One of the side effects of being an author is that you’re constantly thinking about things. It’s not always about fictional characters or intricate world-building. In fact, the characters and the world-building are vehicles for the philosophical concepts I mull over. Given the climate in the world nowadays, I’ve been preoccupied with figuring out what causes polarization and how to eliminate it, if not at least, mitigate it. This took me down a series of cascading ideas that may not be novel, but are important nonetheless. Now, by no means am I claiming that these are my original creations, but rather an amalgamation of the influences of my life and synthesis of those influences. So bear with me.
In order to explain this concept, it might be easiest to start with an example. Take a look at this grid. And obviously, we can add another dimension to it, making it a cube, or more dimensions that would make it into shapes I can’t quite comprehend. But for the sake of the example, let’s keep things simple and two-dimensional. On one axis, we have like vs. dislike, while on the other, we have enjoy vs. don’t enjoy. Four boxes, four ways of experiencing life. 
- Like & Enjoy— Your morning coffee, favorite playlist, or flirting with someone who laughs at your jokes.
- Like but Don’t Enjoy— You like being fit, but don’t enjoy the grind of working out. You like growing your own food, but don’t enjoy weeding at 6 am.
- Dislike but Enjoy— You dislike confrontation, but when you speak your mind? Oh, it feels good.
- Dislike & Don’t Enjoy— Bureaucracy. Family reunions with that uncle who talks about crypto nonstop.
Based on my experience (note: anecdote does not equal data), I find that most of us want to live in that neat little first box: Things I Like and Enjoy. We want food that tastes good, work that feels easy, and relationships that don’t create too much drama. We prefer the smoothness that liking something and enjoying doing it offers. Everything outside that box is shoved into the Ugh, No Thanks box, thereby dismissing three-quarters of our life experiences because they aren’t clean or perfect.
Here’s where I think it gets interesting. We take a single dimension—Do I agree with them? or Do I like their tone?—and we collapse the entire human being or worldview into a one-word label: Wrong. Evil. Stupid. Dangerous. That’s how polarization thrives. We flatten complexity into caricature by reducing multi-dimensional realities into two opposing teams. We forget how to hold contradiction in our heads—or our hearts.
Here are a couple of examples of how this applies to people. 
Most of us want to be in the top-left: kind and truthful. But in reality, things are a lot more fluid. Millennia of history have shown that people fall into the other boxes all the time, especially when they’re scared, or angry, or human.
If all we see is “not truthful means liar” or “not kind means bad person,” we lose the capacity for empathy, understanding, and, crucially, conversation.
The same goes for Knowledge vs. Confidence. When we equate confidence with competence, we ignore the quiet wisdom of people who just don’t self-promote. Or, we fall for the loudest voices in the room, regardless of whether they have anything valuable to say.
Now let’s zoom out and apply this kind of thinking to politics, religion, identity, culture and we start to see that disagreement doesn’t automatically mean bad faith. That discomfort doesn’t mean danger. That “they” might not be who we assumed they were. Of course, not every disagreement is just a misunderstanding. This isn’t a call to blur all moral lines or pretend every belief is equally valid. There are ideas that cause real harm, making boundaries worth drawing. But too often, we draw those lines in haste. We confuse discomfort with danger, and we write people off before we’ve really listened.
So, how do we reduce polarization?
Philosophers like Aristotle spoke of the “golden mean”—the idea that virtue often lies between extremes. Too much or too little of a quality can both be flaws. This quadrant thinking echoes that insight. Sometimes, the best parts of life are found not in absolutes, but in the tension between them. I don’t think polarization can be dealt with through better arguments or louder slogans, but with people holding broader frameworks and perspectives. It requires a willingness to acknowledge that maybe this doesn’t fit into the box I want it to. That, maybe, I’m only seeing one dimension of a multi-dimensional person or situation. And maybe—just maybe—if we spent more time in the middle zones, if we learned to live with ambiguity, if we embraced discomfort instead of avoiding it, we’d grow not just as individuals, but as a people.
Clarity is great. But more than that, we need the courage to stay with complexity.
