Instead, one party will take complete control of the government, and that party’s perception will dominate. Our nation’s ills will be addressed on the basis of what one group perceives to be the cause(s) of our misery. The other side will disagree, but they will be powerless to prevent the dominant group from acting on its beliefs.

-Laelth

Is that a prediction or presumption?

I understand and even agree with your premise in a sense. However, I can't see it as pragmatic in that it assumes defeat prior to the engagement and might even encourage apathy and retreat.

Emergence allows for small steps and actions to literally gain a rapid momentum and blossom into full-scale results over time, both constructive and destructive. If we are committed to being defeatist from the get-go, it seems to me that we are thereby, by default, capitulating to the dominant group which the only serves to make the prediction true and facilitate their agenda. In the worst case scenario, we don't have to make our defeat easy.

We can feel empowered and muster up the courage to engage in this from an "as if" or "what if" perspective and then make adjustments as needed. It is a matter of context, process and perspective based on current events.

A pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist waits for it to change. A realist adjust the sails.

Our perceptions of the causes of our misery will dominate, and we will act on those beliefs to make what we think will be a better world.

It’s also a description. If the Republicans win, heaven forbid, they will do the same, but, mainly, my comment was a critique of a naive premise. The author says, in essence, “If we could all agree, then we could fix things.” True, but we don’t all agree. We never have, and we never will, so your entire book is based upon a premise that is absurd. I have no desire to read any more of what this scholar has to say. He lost me with his first sentence.

-Laelth

I can respect your bias there and appreciate your way of framing it. However, a response to a book based on a short excerpt is not compelling, nor does it give much scope or understanding to the discussion.

I would respond with the fact that we already do have many things we are in accord with and find agreement in and that's called culture and society as we know it. We can come to more reaching agreements by way of reason, understanding and debate. I think of Democracy itself as a context that opens a wide umbrella under which a diverse range of views can be presented and that ideology is a form of meta-consensus in its own right.

It is hard to imagine having a culture or society, as well as any form of civilization, that could thrive in perpetual chaos, (which would negate the persistence of a cohesive culture/society/civilization). A general consensus view of basic human functions and interactions is evident and fundamental to those structures. There are many examples of the predominance of those agreements being honored without much in the way of debate or dissent. Some are treated as matter of fact. That's a good place to look.

I have to question the broad brush of your implication that agreement and consent would require a Universal accord in order to be applicable, functional and useful. The disagreements provide a vital aspect of a dynamic system that can thrive even with its most glaring contrasts, or maybe even because of them. Taking "if we all could agree, then we can fix things." too literally might be missing the point in this context, as well.

Perhaps it is a matter of degree rather than black and white thinking? We can define the "we" and even come into agreement in emergent subsets that become more pervasive and influential, as have many ideas and social norms historically.

As Kuhn demonstrates in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” there’s always a dominant position and at least one minority position on any question that is of import to humanity. The dominant position gets to effect public policy in a way that comports with its beliefs. In the United States, that will soon be the position of the Democratic Party unless I am very mistaken.

-Laelth

...children, elderly, and the vulnerable.