Catching up with how the world develops is extremely difficult. Not only can it be hard to figure out why things are happening, just seeing the direction the world is going in is rarely any cause for celebration either. No matter what sort of topics you're interested in, because good news rarely make the world go around. If you love animals, you hear about how many of them are endangered, or how they're treated by corporations for profit. If you're pro-EU you hear about all the things that are threatening the union's current stability, and if you're anti-EU you hear about all the reasons why it threatens your country. The most important news will never fail to make people angry, afraid or even depressed.
When you surround yourself with such bad news, you surround yourself with only negativity, pulling you deeper and deeper into an abyss where everything you see is darkness. And as you focus only on such things, you become what you behold. No matter which political leaning you follow, if you let darkness take root in your heart, these feelings you've surrounded yourself with becomes part of you and it will grow to consume more and more of you for each day.
Eventually you'll see the entire world as only two sides, those whom agrees with you, and those who need to be stopped. If you're a Democrat you learn to see Republicans as nothing but bigoted, semi-fascists with outdated morals which doesn't care about the marginalized. If you're a Republican you learn to see Democrats as naive, cultural marxists with no discipline or understanding of how society works. And honestly, how can any reasonable person support someone fitting either of those descriptions? Of course "they" need to be stopped when they represent such things. And once you've reached that point, you no longer see your opponents as people, they are only obstacles.
For example, a lot of "lefties" believe nazism is currently on the rise, while "righties" believe communism is on the rise. And in most cases, people will believe in the one threat, while seeing the other as an "exaggeration" or "fear propaganda".
This doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of where the world is heading, but it does reflect how the differing sides see one another, as the most mislead and destructive sort of ideologues they could possibly imagine. And so it's acceptable to bend the rules to stop them, by any means, thus channeling the darkness in their hearts towards some sort of perceived great threat, real or not. Once you see violence as a legitimate response to non-violent actions your enemies might respond in turn, and there's no logical stop to that before at least one of the sides is somehow gone. This sort of escalation will only bring on destruction, one way or another.
I am in no way trying to discourage people from being politically involved, i'm merely pointing out the lack of nuance on both sides, that polarization comes from a lack of communication and understanding among them and the problems resulting from such polarization.
Or as president Kennedy once put it "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". And peaceful revolutions happen through civil discussion, research, critical thinking and honest reflection of the facts. If you properly understand your opponent, you might learn they are not as bad as you thought, and find you've been pulled too deep into the abyss.
For better or worse, there will always be differing opinions on a lot of different social issues and ideas, and just because something is a real problem doesn't mean everyone can see it, especially not if you've already learned to divide the world into "us" and "them". That's why in order to solve these issues in a civilized way, we need to accept that no one side or person holds all the answers, and at least try to understand our opponents.
If you can't even for a moment consider the possibility that you might be wrong, how can you expect your opponent to do so? If you are adamant that there's no point in reasoning with your opponent because they won't listen to you, that's merely a reflection of your own stubborn and narrow mind.
If you learn to have a proper discussion however, you might find that even your "enemies" may have very legitimate reasons and grievances for opinions you think of as absolute bullshit. And if you try to properly understand them, but are still convinced they are wrong, better understanding their views will still make you better equipped to argue those ideas and why they are wrong.
In summary, polarization grows from people succumbing to their darkest sides, and stop caring. The best way to prevent polarization is to keep yourself grounded and always try to understand both sides of an argument.
