In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington warned that party conflict could harden into vengeance and “frightful despotism,” describing “the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge…[as] itself a frightful despotism,” and cautioning that parties can become “potent engines” for those who would “usurp… the reins of government.”
Years earlier, John Adams reflected a similar fear in a 1780 letter: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties…This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
Nearly 250 years later, as the United States approaches its 250th birthday, those early warnings by our founders ring truer than ever. Partisanship has hardened into a firm tribalism, and the centrifugal pull of competing factions now threatens to test—perhaps more so than at any point in living memory—the durability of the “American experiment”.
The numbers are disconcerting. A 2024 Gallup poll found a record-high 80% of U.S. adults believe Americans are “greatly divided” on the most important values, a level that has steadily climbed in recent decades. Pew Research Center reports that eight in ten Americans say Republicans and Democrats cannot even agree on basic facts about the nation’s most pressing issues, reflecting the depth of our division.
Significant majorities now see the other party as immoral, as Pew research indicates 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats view members of the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans, up sharply from 2016.
A recent study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that fewer than one in ten friendships cross party lines. The study found that, even when friendships did cross the aisle, they scored lower on trust, emotional support, and mutual understanding.
None of this is particularly surprising to anyone watching American politics today. Political identity increasingly shapes not just our institutions but our social networks, our media consumption, and even our perception of reality itself.
But the new science of human cooperation suggests that this trajectory is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
The New Science of Cooperation
Division may dominate today’s headlines, but it is not inevitable. In fact, recent science suggests that division is the exception rather than the norm for most of human history. Human beings evolved as profoundly social creatures—or “ultrasocial,” in the words of anthropologist Joseph Henrich—whose survival depended on cooperation in large groups.
Behavioral science has long shown that cohesive societies are built not by amplifying differences but by cultivating shared identities and shared goals. When people see themselves as members of the same group working toward a common purpose, cooperation becomes far easier.
The late political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who was the first women to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, spent decades studying how communities around the world successfully managed shared resources without collapsing into conflict, effectively solving the longstanding issue known as “The Tragedy of the Commons”.
The defining research question she asked was: why do some groups cooperate while others fail?
Her research took her to communities across the world. She identified a set of conditions—known as the Core Design Principles (CDPs)—that allow diverse groups to cooperate effectively along a multilevel scale.
These principles enumerated are: (1) clear group identity and shared purpose, (2) equitable distribution of benefits and resources, (3) fair and inclusive decision-making, (4) transparency of behavior, (5) graduated responding to helpful or unhelpful behavior, (6) fast and fair conflict resolution, (7) authority to self-govern, and (8) collaborative relations with other groups (using principles 1-7).
Ostrom found that when any social group accomplished all eight of the CDPs, then they can overcome any social dilemma that might otherwise undermine cooperation and collective action at a higher level.
What makes Ostrom’s work—and more recent adaptations such as the Prosocial framework—especially relevant today is that these principles appear to be remarkably universal. They apply across cultures and contexts, from pastoralist cultures in east Africa to irrigation farmers in Nepal to fishing villages in Turkey.
They are also surprisingly modern, as the same dynamics can be found in nearly all modern institutions across the world, from corporations and civic organizations to sports teams and local governments.
As a friend and long-time collaborator with Ostrom, the famous evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson writes in his book This View of Life, “Why should they (the CDPs) be restricted to common-pool resource groups? How about schools, neighborhoods, churches, volunteer organizations, businesses, nonprofits, and governmental agencies? In a sense, the very act of working together to achieve a common goal is a common-pool resource.”
What Ostrom found in her research is an undeniable truth—a universal blueprint, let’s call it—for how to build cooperative societies that work best with how our species evolved to think and to live. The core lesson we can draw from her work is that strong societies emerge when people feel they are working within the same enterprise, toward a shared purpose.
For much of American history, I believe we embodied this sense of a common identity, however imperfectly realized. The challenge before us is not to “reinvent the wheel”, so to speak, but to relearn the deep-seated principles of cooperation that we’ve allowed to fade in modern times.
A New “Experiment” in Northern Michigan Civics
For many northern Michiganders, the rift between Democrats and Republicans has become too much to bear. Rather than wait for solutions from our politicians, they have taken it upon themselves to try and fix the political divide.
The Purple Assembly, a grassroots initiative recently started in Traverse City, grew out of a gnawing sense that Americans need to relearn how to hold constructive, civil dialogue.
“We were exhausted by the constant fighting we see on television,” noted Tina Allen, one of the organizers. “It feels like politics has become a zero-sum game where one side wins and the other loses, which typically ends in perpetual gridlock, and nothing ever gets solved.”
Allen and a handful of neighbors decided to try something different. They invited people with different political views into the same room and asked them one simple request: talk to each other—respectfully, of course.
Their first meeting, held this past January, drew more than 70 participants from across the region and all walks of life. “It was a success,” Allen said, “but more needs to be done. We’re still learning how to hold this space for everyone.”
Around the same time, another Northern Michigander arrived at a similar conclusion. Sam Getslinger, an 82-yr old retiree from Leelanau, began organizing “Common Ground Gatherings” that included people from all different demographics and political affiliations.
“The goal,” Getslinger told the Leelanau Ticker, “is to break down barriers of thinking so we can listen to one another and work together.”
“In kindergarten, the kids for the most part really liked each other,” Getsinger continued. “It always made me wonder what happened later in school, where they didn’t anymore. I think, often, what we do to kids is separate them, and not show each of them what they have to contribute.”
These new initiatives coalesce with recent events such as the fight against data centers in Kalkaska, where members of the Kalkaskan Democrat party were fighting alongside members of the Kalkaskan Republican party—for the first time in living memory.
A Washington Post article, “How Data Centers Are Shifting the Political Landscape”, highlighted the exact same pattern observed in Kalkaska, that American share far more in common than they typically realize.
These recent events in Northern Michigan, and across the country, point to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we’re not so different after all. Despite the incessant rhetoric of division that plays out our TV screens, perhaps we’re far more similar than we like to admit. Wouldn’t that be something.
The Purple Assembly will hold its second meeting on April 12th from 2-4pm at Middle Coast Brewery, discussing “How the Case of Data Centers Shows the Falsity of the Left-Right Divide”, run by Mitchell Ryan Distin, PhD. Purple Assembly events in Benzie, Elk Rapids, Charlevoix, Petosky and Kalkaska coming soon! For more information, reach out to us at Purpleconfressnwmi@gmail.com