When we talk about polarization, we immediately think of the distance that is created between opposing positions. We think of opinions which are moving away, which are becoming radicalized, which are preventing any debate.
This is exactly what has been happening for several years, we can see it clearly. Positions are less and less gray: they are black or they are white, particularly on social networks, where we go around tweeting whatever you want.
But there is something even more pernicious with this ambient divide: our growing difficulty even in listening to the position contrary to ours.
It’s one thing to disagree with your neighbor. Divergence of points of view is healthy and normal. It is even through the clash of ideas that light springs forth.
Throughout history, we have debated, we have argued, we have persisted, and great good has been done to us. We have the right to our opinions, to our convictions and even to the firmness of our positions… provided, that said, that we are able to welcome and hear the position of our counterpart in order to evaluate it , analyze it, judge it on its merits, even to dismantle it.
And this is what seems to be missing most from public debate these days: intellectual humility.
In his very recent book THE tearsthe essayist Alex Gagnon beautifully demonstrates the link that exists between this tension in opinions and the surge in identity that we observe almost everywhere.
Gagnon argues that we are trapped, in some way, by our ideological identities: I think left, therefore I think this about such a debate. Point. Without further reflection on the issue, the relevance of the positions, the strength of the arguments of each party.
This is how, notes Gagnon, that controversy is often much less a dialogue or a debate than a classification exercise by which we classify others by classifying ourselves.
A recent example. If you are on the left and have environmental sensitivity, you have a good chance of being against the Northvolt factory, because environmentalists are opposed to it. And if we are on the right, we risk being for construction. And we evacuate, on one side or the other, all the shades of green from this very contemporary debate which goes from the protection of natural environments to the necessary electric shift.
We thus adopt postures linked to the camp with which we identify, we lock ourselves into our family of thoughts, without daring to question our positions, and above all, without wanting to agree with those who see things differently.
In the United States, we talk about tribalism. In France, “archipellization”1 of a society divided into islands, or even, of “netflixation”2 of the life of ideas, with opinions “on demand”, in niches of meaning which no longer communicate with each other.
Different expressions which lead to an observation: we move away, we eliminate contrary arguments, we stop giving the benefit of the doubt to those who think differently. In short, we no longer even bother to listen to what the other has to say.
I’ll give you a word about it at the start of the year, because I sense a growing desire to reconnect with dialogue. I even note an increase in calls for more openness and humility in the debate, in the public square as in the private sphere, with our neighbors, with those who are stubborn, with those who do not think like us.
This is what I read in Alex Gagnon’s essay, for example. Just as in Praise of hindsight by David Crête, and in The courage of nuance by Jean Birnbaum.
This is what I recently read from the pen of Mario Girard3 and under that of Professor Frédéric Morneau-Guérin, in The duty4.
It is also the will, The Presswhere we focus more than ever on dialogue and pluralism of ideas, by promoting respectful exchanges between those who think differently, by presenting the range of points of view that are expressed in the public square, by allowing you to react to our publications.
We also publish collaborations and open letters which support the opinion texts of the journal as well as those which oppose them, in this spirit of listening to the contrary point of view. Even the positions that attack us, moreover: think of Boucar Diouf, who criticized us for having given too much importance to the son of Jean Charest5or to Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin, who considers us incapable of taking criticism (in a text that we publish on our own platforms)6.
The objective is to provoke thought. A reflection that can only be done if we collectively return to the notion of exchange and dialogue, which would force us to stop, to listen to those who do not think like us, to weigh up, to make up our minds. And sometimes, to realize that we agree with a person on one subject, but not on the other, which requires listening, openness and humility.
Precisely what I wish for us collectively in 2024. And I am taking advantage of these last days of January to wish you, dear readers, a happy new year, under the sign of discussion, reason and reflection.
1. Jérôme Fourquet, The French archipelago
2. Eugénie Bastié, The war of ideas
Calling all
And you, do you practice intellectual humility? Are you trying to listen to the position contrary to yours? Do you read books that challenge your opinions? Are you trying to understand points of view that you don’t share?