Decision Making

As usual, this is being written about a week before it will appear in the Cascade Courier. Normally, that doesn’t matter, this week it really might. I am deeply concerned that there is a high potential for violence in our future. Our political life has become so polarized and there are so many people who believe violence is an acceptable way of dealing with disagreements that bloodshed seems inevitable.

To be absolutely transparent, I do not believe violence is ever justified unless and until it is literally a matter of life and death. I can almost hear some folks saying, “Yes, this is a matter of life and death. You just don’t understand what those people want to do.”

My reply is simply, “No, it isn’t. Stop insisting our politics has to be a zero sum event where, if one side wins, the other must necessarily lose.”

Unfortunately, that’s the way our society functions. We compete, we cheer our wins and sneer at the losers. That is, after all, the capitalistic system. Winning is all that matters.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. That isn’t the only way our society, our country, has to function. We are in an existential crisis. If we don’t figure out a better way of behaving there’s going to be more and more bloodshed.

As regular readers of this column are aware, I have deep dislike for those who encourage division in order to make a buck. There are people who make a very good income encouraging people to be afraid. They are richly rewarded for their skill in manipulating the emotions of their audience so folks feel justified in hating someone else. That’s a big reason why I turned off the television, except for sporting events, years ago. I get more than enough news from newspapers and articles readily available on the internet. I do not need some talking head telling me how to interpret the news and how I should feel about it. News should be factually, not emotionally, driven.

In primitive, hunter-gatherer, societies, in which decisions really do have life and death consequences, decisions are typically not left to any individual.

Decisions about the acquisition of food and serious social issues are made by consensus. When the health and safety of the group is dependent upon

cooperation instead of competition discussions may go on for a very long time. Compromise is expected and no individual’s voice is allowed to dominate. Those who violate the cooperative nature of the process are ignored. The group wins or loses, not individuals.

Those who study such things have long said that group decision making results in better decisions. Putting the health and safety of the group first instead of individual egos means everyone learns to cooperate.

No emotionally healthy individual wants violence. No healthy society puts the desires of individuals above the good of everybody else but politicians aren’t going to change how we collectively do things, it is up to us, the people.