I Blame the Babel Fish
Is it really <i>causing</i> polarization, or is it causing more groups of people who were previously separated to become less separated and thus bringing the already-existing differences into a context where they can&#x27;t be ignored?<p>I think if you ground yourself in history, and look around the world, you will see that there were <i>plenty</i> of very real differences between people and groups of people in both spatial and temporal directions, and anybody who had the idea that &quot;everybody in the world is mostly the same and generally agrees with each other (and me)&quot; was simply unaware of how deeply false that has always been.<p>If you look at it that way, a reflexive closing of the ranks after these decades of increasing contact with others is quite predictable, and I&#x27;m pretty sure you can expect it to continue apace for the next couple of decades at a minimum, and there&#x27;s basically nothing you can do about it except somehow manage to restore the communication environment back to around the 1950s or earlier.<p>(After that, I expect another wave of internationalism similar to the one that currently exists (albeit sputtering and fading) between the elites of the US and the EU, but much more widely spread. But before that can happen, a lot more countries need to get much, much wealthier.)