Schismogenesis
MAGA for a day — or here’s how you can really own the Libs
10 min readSep 6, 2022
Key points:
- Schismogenesis is a term from Gregory Bateson, noted anthropologist and systems theorist.
- It names a ‘positive feedback loop’ that can cause societies to break apart.
- The term was developed as he observed how gender roles progressed in severe opposition to each other in the Iatmul people — and the Naven ceremony that seemed designed specifically to counteract that.
- This framework provides insight into the fracturing of the US politics.
- But how do we work with that?
…schismogenesis, unless it is restrained, leads to a progressive unilateral distortion of the personalities of the members of both groups, which results in mutual hostility between them and must end in the break-down of the system.
-Gregory Bateson, Steps To An Ecology Of Mind
First, I need to testify. I’m a Gregory Bateson fanboy!
I was a newbie analyst/coder in the early ’80s. Bateson, and folks like Stephen J Gould, provided…