Well, I don’t have a ready-made solution (but of course, having a solution in hand isn’t a prerequisite to be allowed to point out a problem). And bad situations may arise completely organically.
I think one thing that can be done is to promote what’s known as cross-cutting cleavages—I outlined this above. Essentially, the idea is that rather than focusing on those (often narrow) issues where we’re at odds, it helps to start from those where we have shared ground. When we perceive our specific in-group as threatened, we switch to exclusionism and ‘circle the wagons’, so to speak:
“It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group … But when they perceive no such threat, their behavior is not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.”
What pushes that button, Stenner and others find, is group-based threats.
The existence of cross-cutting cleavages diminishes the clean sorting into in-group and out-group, fostering the recognition that ‘they’ are ‘us’ in many more cases than they are not. Hence, promoting awareness of such orthogonal ways of partitioning people can avoid the above ‘button’ being pushed, and thus, lessen the impulse to ostracize:
Scholars have long recognized the necessity of cross-cutting cleavages to healthy democracy. In his classic study, the Social Requisites of Democracy, Seymour Martin Lipset, for example, noted that “the available evidence suggests that the chances for stable democracy are enhanced to the extent that groups and individuals have a number of cross-cutting, politically relevant affiliations”.
More specifically, research has linked cross-cutting cleavages with toleration, moderation and conflict prevention.
So one way to lessen the tendency of the spectrum of opinions to fracture into self-reinforcing in-groups is to engage with others not just on the basis of those issues where you’re divided, but also, on those where you’re united—thus, avoiding a simplistic painting of another as a mere ‘other’, or ‘enemy’. The world simply doesn’t cleanly partition into enemies and allies; even those with similar goals may disagree on how to obtain them, and those with differing goals may find common ground elsewhere.
We could thus ask ourselves where the other really stands on certain issues. Where do we agree, where do we differ? Is the disagreement substantial, or merely on the surface? Let’s say we’re talking about feminism. A genie approaches us with the offer to end sexual discrimination and inequality with a snap of their fingers. Do we believe that the other would accept that offer? Would we? If yes, then we’re at least broadly aligned; that’s something that can be built upon. If no, then it might be that there’s no common ground to be had.
Of course, the difficult part comes only afterwards: nobody might know exactly what ‘ending inequality’ would mean, for instance. That’s where the debate starts; but now, we have grounds based on which we can enter the debate as united by a common goal, and only separated by our opinion on how to reach that goal, or perhaps how that goal should be understood, exactly. But we don’t start on opposite sides of a chasm anymore, and can work together, refining our mutual understanding, rather than against one another, seeking to define the boundaries of our in-group.
Relatedly, as I pointed out in the other thread, the Aztecs had an interesting take on moral philosophy:
This, too, urges us not to think of each other as separated loci of moral action, but rather, understand that we’re all in this together. Even if we’re opposed to one another in view, that might be due to moral error—people may get things wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily make them wicked. We can try to aid them in becoming better at walking the slippery Earth, rather than considering them irrevocably stained by their failings.
All of which, of course, only goes so far. There are gulfs too far to be bridged. But that doesn’t mean none can be. And of course, the Aztecs also sometimes sacrificed their children to placate various gods, so perhaps one should take their moral reasoning with a grain of sand. 