A mailing list I am on shared an article which I am not going to be easily able to find again now, but which was rather significant.
The author claimed that the political polarization we are experiencing is a large-scale effect of the distribution of left-brain-dominance and right-brain-dominance in the population. Not exactly a new idea, but he had a novel spin on it: that it is the left who are left-brained, and the right who are right-brained.
His reasoning is that it is the leftists who get caught up in grandiose theorizing, and it is the right who are more grounded and in tune with their surroundings.
I think he is to some extent on the wrong track there, and that it may come down to how people integrate the workings of both hemispheres. A leftist may have a grandiose theory, but they will also have strong feelings about that theory, and it is the feelings which confirm them in discounting any and all challenges to the theory. At the same time, many of them can live very strongly in the present, and very relationally, without necessarily connecting anything that happens there to their ideological model.
For myself, I am very concerned that my theories actually be correct, which involves a great deal of seeking out, weighing, and arranging new information. Much of the time, that is motivated by a feeling that I don't have something quite right. Other times, it is spurred on by something God has shown me in my Bible reading, or elsewhere. And I tend to do this absentmindedly, unless I am looking for information in the immediate vicinity.
The bigger problem, though, is the corresponding polarization in the Church. Jesus said to stay unified, and that is clearly not happening.
This song is haunting, although not directly applicable to my personal experience.
There's an interesting semi-parallel in Revelation 7:17 and 8:1:
"...and God shall wipe all tears from their eyes. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour."
Some years back there were some public comments from famous authors about the Susan in the Narnia books not being present for the Final Battle and what followed. It was framed as bigotry against women and people of average morals.
Neil Gaiman's came in the form of a short story, "The Problem of Susan," which from an excerpt I found is apparently quite vile.
Gaiman has fallen out of public favor as allegations against him have begun to surface.
Two other authors were J. K. Rowling, who ought to know better, and Phillip Pullman, who also writes vile stories, I've been told.
Pastor Douglas Wilson has a lucid, sensitive, and rather long rebuttal to the Problem of Susan; link below.
My own, lesser contribution here, is that C. S. Lewis was a fan of George MacDonald, and MacDonald wrote some vivid portrayals of spiritual devolution. In The Princess and Curdie, Curdie was given the ability to discern which beast a person's moral character was descending into by holding their hand. In ...
