Maybe polarization is a function of the transition towards Classical Liberalism (Age of Enlightenment thinking)

A great example of namby-pamby generic and meaningless feel-good blather. It is not that the sentiment is wrong, it is that it is without substance.

For all the time humans spend on fighting with each other, being cynical about each other, and attempting to dehumanize each other, imagine what humans could accomplish if they spent that time trying to uplift each other?

— Scott Barry Kaufman (SBK) (@sbkaufman) February 16, 2020

In thinking about why I had a disconnect between the happy-clappy vibe and the hard-nosed negative knee-jerk skeptical response, I ended up on a different trail of thought.

I accept that the world is inconceivably better off than at any time in the past and that the past thirty years have seen increases in material prosperity across the globe which a few short decades ago were mere aspirational dreams. People are living longer, healthier lives. They are becoming more educated and economically productive. They live in cleaner environments and safer neighborhoods. The risk of violence is down and the opportunities for success greater.

I also accept that in this period of Age of Enlightenment success, there are all sorts of threats, principally from backsliding into sectionalism, racism, sexism, and socialism under the guise of the variant forms of primitivist postmodernism seeking, not a free world of individual prosperity, but the redistribution of "free" wealth on the basis of group identity and authoritarian pursuit of power.

Finally, I accept that there is a lot of propagandized polarization, a product mainly of an commercial sector (the mainstream media) in its desperate financial death-throws, grasping for a new crisis to clutch at any remaining viewer attention.

BUT . . . I also accept that there are vague levels of concern, anxiety and angst. The world is changing as we charge into universal prosperity and the unfamiliarity of living with everyone always connected in a time when the successes of some (classical liberal Age of Enlightenment mindset - freedom, human universalism, rule-of-law, equality before the law, natural rights, etc.) are inescapably obvious in comparison to the perils and failures of more traditional closed and coercive systems of theocracy, feudalism, marxism (socialism, postmodernism), and autocracy (or its variants).

Can't claim that we are experiencing the last gasp of theocracy, central planning, coercive autocracy, and socialism but certainly those old habits of mind are far more threatened by the success of freedom-based Age-of-Enlightenment thinking than at any any time ever before.

Of course there is angst and anxiety while seven billion reexamine their fundamental beliefs which are increasingly divergent from the reality presented.

The thought in response to Kaufman is that, perhaps that transition from primitivism to Age of Enlightenment mindset requires exactly that which he laments. I hypothesize that the journey to Age-of-Enlightenment thinking (classical liberalism) requires skepticism, contention, and some degree of cynicism. One set of beliefs which were well-established (unitary theocracy is good, Socialism is good, submission to central control is good), or well enforced, is now clearly failing to deliver in comparison to Age-of-Enlightenment thinking.

As more people make the transition from the primitive to the classical liberal modern, not by choice but by circumstance, it is forcing everyone to engage with the deeper thinking around the Classical Liberal model which takes power from autocrats and frees individual expression.

And no matter which direction your journey moves, it will likely will entail two responses. The traditional response is an unreflective, frequently violent, rear-guard action by the loyalists of the old models. The theocrats, the bureaucrats, the socialists, etc. In our contemporary American context - extreme actions by anarchists, Antifa, and Deep Staters.

The second response is to engage with trying to understand the mass of chaotic information in order to discern what is happening and to eventually pick up the heavy, but freeing and prospering, burden of classical liberalism where openness is balanced by skepticism, where innovation is balanced by caution, where personal is balanced by populace, where confidence is balanced by uncertainty.

The Age-of-Enlightenment model has been conquering the world since 1775. First slowly and then more rapidly. With that model comes longevity and freedoms and prosperity, etc. But necessarily with that model comes greater skepticism, reviewing of previously accepted "facts", debate, contention, etc. Perhaps what we see as polarization and global anxiety are merely by-products of the transition towards the Age-of-Enlightenment model.