Ideology Changes and Damped Systems ... 2020

 

Trying to understand the dynamics and outcome of the just-completed US Presidential election, memories of systems behavior from the engineering days came to my rescue.

The behavior of a system such as a spring-loaded door with a damper behaves typically in ways described by the above graph. If the door is ideally supposed to be adjusted to be "critically damped" - in this setting, the door gradually but without much delay settles into its equilibrium state. If overdamped (as can happen in cold weather), the door takes an unusually long time to reach that state. In an underdamped (as can happen in hot weather), the door comes in faster than ideal, and may oscillate back and forth before settling into its equilibrium.

Applying this analogy to today's society, consider the area under the dotted line as Conservative or Right-wing; the area above the dotted line as Liberal or Left-wing. In the last four years, we find our society stretched too far to the Conservative side (threats about reversing Roe vs Wade, conservative judges in the Supreme Court, ...) and the hype is high due to the rhetoric from the departing President. This has resulted in today's society to be near the origin of the above graph. Examples of the rhetoric are - condoning white supremacist and other racist behaviors, instigation of armed militia through incendiary statements during rallies and debates. 

Now that this compressed spring is released, it is natural to see society to swing too far left before it overcompensates for a few cycles. The advantage of this is that normalcy is achieved sooner, albeit through swings of smaller amplitude.

I would rather have this, than an overdamped system where "wanting to do the right thing" takes an inordinate amount of time to figure it out. The impatience to come into a normal zone is high, and I am ready for some swings!