On this episode I’ve got an interview lined up for you that I did with Bob Froehlich, who hosts the Thinking Clearly radio program and podcast over at KMUD community radio in Redway, California.
Our topic was critical thinking and tribalism, very much in the vein of what I’ve been talking about in my recent sketchbook video series titled, appropriately, "Critical Thinking and Tribalism".
(To see the first three videos in this series, follow the links in the show notes below).
If you’ve been following my work a certain amount of this will be familiar, but in this interview we covered some new topics relating to tribalism and polarization that I haven’t discussed before; for example, the distinction between ideological polarization and social polarization; evidence that social polarization along political lines has increased dramatically in recent years, especially in the US; and some discussion of the causes of this increase in polarization.
We also answer a couple of live call-ins from listeners!
We hear a lot of talk about the "rediscovery of tribal psychology "in recent years, but my view is that it’s misguided to think of tribal psychology per se as the problem.
The problem facing us today is how our tribal psychology operates when polarization becomes extreme.
So the more pressing issue is to understand the psychological and social factors that increase or decrease polarization.
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In This Episode:
(0:00 - 4:25) Introductory remarks from Kevin
(4:25 - 1:50) Introductory remarks from Bob Froelich
(5:56 - 6:34) What is a tribe?
(6:34 - 7:00) What is tribalism?
(7:40 - 9:15) What prompted me to engage with this issue of tribalism? How is it relevant to critical thinking?