Schismogenesis

The Greek roots of “schismogenesis” mean “creating division.” Two entities become increasingly different as they interact.

A rebellious child resents how uptight one of their parents is. They resolve never to be that way. They rebel. The parent leans into their uptight ways even more.

In The Dawn of Everything we see how common it is for societies living near each other to do the same, organizing themselves in opposite ways. Sparta liked war and Athens liked debate. Native tribes on the northern California coast lived simply and industriously while the ones just to their north lived for lavish banquets. Cities in Mesopotamian river valleys built grand public works with massive civic cooperation. Their neighbors in the nearby mountains rallied around warrior kings and avoided bureaucracy like the plague.

All were still human. That’s the irony of these situations. Schismogenesis implies an initial state of togetherness. The child mentioned earlier only comes to hate a characteristic after they repeatedly encounter it, whether in their parent while growing up or (more often, I think) within themselves as they grow older.

The more you try to make yourself the opposite of something, the more attention you need to give it and the more your personality depends on it, in a way. It’s the Joker in the Dark Knight telling Batman, “You complete me.”

Schismogenesis can happen worldwide now thanks to the Internet. That doesn’t make it special. It will keep happening even if one ideology “wins.”

Say authoritarianism takes hold globally — not just in America and Russia, but all around the world. A cultish minority runs a rigid hierarchy, applied to everyone yet accountable to virtually no one, backed up by a vast military and surveillance system. It strip mines the planet for what’s left and throws out the scraps for the masses to fight over. Even then, or especially then, there will be people fighting tooth and nail to overthrow this until they succeed. It will not last. Even within the upper echelons, people will ardently disagree about the specifics of how it’s run.

You have to give schismogenesis a “release valve.” You have to leave space for experimentation with new and potentially better ways of living. The only ideological authority you need to exercise is clamping down on pockets of intolerant authoritarianism that trample on key rights.

The United States hasn’t done so. It has pretended capitalism tends toward meritocracy and competition, despite clearly tending toward nepotism and monopoly. It has let the economy remain hopelessly authoritarian with CEOs and boards making unilateral decisions.

The result is this, which you’ll notice is strikingly similar to the authoritarian picture I painted above:

The 0.1% needs us to stay afraid of each other to complete the transition to feudalism which would benefit them enormously. They need to maintain the illusion that schismogenesis between the left and right is still balanced. They need politicians to pretend to be in two different camps, one side defining itself in opposition to what it calls “moral decay,” the other side defining itself in opposition to that. Interesting, then, that the former actually gets radical legislation passed and the latter does nothing.

In reality, no state, no city, and no single person is fully red or blue. All are a shade of purple. The vast majority of people who care about climate action and universal healthcare don’t actually want to burn whole cities down and the vast majority of people who care about God and trade protections for American workers don’t actually want to burn crosses on the Capitol steps. All of us are viewing “the opposition” through a customized lens shaped by algorithms and billionaires. We are all Don Quixotes attacking our own private windmills.

As a consequence, we increasingly have to define ourselves in opposition to the entire political system just to survive. Roe v. Wade has been overturned, letting many states force pregnant people to be incubators, despite not forcing others to donate their organs to save lives. The government continues to let millions die of COVID and climate change as though this somehow allows more “freedom” than responding to popular and scientifically-supported demands for action. The response by the 0.1% and the corporate media is gaslighting. These demands are treated as crazy leftist pipe dreams.

Everyone is figuring out life as they go, building the plane as they fly it. Everyone is misguided about some things. But some are more misguided than others. It’s time to stop treating the most misguided as being worthy of our opposition and attention. It’s time to start defining ourselves and our society not in contrast to them, like moody teenagers rebelling against parents, but in opposition to what we’ve done in the past to fix our situation that hasn’t worked.

Socialism that uses unaccountable and undemocratic central parties hasn’t worked. Even more than that, and more recently, unregulated capitalism that sabotages every socialist project that comes along, saying it failed on its own, hasn’t worked.

It’s time to use these lessons to cobble together a positive, concrete vision of a democratic economy and government, not just resist what currently exists. We also have to make it inclusive, or else the people left out will revolt through the cracks, as they should.

When we ignore and avoid the past, or even just dwell too much on certain parts, we’re doomed to repeat it. When we instead acknowledge it and come to terms with it, the good and the bad, then we can move on from it, using all we’ve learned to craft a brand new world we might actually like.