It is no secret that Lebanon is a fragmented nation. The political reality is a testament to that reality.

Whether it has to do with historical divisions, cartel factions bickering, or the thawra’s inability to create a unified coalition, the phenomenon is the same.

There are over 150 licensed political parties and associations in Lebanon. Within the thawra, there are over 20 groups.

Diversity in opinions can be very healthy for the functioning of democracies. Being fragmented into dozens of ideologically opposed factions, however, is not.

Without a strong unified coalition taking the country in a certain direction, the country is left collapsing into chaos without any political force capable of changing the status quo.

There is no unique reason why there has not been any unification so far.

There could be narrow individual or tribal interests, ego, or intergenerational trauma at play. Lack of experience, leadership, resources or crisis fatigue could also be factors.

Boiling down the issue to its essence, it all has to do with the concept of “coalition consensus”. The nation is fundamentally at odds on many existential issues facing the country.

The reason the nation is divided is because there are many clusters holding, not only contrasting values of how the country should function, but also vastly opposed versions of objective truth.

The Lebanese nation is not fragmented because there are a multitude of personal truths about religious beliefs.

Yes, personal truths can sometimes be imposed on others as normative truths, and they can also cause tribal social behaviors, which in turn leads to fragmentation of a larger collective.

Fundamentally, the issue of the fragmentation of the nation boils down to disagreements on both normative values (how things should be) and objective truth (how things are currently, and why).

For normative truths, the “ethical” allocation of financial sacrifice within society, the ability of the country to secularize, decentralization, the state neutrality policy, and the economic and cultural identity of the state are all still contentious points.

It is completely normal for a country to have clashing normative truths.

As long as mechanisms of cooperation to obtain consensus are introduced, clashes in normative truths can be resolved peacefully.

Normative values are partially functions of personal values, identity, tastes and projections of the future. However, normative values are also inevitably influenced by one’s subjective perception of other humans and their environment.

This is why, for normative values to be turned into accomplishments, they also have to connect the dot between the future and events of the past interpreted objectively.

This is where the importance of common grounds on objective truth is important. One cannot simply “forget the past and move on” or “think about the future”, without collectively sharing the same benchmarks and recollections of the past.

Disagreements in normative values originating simply in diverse tastes, can easily be exacerbated when the two interlocutors in debate are projecting different versions, terminologies and understandings of the past into how they see the future.

The clashes on objective truth encompass all aspects of our old and more recent history: the exact causes of the economic collapse, the definition of a revolutionary, the original purpose of sectarian quotas, the causes of the civil war, the history of Lebanese civilization, to regional geopolitics.

Once consensus is reached on objective truth, no matter the divergence in values, characters, and visions, it becomes a lot easier to achieve convergence in normative values. Even when demands are occasionally mutually exclusive, dialogue can lead to compromises where normative objectives are shared in a balanced way, enabling democracies to function and thrive.

Pluralism can then be converted as a positive force that empowers the country’s resources, rather than depletes them.