opinion
Lanna Hill: Don’t fall for this reductive dichotomy designed to divide

When it comes to examples of binary or dichotomous thinking, we don’t need to look very hard to find one of the most prominent examples on Earth in recent memory — Donald Trump 2.0. The Liberation Day announcement on tariffs this week, also known as Trump’s global trade war, is another chapter in the President’s nationalist, divisive playbook — us vs them, black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. And while the response to Trump’s announcement from world leaders was certainly unified and emphatic, his antics have become eye-rollingly predictable. The increasing prevalence of this leadership and communication style is something we’ve become far more used to seeing — in our political leaders, our social media feeds, and our sources of news and information. And there’s good reason for this — our brains are wired to categorise information in ways that simplify decision-making, and this is something that has only accelerated in our post-pandemic world. As the world becomes more complex, we seek simplicity as a coping mechanism. Last month’s Federal Budget announcement is another local example — with our mainstream coverage separating our population into winners and losers. The issues facing the Australian economy reflect this — the wealth gap is widening, driving economic inequality and in turn, more marked social and cultural fragmentation. As the millennial and gen Z cohort take over as the largest voting demographic in the upcoming Federal election, we can again observe a strong divide. However, this time, the lines are drawn along established structures and systems. Younger voters are less concerned with traditional left and right political leanings — they’re progressive and conservative at the same time, and within these generations, we’re seeing even more seismic shifts. Young men across the globe are heading to the far-right in droves, while our young women are more left than any generation before them. And as politicians turn to social media influencers to drive engagement in valuable demographics, our algorithms only heighten the divide. Instead of seeking a broad and varied range of views and perspectives, we’re increasingly retreating to our personalised feeds, niche platforms and digital echo chambers. The world is a scary place, after all — hard to understand, increasingly unpredictable and volatile, the only constant being rapid change. So we seek comforting ideas, content, and communities — and by design, we spend far less time engaging with the other side. What we need right now, however, isn’t comfort. We need more political leaders, more parents, and more school principals leading the way in more courageous, empathetic and open-minded discussions for the purpose of understanding, listening and curiosity rather than inciting so-called “unity” of ways of thinking that are ingraining the opposite. We need more podcast hosts and advertising campaigns encouraging all of us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable — for the purpose of un-training our human need to binarise, and for the purpose of teaching ourselves to be more comfortable holding multiple options, perspectives and shades of grey in our minds at the same time. We need more co-operation from our governments and politicians, to deal with the significant economic, social and cultural issues Australia faces. The us and them narrative is what will keep us divided, and not to our benefit — though it’s certainly sold to us that way. Lanna Hill is a strategist, speaker and founder of Leverage Media.

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Lanna Hill: Don’t fall for this reductive dichotomy designed to divide

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opinion
Lanna Hill: Don’t fall for this reductive dichotomy designed to divide