Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created February 26, 2026
Last week, we began this discussion of finding things we can agree upon across the political spectrum. It is the issue of the Age, and so obviously not soluble in one quick blogpost. In this post, we intend to dive more deeply into finding the pragmatic solution steps.
Step one in any solution process is a situation analysis. In this case, what is wrong, and how did it get broken?
The Ideological Brain: A Radical Science of Flexible Thinking, authored by political neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod, is a good read which came out in 2025 and touches upon many of the subjects about ways to use the mind, which I come at from a different angle in my writings, and which Jerry Zaltman writes about in his books. Where Jerry uses terms such as “open mind”, and I use terms such as “hasty closure” and “dichotomania”, Leor uses “rigidity” and “dogmatic”, but we are all talking about the same things: different ways of using our minds.
Leor brings both genetics and epigenetics into the picture in reporting meta-analyses of neuroscience experiments conducted all over the world which have found that there are structural brain differences which account for the tendency to not update one’s thinking based on new evidence, but to stick with doctrine that explains everything in life, i.e. some ideology, a narrative designed to be logically exhaustive and prescriptive about how to live one’s life.
Darwin taught us nothing if not that survival depends upon the ability to adapt to changing environments. But if one is in an ideological state of mind, this adaptability is crippled.
My friend Joel Tucciarone uses the phrase “frozen perceptions”.
Leor points out that the structural brain differences do not necessarily precede the adoption or the conditioning into belief in an ideology, and that brain plasticity enables a person to overcome and change the brain structure by acts of free will. There is not a deterministic no-exit mind trap; we can choose to use our minds in unfamiliar ways and stick to it and free ourselves. However, she also points out that there is a tendency for a person who is locked into one specific ideology, if he or she gives that up, to fall into a different ideology. She hypothesizes that the regimentation and the comfort of not having to think about the complexity of existence seduce many of us to choose a prepackaged ideology. This is also my hypothesis, that the stress of Acceleritis causes many of us to subscribe to an existing comprehensive set of beliefs as opposed to making our own decisions about the perennial largest philosophical questions.
Unable to bear ambiguity, many will seek hasty closure in an ideology. Better to be like a scientist, leaving closure open until there is replicated proof.
When I was a child, I became aware of a number of political and religious ideologies: Fascism (WWII was still going on), Capitalism, Communism, Democrats, Republicans, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, et al, each with its own logically comprehensive beliefs and action rules. I intuitively felt no resonance with any of them; they all seemed limiting to me.
So ideology has been going on a long time, for thousands of years (Leor traces the word itself to July 22, 1794, I won’t be a spoiler, enjoy her beautiful writing), people have wedded themselves firmly to belief systems. But today the matter has come to a head in a way that seems apocalyptic even compared to the American Civil War and WWII, because of the ferocity of the unforgiving anger and loathing between the most extreme of the right and left political ideologues in the USA.
Leor again comes to the rescue here by reporting well-replicated experiments which indicate that ideological locked-in thinking spikes during periods of fear and threat. It would appear from the evidence that the bitterness and implacability of the ideological clash today is explained by the many frightening existential threats that have come together at this point in history. Thermonuclear, biological, chemical, psychological weapons of mass destruction, environmental collapse, risk of economic breakdown because of fiat currencies and gargantuan debt buildups, devastation of trust, mental emotional Acceleritis overwhelm, AI, and the absence of a plausible scientific spiritual worldview. If Leor is right about fear being a cause of ideological exacerbation, then this doomsday litany is among the unmooring terrors of the present epoch, which arguably explain why the left and right have morphed from friendly competitors into vicious hated enemies.
In my philosophy with which readers of this blog are familiar, fear itself is an alarm that wakens us to think creatively about some problem and to solve it, which is best done in a mindset of resolute courage and stoic resilience, i.e., turn off the fear alarm before you start to think about the solution. Accept the possibility of the negative outcome and see how you will handle it if it comes. Then, turn to creative thinking to prevent the undesirable outcome.
Instead of doing these things, our two political poles are blaming each other, besmirching each other, and justifying their own righteousness. I’m not saying that both extremes are equally at fault; I’m saying that is not the useful handle on the solution. Whoever has done whatever wrongs will eventually be sorted out and penalties applied to criminal acts where appropriate. In the meantime, a general amnesty is necessary. In the end, most of us will be found innocent, and the time for forgiveness of the masses is at hand.
“To err is human, to forgive is divine.” This was written by Alexander Pope in 1711 and has roots in the Bible:
- “To Err is Human”: Romans 3:23 (“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”) acknowledges that making mistakes/sinning is a part of fallen human nature.
- “To Forgive is Divine”: Ephesians 4:32 and Colossians 3:13 encourage Christians to forgive others just as God, through Christ, has forgiven them.
- God’s Command: Jesus emphasizes the importance of forgiveness in Matthew 6:14, stating that if you forgive others, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
In my own humble philosophy, we each are an avatar of the One Consciousness, and have been given free will in order, across incarnations, to learn for ourselves the right ways to be, and this learning will be driven by errors we make. Error is inherent in the cosmic video game the One is playing. Therefore, forgiveness is implicit in the whole setup.
By forgiveness, I do not mean to say that those who continue to act against our interests should be empowered to continue doing those things to us. I mean that in our hearts we can remove the anger and hatred and replace it with understanding, compassion, empathy, and pragmatic solutions to no longer have to put up with those mistreatments.
Voting is the way in which we can take the most effective action. Communication with our representatives is something we can do every day we feel like it (and is our civic duty), and speaking up constructively without rancor will be more effective than joining in with the yelling. We shall also be able to communicate more effectively if we are not taking an accusatory tone, the listener, if he/she is not being blamed, will have a more open mind. If we take the love out of our voice, the people we most need to listen will not listen and will make sure to black us out of their consciousness.
Takeaways:
- Open Closure
- Adaptive Optimization Synthesizing Idealism and Pragmatism
- Agility, Resilience, Adaptability
- Ability to reset one’s mind (finding the hidden switch)
Love to all,
