Ending the echo chamber: How to find where left and right unite

Published in the Sunday Star Times on 1 December 2024

Ending the echo chamber: How to find where left and right unite | The Post

And on RNZ: Death to the echo chamber | RNZ

OPINION: On the same day that I lunched in the Capital with a well-known left-leaning public intellectual, Act leader David Seymour was spotted on ThreeNews flicking through the pages of the newly released issue of Folly Journal.

My sister, an Aucklander oblivious to politics (although I assume she was aware of the hīkoi) messaged me excitedly. Folly's on tv! I took a photo!

As a Wellington-based strategist, I didn't bother explaining that a photo of Seymour, a politician intensely hated by the left, reading our luxuriously printed literary journal mightn't be great for Folly's reputation.

But then over the course of lunch as we discussed a particularly provocative essay, I jokingly referred to the piece as causing a positive collision of Capitalists and Communists. It occurred to me that in this socially divisive time, many of us have forgotten the best conversations occur when we're too busy being amused and intrigued to be outraged.

Over the past five years, society has decided that cultural discourse takes sides in a deadly serious way with no room for the delicious space in between. People prefer to live in an echo chamber, with no means of providing opinion without fear of disapproval.

When I worked in parliament it was common for opposing parties and their staff to stroll through each other’s corridors during recess weeks and evenings for a chat. It was completely normal for a senior Opposition member of parliament to turn up in the office doorway of a government MP with a bottle of whisky after a day of slinging mud at each other across the Debating Chamber.

The first time Phil Goff appeared in my doorway as a young staffer I almost spilt my tea. I recall my first MP laughing and telling me not to believe everything I see on TV, before shutting himself and Phil in his office for an evening of banter.

From what I have heard, this rarely happens any more, if at all, and society is worse for it. When you're socialising and having a laugh together, it's harder to maintain the fiction that “they” are so different from “us”.

As I have commented recently, everyone hates each other right now, with a deep sense of fairness and worthiness which has collided with moral posturing about what is considered a socially right and socially wrong way to think, do and fund.

Someone asked me yesterday, is cancel culture over yet?

It should be. Because consider this: when was the last time you shared a genuine laugh with someone whose political views make you nervous?

We are in a cultural moment where people speak with hushed voices for fear of not holding a popular view, and comments such as “I agree, but you can’t say something like that too loudly in Wellington” are all too common. Those who hold the popular view deem it appropriate to boo those who believe differently, and we seem to have forgotten one of the first rules I remember learning as a young staffer in parliament.

“We all want the same things,” I was told. “We just have different ideas about how to achieve them.”

Emily spoke about this opinion piece on RNZ: Death to the echo chamber | RNZ