Republican’s Great Divide in a Time of Great Cooperation

I’ve wondered why modern Republicans chose divisiveness as their main strategic initiative for the 21st century. Sure, current Republicans emulate some old standards: the Civil War, the wars against indigenous people, Jim Crow, and the German Nazis of the 1930s and 1940s, 1950s McCarthyism, all racist, authoritarian movements to steal from working people and consolidate and wield power. But is there more to it now or some new motivator? I think so. Without rich people and Republicans actively dividing the country, this century might have been one of great connection and cooperation among all people. Why? Because connection and cooperation are necessary in our technology-driven world.

I’ve been reading Quantum Bullsh*t: How to ruin your life with advice from quantum physics by Dr. Chris Ferrie, a Canadian-born physicist from the University of Technology in Sydney. I highly recommend the book for an easy-to-read explanation of what we know and do not know about the quantum world and for debunking the lucrative but stupid quantum self-help industry. Ferrie isn’t American and doesn’t attempt to speak to our political situation, but he makes a point about computers that reminded me of the state of modern work and modern life and speaks to where we could be if the great dividers stood down.

In Chapter 7 of Quantum Bullsh*t, Ferrie writes about quantum non-bullsh*t, the actual realities, and possibilities of quantum mechanics (QM). He lists current and near-future technology from QM, including lasers, MRIs, other forms of nuclear medicine, smoke detectors, and the emerging world of quantum computing. In his discussion about transistors and quantum computers, he makes a point that applies to many aspects of our work and lives:

… but the story of those tiny switches is so complex that no one human can understand all of it. It’s beautiful, really — that we rely now on the network of human intelligence to maintain our standard of living and continue to progress. We are all connected and not in some wishy-washy New Age bullshit way. The action of individual people on other sides of the globe cannot be explained by understanding them alone; their actions are part of the collective behavior of billions of people. They are part of the network. Are you? Come, join us. We have beer.~~Dr. Chris Ferrie

What Ferrie describes for quantum computing affects most or all of us in our work and lives. It’s all too complex to do it alone. This is true in my field of law. I don’t care what some general practitioners might say to get business; no one knows everything. Sure, they can look it up, but nothing replaces experience. It’s not just the case; it’s how the courts interpret it and how that statute is implemented. I cringe when slip-and-fall litigators, divorce lawyers, and IP lawyers sit at the real estate closing table. They’re scary and likely violating their ethical duty of competence. I am delighted to refer specialized work to people with more relevant experience. This holds for the medical profession. General practitioners refer patients to specialists, and medical technicians master one or two specialized tests. Law and medicine had to become cooperative because no one person could learn every complex specialty.

The factory assembly line exhibits the same specialization, and modern factories use IT specialists to program the complex machines that contain computers. You’re usually put in a team when you get an IT job. As a programmer (in my other life), I worked on HR websites and databases. Each team had programmers, testers, network specialists, security specialists, batch upload specialists, and less technical customer service reps and salespeople. I was a programmer and probably could have tested successfully, but I had little idea how to work on the network, security, or batch at the level of the specialists.

In sales, there’s a famous saying that’s nonsense: the sales staff doesn’t have to know anything about their product; they need only know how to sell. I call BS on that coming from an industry that suffered great strain and anxiety from a completely non-knowledgeable sales staff, and I think it’s changing. However, sales staff still rely on knowledge workers to handle customer questions.

Further, business cooperation is necessary for job sharing, carpooling, event hosting and planning, training, and continuing education. Bosses hate remote work, but with remote work, a skilled knowledge worker could live in Boston and work in Silicon Valley and still be part of a team. Republicans hated high-speed rail, but with it, people enjoying country living could work in the city and vice versa. I always thought it was a shame that Chicago lawyers can’t take cases in Springfield without taking up an entire day or more and that South Beach sun worshipers can’t have an afternoon at Disney, and workers can’t come from all over the state. We could be living something close to the OG Star Trek — okay, maybe not the instantaneous “beam me up, Scotty” (QM doesn’t work that way), but almost certainly in some places, “I’ll be there in an hour” could be a thing. But No, the political right wants to sink us into Star Wars — didn’t Ronald Reagan make that proclamation?

Life cooperation is necessary for two-career households (that Republican economic policy made necessary), multi-family housing, travel, child care, and pet care. Education is specialized, especially at the higher levels but even in grade school where the gym teachers, the science teachers, the math teachers, the language teachers, and the history teachers are not and should not be the same people with the same degrees and backgrounds — why homeschooling is not going to be enough to prepare students for life in the world no matter what the agenda fraught homeschooling advocates say.

Republicans ostensibly hated “it takes a village” because it was their arch nemesis, Hillary Clinton, who quoted from the old African proverb, but probably because the saying is true. They don’t like the interdependence and cooperation necessary for modern life because they don’t want us to live modern lives where we can amass power as a group, borderless, using our accumulated people networks, technology, and all the cooperation skills we’ve learned using it. Wealth and power hoarding depend on old-world thinking. The masses were kept down by making them suspicious of each other and individually dependent on the rich and powerful because they owned everything and all access to knowledge. If people could join the network or collective with beer, they would see that they don’t need the wealth and power mongers, their wars, or their hate. People would be harder to control. Cooperation, teamwork, and technology could set everyone free if people didn’t have the twisted sense of freedom — freedom to hate and divide — the Republican creed.