Connected We Stand

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Wherever it appears, the conflict between them boils down to a different attitude toward boundaries. The Culture of Division is based on boundaries and seeks to uphold and create them. The Culture of Connection seeks to dissolve them.

Connector culture is characterized by a preoccupation with linking—people, concepts, places. It seeks to recognize commonalities and promote democratic decision-making. It emphasizes process over product.

The emergence of Connector culture takes such diverse forms as the euro, the ending of apartheid, the blurring of gender roles and the increasing power and influence of women, global communication and the global economy, internationalism in music, cuisines, and art, and the retelling of old tales from the viewpoint of the antagonist.

Resistance to Connector culture has been most visible in the rise of fundamentalist movements—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu—throughout the world. Paradoxically, it is strongest both in the world’s most backward areas and in its centers of great power. Osama bin Laden and the Bush administration both exemplify Divider resistance.

Divider culture is marked by a preoccupation with control—over nature, over other people, over our own bodies and feelings. It’s relentlessly dualistic—splitting all of life into warring opposites. It fosters rankings and hierarchies. It exalts war and competition, and tends to see cooperation as weakness. It seeks a fixed, static world in which good perpetually battles evil. The clash between Dividers and Connectors can be seen in every area of life—politics, business, science, art, personal relationships, sexuality, religion, psychology, medicine. (It mirrors, for example, the conceptual revolution brought about by quantum physics and chaos theory.) It is the defining social issue today, and probably for decades to come.

The right has positioned itself unambiguously in this struggle—resisting nearly every aspect of Connector culture. The ambivalence of the left—stemming from its failure to grasp fully these fundamental changes and align itself with Connector culture—has forced many progressives into a reactive role. Only when someone in power does something destructive, predatory, or stupid do they mount some sort of protest in response—a demonstration, a march, a boycott, a lawsuit. American politics has become a tennis game in which the left no longer gets to serve. The wider public can see clearly today what progressives are against, but can often only guess what they are for.

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