How do we end the divisive mindset?

Great question. Here's what I think...

It's a lot easier on the personal level than at the societal level.

The big hurdle for society to leap over is the profit to made off of promoting division by reinforcing people's fears. The leaches that sell fear based hate and political division have a constitutional right to spew and there's not a lot we can do to change that, nor should we try.

We can, however, influence people's desire to seek it out by using targeted media campaigns to counter the divisive messages they produce with those that invite cooperation.

The hurdle to do that effectively is the cost of the effort. "We" don't own a big media outlet, or have the budget to produce quality content and distribute it. To be fair, this is being done to the extent it can be with current resources available to those who are working on it, but not in a focused way. There are media sources that do work on producing unbiased content but not really unity by looking for and exposing common ground.

Since before the elections last year, on a personal level, when I have interacted with either "Liberals" or "Conservatives" I have purposely tried to find and expose common ground and there's actually a lot there.

As an example, when I talked to Trump voters about "the wall" it was easy to find common ground by pointing out the expense and ineffectiveness of a wall in comparison to enforcing existing regulations and reducing incentives for illegal immigration, and for making legal immigration easier for seasonal and temporary workers, which all my "liberal" friends would support.

When I pointed out that "Big Corporations" have an obligation to help maintain and improve the communities they sell their products in they agree with that. We all agreed that government waste is out of control and needs to be reeled in.

So, there is common ground and a lot of it, but no money and little effort is being spent on cultivating it.

I'm not sure, but within the context of social media, I think fewer memes and more actual conversations would help.

Is it any different from how it was before? Perhaps the same diversity of opinion was always there, but some people simply didn't have a voice -- and now they do.

I don't know if I even believe this hypothesis, but I haven't seen any systematic study to prove/disprove it. Simply many assertions that people are more divisive.

Throw your smartphone in a lake, quit social media, stop reading the news, move to a mixed-race neighborhood and then join a bowling league.

You might only just need to go outside and walk around talking to people about their interests.

The world is a wonderful place when you're not being frightened and primed to make unnecessary consumer purchase s.

Absolutely stop thinking there is some technical solution to these problems.

I think the question really is: can the tech community come up with do-able ideas that can a) reach the population at large, b) use crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence to identify and tag/mark fake news and unfounded opinions c) possibly use blockchain for tagging/marking crowd-classified news....So that fake news, divisive propaganda, trolling, etc. are quickly identified and indelibly marked as such....This will not entirely solve the problem (artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity), but it should contribute towards reducing its effects

Censorship. I know this doesn't fit with the techno libertarian mindset, but I think it's a viable solution.

Let's say I'm about to share an article that claims the holocaust never happened. (This might be illegal in certain places, but let's say it's legal in your country). The platform could warn me that this is not factually accurate. It could flag my post for others as not accurate. Or it could prohibit the share.

By spreading truth and facts. The anti Trump media and anti media Trump are destroying the core fabric of news consumption in this country and that's what's causing the divisiveness and hatred.

Stop hatred. Spread the facts. Learn the facts.