It’s time to open back up, and end our self-quarantine… but not the one you’re thinking of.

We’ve been self-quarantining for a while now.

From anti-social “basement dwellers,” all the way back to the goth kids you never spoke to in high school, people have become increasingly adept at quarantining themselves whenever possible. Although currently tied to a virology context, the verb usage of the word quarantine means “to exclude, detain, or isolate for political, social, or hygienic reasons.”

Despite this broader application of the term, let’s run with the unprecedented situation we currently find ourselves in. Why are hundreds of millions of people around the world self-quarantining? To protect themselves from a virus. A contaminant. A threat.

The fact that we’re even using the term self-quarantine is important. It implies that the self-imposed aspect of our quarantine isn’t a natural part of the quarantine process. Given, there have indeed been draconian government-mandated protocols that have caused much of this. That said, people were already doing most of those things anyway. We’re largely choosing the safety and comfort of self-imposed quarantine over the more interesting, but significantly less comfortable outside world- for now. For the vast majority of us, this is a temporary, albeit frustratingly necessary choice to make.

Viruses aren’t the only form of contaminants, and not all quarantines are accompanied by frustration and discomfort.

But viruses aren’t the only form of contaminants, and not all quarantines are accompanied by frustration and discomfort. Sometimes, a self-quarantine constitutes a permanent and comfortable safe haven, outside of which lies an unspeakable threat most people avoid at all costs: their own fallibility. Their potential for error. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, they might be wrong.

‘Wrong about what?’ you might ask. About anything, really. But not all incorrect thoughts have equal consequences. Some falsehoods will destroy you if left unaddressed; others can persist for a lifetime. One such idea is the commonly-held belief that you’re one of the “good guys,” and that your ideological side is the morally correct one. All those who disagree with you and your team? Evil, heartless monsters. Bigots. Nazis. Freedom-hating Socialists.

This is an understandably easy thought trap to fall into. Consider the alternative, that those you disagree with have come by their beliefs honestly, and have put thought and reasoning into their conclusions. Then what? It might be harder to ignore their ideas. You might even feel obligated to consider their validity, and the accompanying implication that maybe, just maybe, not all of your positions are totally correct.

No, no thank you. It’s much easier to malign those we disagree with. Once all of your detractors are mentally categorized as evil, you’re released from any intellectual obligation to consider their viewpoints. Thus, counterpoints become contaminants, the only reasonable response to which is sanitation and quarantine. We sanitize our surroundings, by alienating, silencing, or unfriending anyone who might be contaminated by countervailing opinions. Once the immediate environment has been scrubbed, we self-quarantine and seal ourselves off from any future contamination. We find other survivors, who were able to escape the contagions of discordant views. Together, the quarantine grows, as we let in those who have demonstrated that they are not infected. Agreement is our inoculation; confirmation bias is our vaccine.

This ideological enclave-building is no mere hyperbole, but rather an observable trend over the past several decades. Jonathan Haidt documents many of these trends in his 2018 best-seller The Coddling of the American Mind. If you live near more gun stores than coffee shops, your area likely votes overwhelmingly Republican, and vice-versa. You can increasingly guess how someone votes by how their neighbors vote, and homogeneity of viewpoints on hot-button issues has solidified on both sides of the political aisle. One such example occurred when recent Democratic candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders declared the pro-choice position as “absolutely an essential part” of being a Democrat, echoing the words of another then-candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who said there was no room in the Democratic party for being pro-life. It’s easy to pick on Buttigieg and Sanders, but I’m inclined to believe that the opposite belief is undoubtedly held by equally prominent Republicans.

As the conversation about Covid-19 and the various responses to it becomes saturated with vitriol from all sides, the notion of “opening back up” and “ending self-quarantines” has become front and center in the national conversation. As various sides make their arguments for decisions one way or another, I find myself wondering if both sides are missing the bigger issue, and ignoring an arguably more dire pandemic. Those arguing that we remain in self-quarantine might indeed be motivated by safety and caution. But the consequences of this quarantine have been accelerating the spread of a different virus, the disease of bad-faith partisanship. Those arguing we “open up” and get back to work are equally oblivious, as they ignore the ideological echo chambers that people will remain quarantined in, even if they’re once again allowed to patronize hair salons.

Again, this idea that we’re spending more and more time online during quarantine isn’t mere speculation: A Newsy/Ipsos survey at the end of March showed Millennials and Gen Z spending an average 54% increased in scrolling through social media, and a staggering 29% increase in posting on social media sites. We already know the algorithms on social media sites are geared towards directing people at content they show interest in, i.e. confirmation bias in the political arena. Combined with the increased self-curation being done on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where users are ever more likely to “unfriend” or “unfollow” those they disagree with, and you have a catastrophic recipe for increased vitriol and partisanship.

There are those who dispute the claim that social media echo chambers exist, or at least show hesitancy in declaring any causal link between social media and ideological echo chambers. While I respect those opinions, a quick survey of the rapidly growing partisan divide in America over the past decade or so, when coupled with existing data about the unique toxicity of online behavior is more than enough to persuade me otherwise. And all of this is before factoring in the ideological news bubble ~40% of voters live in.

Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, I was one of many people who naively thought an event like this would be a catalyst for unity, rather than more fuel on our hyper-partisan fire. Sadly, I now see that my calculations were off more than I care to admit, or even want to believe. The starkly different responses by Republicans and Democrats to the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Joe Biden is one more example of how truly divided we are. But why? Why isn’t Covid-19 the “9/11 moment” we thought it would be? As Neil deGrasse Tyson so poignantly put it: “If a predatory enemy to our species can’t unite everyone on Earth to fight it, I’m left wondering what hope remains for Civilization?”

Unlike physically sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center, or experiencing combat side-by-side, nothing has forced us together, to see our common humanity.

My only explanation for this depressing state of affairs is the issue I raised at the beginning: we’ve been self-quarantining for a long time now. Unlike 9/11, or Pearl Harbor, or some other temporarily galvanizing event in our country’s history, the majority of us have done our part to fight Covid-19 by simply staying home. There’s been no mechanism for forced cooperation among those with starkly different viewpoints. Unlike physically sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center, or experiencing combat side-by-side, nothing has forced us together, to see our common humanity. “More unites us than divides us” isn’t a reality we’ve had to experience. Instead, we’ve been driven indoors- and online, to the safety of our pre-quarantine quarantines. Our version of “fighting the good fight” against Covid-19 has been to hunker down, and simply increase the amount of time we were already spending having our biases confirmed, and sharing posts that affirm how evil our ideological opponents are. Comparing Covid-19 to 9/11 is only accurate if the metaphor excludes Covid-19 altogether, instead describing the political Right and Left as each seeing themselves as America, and the other as al-Qaeda.

It pains me to even acknowledge such a bleak picture of American disunity. But the good news is that part of the problem is easily addressed, and represents a potential starting point for healing: let’s begin by abandoning our online echo chambers. It won’t be easy, but few worthwhile endeavors are. We need to start interacting with those we disagree with, and doing so with respectful intentionality. We need to zealously pursue good-faith disagreements, and establish the principle of charity as our default setting. And we absolutely must stop praising the worst possible treatment of ideological opponents. Diversify your news intake. Stop unfriending people for political reasons. Instead, listen to people, especially those you disagree with. Assume they hold their beliefs for honest reasons. Master the long-lost art of agreeing to disagree.

It’s time to open back up, and leave the comfort of our bias-confirming self-quarantines. Let’s fight the virus of bad-faith partisanship- together.

-🤙