The Dance of Polarization

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By Andrew Bard Schmookler Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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The present battle between the defenders of the traditional social order and the advocates of more countercultural values is a message to us of a challenge yet unmet by our present civilization: to find an integration at a higher level of human wisdom than either side of that war has yet attained.

The idea that "the truth lies between the extremes" would be the clich� it appears to be if it meant only the need for a mechanical compromise, a splitting of the difference. But the real truth lies not between but above the extremes. The great spiritual leaders of humankind -- a Buddha or a Jesus or a Gandhi or a St. Francis or a Dalai Lama -- are people who have integrated values that seem to be in tension into a form that is not just a compromise on a lowest common denominator. At their level of integration, one might be at once freer than the libertines and more disciplined than the straight-laced. One might be both a better warrior than the hawks and a better peacemaker than the doves.

The best resolution of our culture war is not to be found through our present mode of conflict. Neither is it to be found in mere centrist political compromise. The real challenge is for both sides to work together toward an integration at that higher level where opposites no longer seem so irrevocably opposed, where the expressions of our liberty and the requirements of our civilized order achieve a fuller harmony.

No easy task. But the more quickly we can move out of our stance as partisan combatants into a position from which we can see how we are in this dance of polarization together, the sooner we can get to the real work.

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