each other on opinions, but often they don’t even agree with each other on factual statements, even though with the availability of many sources of reliable information on the Internet (among all the other junk that is filling the rest of it), it should not be too difficult for each person to find out the truth value of most factual statements with just a little bit of research on their own.

In my opinion, with the destructive effect of the social media in creating extreme ideas and ideologies, the only way out of the current polarization is constructive dialogue. We should try to get rid of those fashion statements that I mentioned at the top of this post, and replace them with statements that demonstrate a sense of individual responsibility for what is happening in our societies, especially the ones that have a reasonably democratic system (more on this in an upcoming post). Statements that are expressive of us caring about our societies’ future and well-being, or at a bare minimum, our own true interests, and our desire and duty to protect them by active participation in the processes that are available in a democratic system.

Once conversations about such important subjects are no longer considered taboo or unfashionable, then, and only then, people may be more willing to exchange ideas with each other on any subject, even sensitive and political ones, albeit, again, in a civilized manner. Constructive dialogues can work miracles by opening our minds to other perspectives. People will still have their own individual opinions, but hopefully, those opinions will all be based on the same set of facts, and not on different groups of “alternate facts” specific to each group or party, some very remote from the reality.