Polarization Is a Symptom
Polarization is not the enemy. It is the echo of a fracture—a rupture in the relationship with power. Individually. Collectively. When agency is constrained, when authority cannot be claimed or exercised, the system reorganizes around that limitation. What cannot be held internally is expressed externally.
Splitting, trauma bonding, reenactment are not moral failures or pathologies. They are structural responses to blocked agency. When power cannot circulate, coherence collapses. The unresolved fracture is externalized. Polarization is the mirror. It renders visible what has not been integrated.
The original wound is always a loss of agency. When authority is constrained, the psyche seeks coherence through repetition—externalizing conflict, compensating for blocked power, reproducing the original rupture across new surfaces. What appears as ideological division is the surface expression of unclaimed authority.
The architecture is consistent:
Splitting: Complexity becomes intolerable under constraint. Ambiguity collapses. Reality organizes into opposing absolutes because coherence requires agency.
Trauma bonding: Attachment forms around instability itself. Power is located externally because internal authority is unavailable.
Reenactment: The unresolved loss of agency is reproduced across systems. Conflict becomes the site where power is indirectly negotiated.
Integration begins at the point of constraint. When authority is reclaimed where it was severed, the system no longer requires external opposition to organize itself. Power returns to circulation.
Generative power emerges from coherence. Presence replaces compulsion. Clarity replaces reaction. The external field reorganizes because the internal fracture is no longer being projected.
Polarization is not something to defeat. It is something to read. A signal indicating where agency has been constrained. When coherence enters, the signal loses its function. The fracture integrates. The projection collapses. Polarization dissolves.