DIVISIVENESS
Humans have a natural tendency to divide people into them and us. This tendency to favour those of our own tribe has been developed over thousands of years of biological evolution and reinforced by cultural evolution. It leads to racism and other extreme forms of discrimination which are immoral by today’s global standards.
Humans have been becoming more moral as we are experiencing a move towards a more global community. Our “tribe” can now include people from all over the world. Many of us abhor the idea of using war to solve problems. Many of us realise there are too many people for the planet to support and are keen to limit the number of children we have.
We now have international laws that facilitate trade and immigration. There are only a few Nation States that use the force of war to achieve their goals. There is still plenty of crime and poverty, but the communications revolution is making it harder for people to cheat and freeload.
Any attempt to make the world a better place is significantly hindered by divisiveness., even if most of us agree on what is needed. Those with vested interest will create divisiveness to weaken any attempt that might interfere with their current mode of operation. The mechanics of this process is as follows.
First the divider focusses of a difference be it political, religious, or any other institution. They then use the extremists from their side of the divide to exaggerate the difference and this further pushes those from the centre away from that centre.
The recent Federal election shows that it only takes a few from the centre of politics to change the government, and most people are closer to the centre than the extremes. The activists in politics are generally far enough from the centre to bother being involved in politics. This means the workers in the parties have a significant bias in one direction or the other.