Divided We Fall
I've been thinking a lot lately about how you divide people. I know that's a weird thing to think about from a community focused on bringing people together, but sometimes, considering the alternative perspective or the other side of the coin is advantageous. In the process of considering how to grow and increase meaningful conversation, it only makes sense to consider the actions that break apart and put an end to those discussions. In trying to boil the ocean down, I've come up with five "steps" that are critical in dividing people, and I’m sharing them here.
Step 1: "You are different"
To be clear, I believe it's completely okay to acknowledge that we are different--because the truth is that we all are. None of us have shared the same experiences, feelings, emotions, and outcomes, and not one of us is wired precisely the same. So, none of us will process any event similarly or hold identical opinions about a situation. Being different is in NO way wrong or inherently divisive toward the world.
If I say that this is step one and then outline how good and normal it is to be different, how can I say that this is the first step in dividing us? Intent and Effect.
When we are children, our parents and caregivers tell us things. Our friends give us nicknames or help us form a sense of identity and purpose. We find and foster meaning and an understanding of relationships from these formative moments. While I hope that these experiences with parents, teachers, and members of your community are positive and encouraging, the truth is that they aren't always. I can wish that nicknames were uplifting or positive in forming a healthy self-identity, but they don't always work out that way. Sometimes the message that we get is not encouraging or uplifting. Sometimes that message is, "You are different."
That statement has the potential to be interpreted in a few different ways:
A healthy celebration of uniqueness: "You are different" and unique, and the things that make you so are part of why I think you are great, and I want to spend time around you, learn from you, and for you to learn from me – because the world is better because different folks are in it.
Fear-based persecution of your difference: "You are different" and different from us is scary and evil. If you think differently, you might believe differently, and nobody is permitted to do so and be a part of us. So give that up or be isolated and ostracized forever.
A pride-based introduction to bias in difference: "You are different," and that is better than everyone else who is, in any meaningful way, not just like you. We should (and the world should) celebrate you and those like you, and anyone who thinks or acts differently than you should recognize their second-class status in comparison.
What often matters most is the context and the motivations behind it being said to us – either as children or adults. Someone saying so can be looking to encourage you just to be yourself, or the intent can be much more nefarious – an attempt to create groupthink, "me vs. thee" thinking, or even the foundations of overt hate of others.
Based on our interpretation of their intent, the same statements can yield different effects on us as people. Much the same way as the intent affects the framing and motivations by those who tell you that you're different or unique, the same can be said for the outcomes of the recipient. As an example of some toxic effects, here are a few that show up at the party:
"The entitled individual": We all know them, and to be honest, we all know that we struggle to like them. At their worst, you realize that they see you as a role player in their life, but they expect you to see them as your leading actor.
"The insufferable a-hole": This is an extreme version of the entitled person phenomenon. They hold expectations of all others to treat them in a particular way or to see them in a specific fashion, but they are unwilling to meet the same needs in the opposing direction. They, therefore, see goodness or rightness as an asymmetrical relationship.
"The intolerably prejudiced": This is the most frustratingly public form resulting from a message that you are different. We are frequently shown that after hearing the idea that they are different, an individual begins to translate that to mean – "and therefore better." As a result, anything unlike them is to be feared, avoided, and rejected.
These things don't only show up in our childhood either. Plenty of adults begin as well-adjusted people only to have a single event or a situation motivate them to go down this path. And it can be an unsavory and unhealthy path – one where something theoretically neutral (or even positive) becomes toxic to the individual and, ultimately, begins a cascade toward division.
The reality is that we don't have to create division artificially. The law of unintended consequences can do some of that on its own – and interpretation by the recipient and intentionally by the giver can do the rest. Some people are better than others in terms of skills, education, fitness for purpose, etc. What is essential to recognize is that this is not a rejection or an indictment of that sort of "you are different." It is, instead, a recognition that any celebration of those differences which leads someone to a conclusion that they (or people like them) are de facto better people than others who are different is the foundational first step toward the destruction of a united society.
Step 2: The Us vs. Them 5k Fun Run
Once we've established that you (and by proxy, people like you and people who agree with you) are better than others through our differences, real progress toward division can occur. These differences can be in appearance, education, experiences, political beliefs, fashion, or lifestyle. This may also be derived from past experiences that were negative (or positive), which played a lasting role in your memories of people, such as those who will fall into some category that seems disdainful to you.
If you haven't yet noticed, catch that the notion that you are different was, in Phase 1, primarily related to the attributes of the person, has now transcended into things as inconsequential as opinions, clothing, and collegiate alma mater. Don't miss that, and don't miss out on how important it is – as the desire to set oneself (or one's "people") ahead of others grows more substantial, the points of differentiation will devolve into ever-dumber constructs.
There is an ongoing outcome in this, beyond just the expanded stupidity of the reasons that people begin to see themselves as different and, therefore, better. The ongoing increase in how this group is "better" – that is, the more refined the belief set begins to be -- the more inoculated against difference this group becomes. Like the world's worst M&M, the shell keeps getting thicker and more resistant to exterior evidence and pressure of wrong-headedness as time goes on. People in an insular environment where they surround themselves with only messaging that they agree with become more concrete in their certainty of what they believe – about how they relate to themselves, how they relate to others, and how they relate to the world.
When concrete decisions have been made about "what we believe," a funny thing happens. The importance of what we believe gives way, it's as if it becomes old hat, and as a result, the focus of the person or the group around them pivots from "what we believe" into something very different – "what we oppose." If we think it through logically, it makes sense. We can only stand around reciting what we believe for so long before it becomes mundane and repetitive. Furthermore, stating what we believe to be accurate about ourselves and the world does not highlight our superiority over those who hold different beliefs or have different personalities, appearances, etc.
So, what is it that changes? We must pivot to a new conclusion to take the next step in the division. Once we know who "us" are, the next natural step is to define who "them" is. This group must be the group that is out--or rather, on the outs. They must look different than we do, believe differently than we do, speak differently than we do, or think differently than we do. Because, after all – if "we" represent the right and true answer to what defines different and better, how can anyone else be coequal with us when they disagree? Once we get the first "them" defined, it's been my experience that it doesn't take long to find more and to separate yourself from nearly everyone who isn't…well, you.
By establishing an "us" and at least one "them," we have determined that others are different and inferred that they are, therefore, less than us. We begin the process of dehumanization. There is at least some clinical research looking directly into how your opinion of another person primarily drives your empathy toward them. In a nutshell, we dehumanize the people we disagree with – so long as that disagreement is derived from some fundamental them-ism. This is the first stage in which you begin to identify and understand the hatred for those different from us. This may not mean that you didn't feel that feeling before, but it was without focus and a broader conclusion or sensation. Now, however, that focus is a laser beam.
Step 3: Fill the Stadium With Your Fans
So what's next after you have a self-identity wrapped up in superiority of thought, appearance, education, or intellect? As we begin with the notion of "different and better" that is wrapped up in ourselves as individuals, then we either:
Recruit and convince the people around us of our way of thinking or;
Separate ourselves from anyone who disagrees with our perspectives.
I've been around sports just about my whole life. As the son of a football coach and having grown up around a family of sports fans, I've experienced the noise at a stadium. Those moments where a whole group of people rallies around a player or an entire team, those instances where the fans are cheering as much against the opponent as they are for the home team – they can be deafening, where you must shout at the top of your lungs just to be heard by the person standing next to you. If there is one thing I know, the voice of one person screaming will never surpass the volume achieved by a group of people screaming with equal enthusiasm.
To create more significant division amongst people, we must first achieve a large group of "them" whom we stand against. We successfully did that in Phase 2. In this phase, as we have defined the "us" and a broad "them," the next step is amplifying the sound by broadening our reach. There are ultimately a few ways that we can do this.
Our first option is to leverage existing community groups. Like a slow effect from a parasitic invasion, we need only show up, establish relationships, and guide the group in the direction we want them to follow. Given the absence of leaders in the world these days and the pursuit of cults of personality, it only stands to reason that confidence and certainty will help sway the community until it aligns tightly with your different and better version. By then, it will have eschewed all individuals in the "them" category and begun to look more like a hate group than a community group. We see this happen in churches, social clubs, and hobby clubs within towns or areas.
Another way that these occur is through the leveraging of social media. At first blush, you'd think that the exposure and the gnarly prejudices being displayed would be a gigantic red flag to others. You may believe that they would quickly be uncovered, but what's interesting is that in their infancy, social media-based "us vs. them" communities look a great deal like support groups and interest groups and a lot less like anti-________ communities. The scariest part of communities like this is that they are accessible to anyone using that platform and can quickly grow to vast numbers. While that's annoying at face value, the scary part of communities that create divisiveness is that as they grow larger, they get louder. It becomes much easier for its members to convince themselves of rightness – and more challenging to help them see their errors.
Lastly, there are cases where someone may be a student of history. In those cases, they can often find ancient or historical communities upon which to draw inspiration and narrative—finding people who think and believe like you is easier when there is a legacy or story. The person trying to elevate themselves and sew dissent and division does not need to write the whole book, only the last chapter.
While I'm sure there are more ways to do this, I'm not immediately aware of any offhand.
Ultimately, the effect is the same – like thousands of people packing a stadium on any given gameday to cheer on their favorite team, the impact of confident certainty in one's rightness is that it tends to garner attention when placed in public view, and the size of the community shouting against all the people groups, beliefs, ideas, candidates, and anything else that they believe to be wrong or harmful.
Step 4: This One Goes to Eleven – Fabricate Outrage
Once a large group of people shouts down anyone different than the "us" that has been established, the next step in creating division is to begin to express outrage. There are a few ways that this can happen.
Historical allegories and stories play a huge role here, just as they did in the previous step. In addition to establishing a drumbeat for your new community of loyal followers, the historical model involves the identification of past examples of disagreement, discord, or dispute between the "us" and the "them" communities. From there, the moral outrage can amplify.
Secondarily, though perhaps more easily achieved, there is the notion of substitutionary thinking of others. We begin by recasting our differences into a conflation with moral failure. We start to perceive that anyone who disagrees with us is not only wrong contextually but that they are wrong existentially. If you do not think like me, look like me, pray like me, act like me, or agree with me, then it can only follow that you need re-education and explanation. More darkly and much later, when you realize that you cannot explain away differences in people, you are left only with vilification and (in truly tragic cases) a need to destroy them.
Lastly, there are ways to link concepts together. In negotiation, there is the concept of "building the golden bridge." This is the idea that we should help our partners in negotiation to cease seeing the engagement as adversarial but rather that we are working toward a common goal. Alarmingly, people who are wired to see themselves as better and more right or righteous tend to take a similar approach to similarly minded individuals. They look for the similarities in groups of people they respect and find ways to engage and align so that others begin to amplify their message and lend it whatever legitimacy the other party has in the public view.
Ultimately, I've opted only to provide concise versions of these approaches (primarily for brevity but also because they are dark, and I don't want to dwell there in my mind). To desire the removal of an entire group of people or to support the suppression of equality amongst those who are different from us, we must first seek to make them lesser. Not only less in the sense of being poorer, less intelligent, or of another mind, but also in their entitlement to what Thomas Jefferson described as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If we are to snuff those freedoms out through our shouting and (later) our actions, we must first convince ourselves that the fundamental differences are the same as failures of morality or righteousness. We must be right, they must be wrong, and that wrongness must be so significant, so pervasive, and so untenable that a remarkable transformation occurs.
The process of dehumanization requires substitution:
We must swap out forgiveness and acceptance for swift and sure vengeance.
We must replace contentedness with bitterness, joy with jealousy, and peace with dis-ease.
We must see divisions where we once sought similarities.
In his treatise Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Friedrich Nietzsche said, "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
There is no doubt that when we begin to be critical toward those we see as monsters – that is, as half-human or troglodyte – there is no doubt that persecution will soon follow. And when no one is left from the group persecuted, the bloodlust for self-righteous and self-referential removal remains. To keep the fires of hatred alive inside of us, we must continually have an enemy. We must have a rallying cry, and to be the "virtuous right," there must also be a "scandalous wrong."
Simply said, "Haters gonna hate." (Thanks, Taylor Swift).
Nietzsche's point, though, goes to the heart of that matter. To fight against something or someone else, we must be intentional – we must first search ourselves to know if it is a cause worth fighting and a cost worth paying. Nobody returns from a battle the same person that they were that morning. Likewise, as you study the darkness inside of you that it must take to find the hatred within you to shout down, demean, and dehumanize another human, you must also allow the darkness to peer into you - to take root in you. We need not inherently like Nietzsche's beliefs or observations to recognize that to be true. We see it playing out all around us. For a more direct example, author James A. Baldwin wrote in Notes of a Native Son, "Our dehumanization of the Negro is inseparable from the dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his."
In other words, we must crank up the volume and act in ways equally as offensive, vicious, and animalistic as those we seek to throttle to control and dispose of them. Not of the individuals alone - but their thoughts, hopes, perspectives, and futures.
We must crank the volume wide open on the hate amplifier and permit it to fill our spirit. We must become so committed to shouting away any conflicting viewpoint or upsetting idea that we become fully insular. In an awkwardly excellent turn of phrase, a friend of mine said to me once, "Silos are only useful for storing grain, hearing your echo, or smelling your farts." Siloed thinking – the sort that amplifies one voice above all others and carries it back to us as if our voice replaces that of all others – it is the tipping point for division.
Transformation occurs at this point, just as it has across the three previous steps. We move from hearing to believing, from believing to saying, and from saying to shouting. The following steps forward are the final transformative steps. The ones by which the divide deepens and widens.
Step 5: Attempt to Enforce Your Beliefs on Others
As the shouts continue, and the anger inside of a group burns with an ever-intensifying glow, there is a moment when the spark touches cloth, and the whole thing goes up into flames. Thoughts lead to actions. As espoused in the Buddhist aphorism:
We are what we think.
All that we are arises from our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We do nothing that is not first heard and thought and believed.
How do we get to a point where we harm others with impunity?
How can we heal and restore if we continue to tear ourselves apart?
How will we heal when the answer to righteous anger is unrighteous action?
Those are questions that I've wrestled with for more hours than I'd care to confess. I suspect that the answer is in the notion that the answer lies in the statement, "All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
When words fail to call down sufficient thunder to shape the world as we see fit, we must act as haters of heterogeneity of thought, belief, and action. If we cannot win the war of words and the battle of intellect, then we must pivot to action. Like some jilted ex who shouts, "Look what you made me do," moments after assaulting another person, we act with a reckless and destructive certainty that comes from the belief that our rightness of thought justifies our wrongness in action. Ironically, we become genuinely divided due to the efforts of those who seek to reconcile by action.
The silos of insulated thinking and reasoning have long since stripped us of any contrary thought or different perspective, and we become capable of doing nearly anything we can self-justify or rationalize. When anything goes, and anything can be justified with illogical belief, we have no hope of restoration, and division becomes the backdrop against which we act out the fall.
In Closing
This blog isn't intended to engender ideas of Orwell's Thought Police. It is also not intended as a treatise on avoiding discussion, sequestering opinions, or fomenting division. Not really. It is, instead, a look at how I have watched these divisions occur in families, churches, civic clubs, communities, countries, and our world. As most readers can probably tell, the various points in which I shift to the position of "we" or "us" as it pertains to fomenting division are merely an attempt to "play the devil's advocate" for narrative or explanatory reasons. I do not seek out division or find arbitrary points of distinction problematic. On the contrary, I seek them out. I love to hear from people who disagree with me; even when I defend my position assertively, that does not mean I do not learn.
Let me go further. I strongly support the notion that we should hold different views and ideas. My perspective and my opinion are only that. They are mine. I cannot know or experience your life any more than you can mine. Without transparent and open conversation, however, I cannot hope to ever understand it better or change my opinion and perspective. Living, working, and thinking in a vacuum is not, in any way, advantageous for society.
If we seek to be restored and to stop the drift toward division and hatred, some things must happen. Some of those things may be uncomfortable for us, and some of those things may be downright painful.
We must seek to reject the leveraging of our differences as a weapon against us and instead choose to see them as part of the fabric that knits us together as a society.
We must learn to celebrate our differences, to support our varied opinions, ideas, cultures, ethnicities, and experiences.
We must learn that our first response to ignorance should be compassion and an attempt to educate through our actions and our lives.
We must learn to turn to, rather than away from, one another in times of confusion and to hold a position of vulnerability, honesty, and assurance that we can ask questions of one another.
We must be honest about our experiences and predisposed beliefs and be open to growth and change.
We must be willing to forgive others when evidence suggests that they have changed.
We must be open to holding two conflicting ideas in our heads.
Ultimately, we must choose love and a belief in the ties that bind us all together as people. People are not shamed and shouted into changing their thoughts. They are educated and exposed to contradictory evidence. They are shown the error of their ways through how we conduct ourselves in times of confrontation, times of difficulty, and times of discord.
I won't get it all correct. Neither will you. This blog is probably lacking in a number of significant areas, and even now, I’m guessing that you feel like you’d love to tell me how I can improve. Please do! However, even if we don’t work to improve this article, the truth is that we have a much better chance of improving ourselves and our communities together than any of us do alone.
If this article has been helpful, my only request is that you consider sharing it with others. We all grow and improve from broader and more significant conversation. I’d love to hear the thoughts and ideas that you may have. Feel free to drop them at the link below by joining the Facebook community. Let’s talk and see what we can learn together.
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