A leading social scientist explains the psychology of our current social divide and how understanding it can help reduce the conflicts it causes

There has been much written about the impact of polarization on elections, political parties, and policy outcomes. But Keith Payne's goal is more personal: to focus on what our divisions mean for us as individuals, as families, and as communities. This book is about how ordinary people think about politics, why talking about it is so hard, and how we can begin to mend the personal bonds that are fraying for so many of us.

Drawing upon his own research and his experience growing up in a working class, conservative Christian family in small town Kentucky, Payne argues that there is a near-universal human tendency to believe that people who are different from us are irrational or foolish. The fundamental source of our division is our need to flexibly rationalize ideas in order to see ourselves as good people.

Understanding the psychology behind our political divide provides clues about how we can reduce the damage it is causing. It won't allow us to undo our polarization overnight, but it can give us the tools to stop going around in circles in frustrating arguments. It can help us make better choices about how we engage in political debates, how policy makers and social media companies deal with misinformation, and how we deal with each other on social media. It can help us separate, if we choose to, our political principles from our personal relationships so that we can nurture both.

A timely examination by a leading scientist of the physical, psychological, and moral effects of inequality.

The levels of inequality in the world today are on a scale that have not been seen in our lifetimes, yet the disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means. In The Broken Ladder psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically; it also has profound consequences for how we think, how we respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and even how we view moral concepts such as justice and fairness.

Research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics has not only revealed important new insights into how inequality changes people in predictable ways but also provided a corrective to the flawed view of poverty as being the result of individual character failings. Among modern developed societies, inequality is not primarily a matter of the actual amount of money people have. It is, rather, people's sense of where they stand in relation to others. Feeling poor matters--not just being poor. Regardless of their average incomes, countries or states with greater levels of income inequality have much higher rates of all the social maladies we associate with poverty, including lower than average life expectancies, serious health problems, mental illness, and crime.

The Broken Ladder explores such issues as why women in poor societies often have more children, and why they have them at a younger age; why there is little trust among the working class in the prudence of investing for the future; why people's perception of their social status affects their political beliefs and leads to greater political divisions; how poverty raises stress levels as effectively as actual physical threats; how inequality in the workplace affects performance; and why unequal societies tend to become more religious. Understanding how inequality shapes our world can help us better understand what drives ideological divides, why high inequality makes the middle class feel left behind, and how to disconnect from the endless treadmill of social comparison.

In dialogue with each other and our environment, some 40 contemporary poets from Ireland and Galicia (among them Paddy Bushe, Olga Novo, Michael Longley, Paula Meehan, Luz Pichel, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Xavier Queipo and Grace Wells) speak from the Atlantic edge of Europe, from the wild some might say, to the very heart of the matter: our damaged and threatened world.

Carefully tending to our fragile ecosystem, this timely bilingual anthology of Irish and Galician poems asks how we live in this world, how we celebrate our intimate relationship with all living things.

There is a sense of urgency here, of the need for action - and the need to move 'from ego to eco.'

Whether casting the bones or skylarking, these poems range across language and borders tracing every foot print, every paw print and every flight path through our shared world in the belief that A Different Eden is possible.

In dialogue with each other and our environment, some 40 contemporary poets from Ireland and Galicia (among them Paddy Bushe, Olga Novo, Michael Longley, Paula Meehan, Luz Pichel, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Xavier Queipo and Grace Wells) speak from the Atlantic edge of Europe, from the wild some might say, to the very heart of the matter: our damaged and threatened world.

Carefully tending to our fragile ecosystem, this timely bilingual anthology of Irish and Galician poems asks how we live in this world, how we celebrate our intimate relationship with all living things.

There is a sense of urgency here, of the need for action - and the need to move 'from ego to eco.'

Whether casting the bones or skylarking, these poems range across language and borders tracing every foot print, every paw print and every flight path through our shared world in the belief that A Different Eden is possible.

In the 20 years I've known Keith Payne as a sales professional, public speaker and friend, he has never failed to delight me. His wit, intelligence and plain horse sense come through brilliantly in these pages. To anyone wanting to maintain a positive outlook regardless of the circumstances I say: Read this book Craig Bridgman, Colleague & friend for 20+ years.

You will enjoy Keith's inspirational wisdom and insight in this amazing collection of personal experiences and practical applications. I'm doubly blessed not only to read these, but to actually have witnessed some of them with him as well Jeff Coleman, Ministry Colleague & friend for 20+ years.

In The Best Is Always... Still Yet To Come, author Keith Payne shares many slice of life vignettes drawn from his own experiences. His stories recall good times and bad, often with humor and sometimes with sadness, but always with an opportunity for you to make a practical life application. Drawing on wisdom and instruction from Scripture, Keith Payne seeks to encourage and inspire you to a better outlook and outcome, regardless of your circumstances.

Divided into weekly readings, these stories are designed to inspire you to be decidedly different and consider all of the life circumstances facing you-even the difficult ones-as opportunities to embrace a positive, faith-based outlook. By doing so, your attitude will blossom, and your smile and laughter will be contagious; you will have discovered that the best is always... still yet to come.

The poems of Irish poet Keith Payne's Savage Acres explore the pivotal role of housing and, by extension, community in our lives. Keith Payne revisits the new urban estates of Ireland's capital city - his own formative playing fields - and their once marginalised and neglected inhabitants who, in time, would become central to the story of the city's imaginative resistance and cultural rebirth.

Keith Payne is the author of ten collections of poetry in translation and original poetry, most recently Building the Boat (2023), as featured on BBC Radio 3's The Essay, and Whales and Whales, from the Galician of Luisa Castro (2024). He was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2022 and has held numerous Writer-in-Residence positions, including as Cork City Library Eco Poet in Residence 2022-23. Dividing his time between Ireland and Galicia, he is the founder and curator of the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange Ireland/Galicia.

[A]t once a salute to the life of a single housing estate, and an excavation of the individual lives it contains...-Mary O'Malley

Savage Acres is a terrain, a place of flow, where everyday things lead to unexpected moments of the sublime. Every page contains brilliance and life.' -Adrian Duncan

The poems of Irish poet Keith Payne's Savage Acres explore the pivotal role of housing and, by extension, community in our lives. Keith Payne revisits the new urban estates of Ireland's capital city - his own formative playing fields - and their once marginalised and neglected inhabitants who, in time, would become central to the story of the city's imaginative resistance and cultural rebirth.

Keith Payne is the author of ten collections of poetry in translation and original poetry, most recently Building the Boat (2023), as featured on BBC Radio 3's The Essay, and Whales and Whales, from the Galician of Luisa Castro (2024). He was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2022 and has held numerous Writer-in-Residence positions, including as Cork City Library Eco Poet in Residence 2022-23. Dividing his time between Ireland and Galicia, he is the founder and curator of the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange Ireland/Galicia.

[A]t once a salute to the life of a single housing estate, and an excavation of the individual lives it contains...-Mary O'Malley

Savage Acres is a terrain, a place of flow, where everyday things lead to unexpected moments of the sublime. Every page contains brilliance and life.' -Adrian Duncan

In the 20 years I've known Keith Payne as a sales professional, public speaker and friend, he has never failed to delight me. His wit, intelligence and plain horse sense come through brilliantly in these pages. To anyone wanting to maintain a positive outlook regardless of the circumstances I say: Read this book Craig Bridgman, Colleague & friend for 20+ years.

You will enjoy Keith's inspirational wisdom and insight in this amazing collection of personal experiences and practical applications. I'm doubly blessed not only to read these, but to actually have witnessed some of them with him as well Jeff Coleman, Ministry Colleague & friend for 20+ years.

In The Best Is Always... Still Yet To Come, author Keith Payne shares many slice of life vignettes drawn from his own experiences. His stories recall good times and bad, often with humor and sometimes with sadness, but always with an opportunity for you to make a practical life application. Drawing on wisdom and instruction from Scripture, Keith Payne seeks to encourage and inspire you to a better outlook and outcome, regardless of your circumstances.

Divided into weekly readings, these stories are designed to inspire you to be decidedly different and consider all of the life circumstances facing you-even the difficult ones-as opportunities to embrace a positive, faith-based outlook. By doing so, your attitude will blossom, and your smile and laughter will be contagious; you will have discovered that the best is always... still yet to come.