Dichotomania Is the Root Cause of Partisanity

All of this hatred of Americans across the aisle is beyond stupidity, beyond insanity; it is a sign of a species on the brink of self-destruction. For 12 generations, we Americans have been among the most noble, idealistic, and brotherly people on Earth (with the exception of the Civil War and the ramp to it). Howdy neighbor! In only the last ten years, we have fallen so far back into something like the conditions that led to the Civil War.

How did this happen so quickly?

This post aims to expose the roots of the phenomenon and, by such means, establish the path to its cure.

The main root of this tree is the acceleration of the amount of information processed by the human brain. In the early 1970s, I wrote a book, Mind Magic, which postulated that this Acceleritis had been going on since the beginning of written language about 4,000 years ago, but that it was exponential. By the 1970s, we were already immersed in too many question-producing stimuli per day. We no longer had time to assimilate all of it. We were merely coping with life by shifting into what I called Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP). And I predicted it would get worse.

It got worse.

One of the main symptoms of EOP, I wrote, is dichotomania: pigeonholing everything into either the good box or the bad box, forgetting that shades of grey can exist. It didn’t occur to me to predict that, with a two-party political system (which George Washington warned us against establishing), it would only be a matter of time before each party put the other party into the bad box, with no room for forgiveness or understanding.

Partisanity is a word I just coined to mean the form of non-sanity that manifests as hatred and disgust toward people in the political party that must be the antithesis of one’s own, since everything is either black or white. Acceleritis pushes people into EOP. EOP produces dichotomania. In a two-party system, dichotomania produces partisanity.

I first noticed this tendency toward black-and-white thinking as a child watching westerns on television. The good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats. That made it easy to tell them apart. Thinking was unnecessary. This is what happens when almost everyone is in EOP.

From the point of view of advertising, or brainwashing, EOP makes it very easy, with enough repetition (frequency), to convince any EOPer of almost anything. EOPers are susceptible to hypnotic suggestion and repetition as long as one doesn’t accidentally use a word that signals that you are in their bad box. They are Pavlov’s dog. They are optimizing for the least use of their thinking apparatus. There is not enough time to consider all the ever-mounting complexity, so the best thing to do is join a successful herd and hide in it.

That is how partisanity sustains itself. Each side repeats the signals that tell its own herd who belongs in the good box and who belongs in the bad box. The repetition feels like information, but it prevents information from being considered.

Fortunately, EOP is not the only state available to us.

There are many people who spend goodly amounts of time outside EOP. These are people who have metacognized enough to have minds that are relatively open. I call this middle state the Observer state. People shift in and out of EOP, but when they are in the Observer state, they tend to have sound judgment, learn new things quickly, and know how to have conversations that are friendly and productive.

The famous OCEAN model used for finding good people to hire starts with Open-minded, then adds Conscientious, Extraverted, Agreeable, and Non-Neurotic. Open-mindedness comes first for a reason. It is the ability to keep new information out of the good box and the bad box long enough to see what it actually means.

There is a third level of consciousness known as the Zone, or Flow state. In this state, hypofrontality is shown by EEG and fMRI measurements. The methodical thinking process is not going on, but well-practiced skills are doing themselves automatically, and performance is perfect for the needs of the situation. There is code running in the front brain, but it is well-worn code and does not involve re-solving things that have been solved before.

We see this in jazz musicians as they create new improvisations they have never used before, letting their bodies and intuitions merge in a state of childlike playfulness with no ego attachments to possible outcomes. People in Flow are not hiding in a herd. They are fully engaged with what is happening.

Advertising has to work smarter in order to do its job on people who are in the Observer state or the Flow state. That is not a drawback. It is why the best creators of advertising have always agreed on the same general procedure. Absorb all the relevant information about the client’s business and brand, its customers, and its competitors and their customers. Then go away from thinking about the subject at all and have fun. Be ready to take notes when ideas suddenly erupt from your subconscious, and you know that these are genius ideas.

That process starts in the Observer state and culminates in the Flow state.

What the best ad creators do is therefore not merely a creative technique. It is a small working model of how human beings can process great complexity without collapsing into oversimplification. First, observe without premature judgment. Then allow integration to occur. Finally, act with the whole mind rather than with the frightened reflexes of the herd.

Advertising and business are not the whole point. They are places where this change can begin because they bring people together every day to absorb complexity, exercise judgment, create, and act. If enough people learn to move from EOP into the Observer and Flow states there, the habit will not remain at work. It will change how they see one another, how they talk across differences, and ultimately how they choose their leaders.

The best way to run any business is to set things up so that every one of your employees knows how to use time optimally by being in the Observer state, and by taking those breaks during which the Flow state comes upon you all by itself. It’s not just for ad creators. It’s for everybody.

Once business learns this, the fad will take hold. Partisanity will gradually fade away because it can thrive only in EOP. It will be a win/win situation because, as businesses run better and partisanity fades, happiness and business productivity will mount. Everyone will be in more of a good mood. Relationships will improve. Romance will tsunami. Global and cultural differences will be appreciated as interesting, and respect will naturally return. People in the Flow state do not pick fights nor start wars. Let’s elect some of them.

Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.