{"id":3503113,"date":"2024-09-05T00:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3503113"},"modified":"2024-09-09T19:21:52","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T19:21:52","slug":"global-trends-are-polarizing-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-09-05\/global-trends-are-polarizing-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Global trends are polarizing us: Can democracy handle it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Big problems don\u2019t always polarize societies. Indeed,<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prosocial.world\/posts\/review-of-ultra-society-how-10000-years-of-war-made-humans-the-greatest-cooperators-on-earth\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">having an external enemy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> can cause a society to increase its internal levels of trust and coherence. Moreover, societies can be destabilized without becoming polarized: a pandemic or natural disaster can incapacitate people and their institutions without causing them to choose sides and fight.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, today the world faces historically unique stresses that are likely to be increasingly polarizing for many societies. These stresses can be divided into three groups\u2014environmental, economic, and technological. After examining these, we\u2019ll explore two questions: first, is democracy inherently more polarizing than autocratic forms of government? And second, are democracies or autocracies better at handling crises?<\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-three-baskets-of-societal-stressors\"><b>Three Baskets of Societal Stressors<\/b><\/h2><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Arguably, the biggest <\/span><b>environmental<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> crisis facing humanity today is<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/richardheinberg.com\/museletter-375-navigating-climate-catastrophe\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">climate change<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Just one of its likely impacts will be that, as many regions of the planet become hotter and more arid, the current inhabitants will be<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zurich.com\/media\/magazine\/2022\/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">forced to move<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Large-scale migration often puts stress on political systems in countries receiving migrants, and immigration is already a<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/best-countries\/articles\/2023-08-08\/how-immigration-is-roiling-governments-across-europe\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hot-button issue<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> polarizing the U.S. and many European nations. Public backlash is understandable: the arrival of large numbers of people, who may speak a different language and practice a different religion, can lead non-immigrants to fear their communities being changed or negatively impacted\u2014even though immigrants often bring cultural diversity and economic benefit. For their part, immigrants may have little choice but to move from their home country, and may face discrimination in their new surroundings.<\/span><\/p><div class=\"resp-content-preview-message\">\r\n\t<h2>Get this Resilience+ Deep Dive to see more<\/h2>\r\n\t<p>With a Resilience+ account you can get Deep Dive content and first-hand access to events with experts, facilitated discussions, and educational resources.<\/p>\r\n\t<a class=\"res-btn-yellow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/product\/deep-dive-political-polarization\/\">Get This Deep Dive<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t<div style=\"margin-top: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/enter\/\">Log In<\/a><\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Heinberg explores questions about democracy and political polarization in the context of profound changes in environmental, economic, and technological conditions, including whether democracies or autocracies are better able to respond to crises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129678,"featured_media":3503114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[252007,79720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3503113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resilience-plus","category-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3503113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3503114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3503113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3503113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3503113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}