This is the fourth entry for a miniseries about wisdom.

I am an unaffiliated citizen.  Parents belonging to different parties contributed to my independence, as did the tendency of the parties to change principles.  During my lifetime the parties switched over “shock and awe” tactics.  They switched over choice and abortion.  They switched over state sovereignty.  The good news?  Systemic party bias contributed to the ranks of us unaffiliated citizens rising to 45%, with both parties falling to 27% by the end of 2025.

Unaffiliated citizens have the greatest potential to be skeptics, to hold any politician from either party accountable, to gather news from a variety of media sources.  The party system of governance disappoints us, which provides a greater potential to believe in each other instead. These attributes enhance the potential for collective wisdom and, by extension, the highest function of democracy.

Political parties reinforce systemic bias, the antithesis of collective wisdom, the bane of democracy.  Ideally, constituents would shape the thinking of party leadership in a democracy.  In our country party panderers, pundits and platforms shape the thinking of constituents.  In addition, they manipulate our negative emotions against other humans rather than systemic problems.  Stagnant economic and health indicators for decades leave us vulnerable to this manipulation.  Under the conditions favoring systemic party bias we can be persuaded to see black as white.

Which brings us to the protests in Minneapolis.

Abundant reporting, interviews and video clips document the ICE raids, protests and shootings in Minneapolis.  Two narratives sprung up from the evidence, so different that at least one of them must be wrong.  Doctored video clips reinforce the bias on both sides. With social media now a place where emotions come to fester, plenty of negative emotions cause at least one side to see black as white in the evidence.

Diminished party membership means only about one third of the population will have a false interpretation of the evidence due to systemic party bias. This means that unaffiliated citizens ultimately determine what the majority of the country believes. Polls show the overall “will of the people” favors ICE getting out of Minnesota, due to the demographic least affected by political bias.

Unfortunately, the same systemic bubble that causes people to see black as white also insulates them as to what the majority actually believes. The minority imposing their will on the majority creates a problem for collective wisdom and humanity.  The minority falsely thinking they represent the majority aggravates the problem further.

Systemic bias leads many to prejudge even before seeing evidence.  Citizens of the state prejudging other citizens is unfortunate. Agents of the state prejudging citizens is tyrannical, no matter who interprets the evidence correctly.  Supporting or tolerating tyranny confirms a prejudice against humanity, in part or whole. Neither collective wisdom nor democracy can withstand tyranny.

Please subscribe, share and like. You receive the White Paper for the Unenlightened Wisdom Project by subscribing. Get others to join and collaborate on this ten year journey from brain health to democracy. Eventually I will set up a forum here to gain the collective wisdom of like minded journeyers. The first volume of essays for the Unenlightened Wisdom Project will be released towards the end of the year. A supplementary pamphlet called Pandering and Punditry is available now at kirksinclair.com.