It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that we live in an age when almost every headline story has become a Rorschach Test for spin doctors on cable news or in cyberspace. Their purpose is not to promote dialogue leading to some sort of shared understanding but to further fuel current political polarizations with wildly different, ideologically driven interpretations.

A case in point: Elliot Rodger who went on a killing spree near UC Santa Barbara. He was a product of America’s misogynist culture. Or he was a gun fanatic acting out violent video games or shock films like “American Psycho”—the moral: censor pop culture and more gun control. Or he was a psychotic loner driven by homicidal-suicidal delusions—the moral: more mental health spending. Prepackaged, often contradictory theories were offered up almost before the crime scenes were roped off.

Another dynamic fueling polarization is built into the psychic economy. Across the political spectrum, there seems to be a compelling need to prove novelist Charles Dickens’ at least half right when he wrote: “These are the best of times. These are the worst of times.” Our current updates of Voltaire’s arch-optimistic Dr. Pangloss believe that—despite the last century’s calamitous wars and economic depression—human life has never been healthier, longer-lived, or more literate and economically advanced than today. But we also have our Doomsayers who see Apocalypse around the corner because of climate change or the next pandemic or a new nuclear-chemical-biological-cyber world war triggered by global inequalities. (more…)