A while back Elon Musk threatened to create a third party. The “America Party” — from the brilliant mind that brought you “The Boring Company” and “X.”

Why a third party?

This is really two questions. Why would anyone want a third party, and why would Elon Musk want a third party?

The Musk reason is pretty obvious. He wants a third party with candidates who appeal to republican voters so that he can threaten Trump’s hold on the party to pressure Trump into doing more of what he wants him to do.

But the most common reason other people have brought up the third party is the idea that there is a “silent majority” of moderates, and that the two parties we have are captured by their respective fringes and are both more extreme than they would be if they truly represented voters. The idea is that the middle 40-80% of the nation — the reasonable ones — could actually work together on what they agree on, ignore the far right and the far left, and get things done.

Would it work?

No. And for a fairly simple reason. See, “moderate” or “centrist” republicans and democrats are still, well, republicans and democrats. What I mean is that a “moderate democrat” still cares about the environment and healthcare and rights for homosexual people. A “moderate republican” still cares about gun rights and small government and the traditional family.

A better way to put this might be to say moderates are moderate in temperament, not moderate in ideology. They recognize that they disagree on some things, but assume the other side is reasonable and work to find compromise.

This is why a “centrist” party wouldn’t work. A party is just a way to organize voters around a certain ideology — a set of ideas and priorities. An agreement on what problems are, and how they can be solved. If you got a bunch of people from the left and the right and said “great, create a platform” they would have a hard time doing it, because their ideas, priorities, and definitions of problems and solutions would all be out of alignment, and you’d end up with a couple key planks, and then “party sorting” would lead to a mishmash of policy proposals.

A third party, or fourth, or fifth, would not fix things because the problem is not the parties, or even their positions. The problem is the attitude we take about those positions.

Monism

Isaiah Berlin was a political philosopher (among other things). He was born to a wealthy jewish family in the Russian Empire, witnessed the Russian Revolution starting at the age of six, and moved to England to escape persecution around the age of 11.

Because of what he saw and experienced both in his home country, and during WW I and II, he was drawn to political science, sociology and history, and he wrote incredibly insightful essays about how societies have functioned throughout history.

One such essay is “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” and I strongly urge you to read it. I’m going to go through the basics here, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing. It’s incredible.

Berlin points out that science and political and moral thought grew up side-by-side, and one of the key features of science is the “platonic ideal” which he explain as the idea that “…all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole … in the case of morals, we could then conceive what the perfect life must be, founded as it would be on a correct understanding of the rules that governed the universe.”

In other words, we took the scientific and mathematical idea, that every question has one correct answer, and all other answers are wrong, and we applied that to moral life. This leads to a conclusion that there must be one right way to live a life — one “perfect life” — and that humanity’s ultimate goal is to find out what it is.

Earlier, we defined a political party as a way to organize voters around a certain ideology — a set of ideas and priorities. An agreement on what problems are, and how they can be solved.

Another way to put it might be to say a party is a proposal of what the right way of living and governing is. The “perfect life” that Berlin mentioned. And you don’t need to take my word for it — think of how people talk about political parties. Think of debates between opposing viewpoints. Seriously, take a minute and think “how does my party talk about what is stands for?” I’ll wait.

I imagine what sprung to mind was that those in your political party talk about it as the correct way to govern, and the correct way to live. And they probably talk about the other party as incorrect — representing, perhaps, everything “wrong” with America, or modern society, or whatever.

And that’s because, as Berlin points out, they are ascribing to the “platonic ideal” about life itself — that there is only one right way to live.

Except within our own country we have evidence that there isn’t one right way to live. There are red states and blue states and purple states, and, whatever your personal beliefs are, you’ll find that in each of those states there are people who love the way things are run, or hate the way things are run, or fall somewhere in the middle.

If there were a “right” way to live, and one of the parties had discovered it, the people who lived in states controlled by that party would invariably be happy. But that’s not how it shakes up. If you look at any study of “happiest” or “most satisfied” states, you find states of every political color (except Hawaii is basically always on top — I don’t think this is political, I think it’s because they live in Hawaii).

The bigger problem with Monism

The problem with Monism isn’t just that it leads to political conflict. The problem is that Monism is at the root of basically every major tragedy that has befallen humanity. I’m just going to quote Berlin here because he puts it so well:

So I conclude that the very notion of a final solution [what we have been calling the “perfect life”] … turns out to be an illusion; and a very dangerous one. For if one really believes that [a perfect life] is possible, then surely no cost would be too high to obtain it: to make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious for ever — what could be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelette, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken — that was the faith of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao, for all I know of Pol Pot. Since I know the only true path to the ultimate solution of the problem of society, I know which way to drive the human caravan; and since you are ignorant of what I know, you cannot be allowed to have liberty of choice even within the narrowest of limits … I know what you need, what all men need; and if there is resistance based on ignorance or malevolence, then it must be broken and hundreds of thousands may have to perish to make millions happy for all time. What choice have we, who have the knowledge, but to be willing to sacrifice them all?

Some armed prophets seek to save mankind, and some only their own race because of its superior attributes, but whichever the motive, the millions slaughtered in wars or revolutions — gas chambers, gulag, genocide, all the monstrosities for which our century will be remembered — are the price men must pay for the felicity of future generations. If your desire to save mankind is serious, you must harden your heart, and not reckon the cost.

…

The one thing that we may be sure of is the reality of the sacrifice, the dying and the dead. But the ideal for the sake of which they die remains unrealised. The eggs are broken, and the habit of breaking them grows, but the omelette remains invisible.

Every war, every genocide, ever massacre was driven by a group who believed they were right with such fervor that they discounted the lives of their “enemies.”

Any why wouldn’t they? That is what monism inevitably leads to. If you know how to live the “right” way, and there is only one “right” way, then anyone who disagrees with you isn’t just a debate opponent. They are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, trying to deceive the masses and bring them away from the one right way. They aren’t just bad, or dumb. They are evil.

This is where we find ourselves in the United States today. In the grip of politicians who constantly refers to other citizens as evil, as the enemy within, as deranged or radical or crazy. And Berlin already told us what that leads to.

So how do we stop it? How do we turn the tide? How do we reintroduce civility to our discourse? How do we stop hating each other?

It all starts by understanding what the opposite of monism is.

Pluralism

Let’s remind ourselves of the “platonic ideal” that works in science, but in social life leads to monism (and tragedy). Berlin gave us three main beliefs that help identify monism. They are:

1. That all genuine questions have one true answer, and all other answers are errors.
2. There must be a dependable way to discover these true answers
3. True answers, when found, must be compatible with each other

Obviously the opposite of monism would provide a counterpoint to these beliefs in regards to social life, and Berlin outlines the counterpoint to number 1 above in his definition of the opposite of monism, what he calls value pluralism:

… pluralism [is] the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other.

He is not saying that pluralism means you agree with someone. As he clarifies:

Members of one culture can, by the force of imaginative insight, understand … the values, the ideals, the forms of life of another culture or society … they may find these values unacceptable, but if they open their minds sufficiently they can grasp how one might be a full human being, with whom one could communicate, and at the same time live in the light of values widely different from one’s own, but which nevertheless one can see to be values, ends of life, by the realisation of which men could be fulfilled.

When Berlin wrote this, he was referring to cultures that are removed in both time and space. He was saying that if you study a culture from the distant past, one that you share very little with, you can likely come to some kind of understanding of their society — of the ends they sought, of the values they held dear. You didn’t need to believe what they believed, but you could understand how a fully realized individual could hold those values, and seek those ends.

So let me ask you a question.

Can you look at the opposing party here in the United States and see them as “fully rational, fully [people], capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other”?

Take a minute. Think about the people you typically don’t vote with, democrats or republican. How do you picture them? What do you think is important to them?

Although the public faces of both parties are essentially reality TV stars (in some cases quite literally), I promise you that your fellow citizens ARE fully rational, complete people. And you are capable of understanding, sympoathising, and deriving light from each other. In fact, deriving light from each other is what truly makes America amazing.

What makes America Great

Let’s say you have a complex problem to solve and you need to create a team to tackle that problem. Let’s say the problem is how to revitalize your town’s beloved library. It was an original Carnegie library, but now it’s getting old and it needs renovation, it needs upgrades, maybe an expansion. Who knows. You have a budget but no idea what to do.

You are given two choices for this team. One is 12 fraternity brothers from an ivy league school. The other is a group of similarly qualified people (in terms of educational attainment), but they are all from different walks of life, races, backgrounds, genders, etc. Which team do you choose?

Research has shown that you’d be better off with a varied team than with one where all the members are likely to have a similar point of view. That’s because the varied team will generate a wider array of potential solutions, they’ll all bring their perspectives in narrowing down the solution to a preferred choice, and they will likely create a more comprehensive and well-thought out plan.

(I am grossly simplifying an incredibly fascinating subject, but if you want to dig deeper Scott Page’s “The Difference” is a great place to start — but really, varied groups like this vastly outperform both more homogenous groups, as well as individual geniuses in the right circumstances)

What has made America great in the past is our diversity — the fact that lots of people with different values, different backgrounds, different beliefs, different ideas of the perfect life, would all work together to find common solutions.

So why hasn’t that been working lately?

You probably know why, if you think about it. A diverse team is helpful if they have a few key supports. Things like time to work together and develop trust, a common goal, a skilled facilitator who can help smooth over differences (in juries this is often just one member of the jury who takes the role on themselves).

But if you take a team, split it in half, then tell each side that the other side is their enemy, you are probably not going to get very far. That’s where you come in.

That’s right, you’re fixing America!

We can’t control very much, but we can control how we view and interact with people of other political parties. We can do two things:

1. Choose to see the other side as merely people we disagree with, not enemies
2. Reject leaders who try to tell us that the other side is our enemy

That’s it! It doesn’t take too much, other than being civil to your neighbors, paying attention to how politicians speak about the other side, and voting for people who view every American as “fully rational, fully [people], capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other.”

This isn’t a very sexy pitch. It’s not something you can easily put on a banner or sign as your march down the street. It doesn’t lead to a revolution and change sweeping the nation. Plain old civility and reasonableness doesn’t look good on the nightly news, and likely never will.

Because it won’t lead to utopia. What it will lead to is what Berlin called an “uneasy equilibrium, which is constantly threatened and in constant need of repair.”

Jefferson once said “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Oh man, isn’t that great? Doesn’t it inspire you?

But you know trees really need? Water! Every single day! Liberty isn’t maintained solely through the blood of patriots and tyrants, but is sustained day-to-day by the tiny efforts of millions of citizens to work together and put aside their difference and get stuff done.

That means no one will be 100% happy, because making a society of individuals where everyone is 100% happy is literally impossible. But it will be better tomorrow than it was today.

Berlin knew this wasn’t a course of action that would inspire people. As he put it:

This may seem a very flat answer, not the kind of thing that the idealistic young would wish, if need be, to fight and suffer for, in the cause of a new and nobler society … a little dull as a solution, you will say? Not the stuff of which calls to heroic action by inspired leaders are made? Yet if there is some truth in this view, perhaps that is sufficient.

So let’s put aside the societal benefit (which would be massive) and focus on the personal benefit. How would you feel to look at the people around you and not see friends and enemies, but instead only see other Americans? Some of whom you disagree with, and some of whom you agree with, but all of whom you can derive light from, and share your own?

Wouldn’t that just feel so much better?