A bit of retrospective research here but this is so relevant that I must save it. The work is incredibly detailed and I have not yet read the full document, only the article that introduces it. I was quite taken with how well the author sums up what I was saying yesterday in terms of the fractious atmosphere we witness on social media, although Astle’s net is far wider.
“The root causes of the West’s culture wars are many and complex. But chief among them is the fact we live on a dangerously overheating and ever more densely populated planet where conflict and persecution, flooding and drought and vast inequalities of opportunity and wealth have displaced 65 million people and created a migrant population greater than that of Brazil. Amid the backlash to this unprecedented movement of people from poorer to richer nations, liberalism is in full retreat, while nationalism, nativism and protectionism are all on the rise. And with an angry populist politics on the Right feeding off, and feeding, an intolerant and censorious strain of identity politics on the Left, our ability to transcend our hardwired instinct to tribalism — to put our shared humanity before our group loyalties — is once again being severely tested.” (2017)
I have included the italics because I was annoyed when attending a talk last year, where an artist and academic denied the idea of tribalism. Denying it, imagining there is some possible ‘idel’ where everyone loves each other, is less than helpful, naive and rather foolish. It also prevents us from addressing ways to overcome groupishness.
I linked to another article shared by the RSA in preparation for Nexus; education is one of their key concerns.
Full article below
https://medium.com/rsa-reports/the-ideal-school-exhibition-74cee1951c75