Not by Bread Alone: Immoderate Politics and the Roots of Suffering

Baumeister and Bushman (this issue) present a parsimonious explanation for why the conflict between the left and right is inevitable, sometimes hostile, and prone to escalation. They propose that one way to reduce the intensity of the political polarization is for people on the political right and left to accept a turn-taking arrangement. Central to their argument for why alternations in power can be effective for reducing intergroup conflict is that both parties endorse values that are functional for society, even if their aims are not always reflected in their policies. The core assumption of their cultural animal theory is that the right prioritizes amassing resources, while the left prioritizes sharing or redistributing resources. If each side is given a chance to lead and translate their priorities into policy, the excesses of one regime can be counterbalanced by the excesses of the next, and society will improve as a result. We offer a few observations about their analysis and suggest some plausible amendments to their theory. The model Baumeister and Bushman introduce as being most advantageous for promoting group survival, flourishing, and social stability in a democracy is dialectical. In this regard, they occupy the same territory as thinkers like Hegel (1807/2019) and Marx (1867/2004), who also believed that historical progress toward a superior end-state results from conflict between competing groups. We can imagine how a political dialectic could produce healthier, more prosperous collectives. For instance, people might wish to indulge their desire for voting-based social experimentation, allowing them to learn from the positive and negative outcomes of translating one party’s values into action. We also find merit in the authors’ argument that exchanges in power between political opponents are generally preferable to a prolonged single party rule (like the authors, we acknowledge that there are historical exceptions where such a rule can produce stable and prosperous societies). That said, we suggest an alternative to the process of political turn-taking that Baumeister and Bushman did not sufficiently explore, but that could also reduce political animosity: moderation. Moderation can be defined as “the deliberate effort not to seek the greatest emotion or the fullest accomplishment” (Fukuyama, 2022, p. 154). We maintain that regardless of which party is in power, it is less disruptive to society if neither one attempts to steer it in a direction too far from what most people can reasonably endure without becoming existentially threatened, morally confused, and cynically disengaged from political life. Through political debate and other institutionally mediated processes, a workable society is one that can integrate competing views to create mutually beneficial solutions that are not at the extremes (Carrese, 2016). Importantly, an alternation in power is not essential for a course of moderation to be followed.