Comments on a Divided Country

There are two crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant behav­iors that cause con­flict on any scale — per­son­al, group, or societal:

• Push­ing a neg­a­tive, reduc­tive belief about an oppo­nent as an absolute truth
• Reject­ing mean­ing­ful per­son­al feed­back of any kind

Dis­play­ing these two fun­da­men­tal­ly defen­sive behav­iors, espe­cial­ly in ways that are insult­ing and degrad­ing to oth­ers, with­out a doubt will gen­er­ate con­flict. Keep push­ing and you’ll even­tu­al­ly begin to foment vio­lence. This seems to be because these two behav­iors rep­re­sent a an attack on human iden­ti­ty and dignity.

And this is exact­ly where I see us now — in a state of degra­da­tion, our chal­lenged and divid­ed Amer­i­ca. What­ev­er our side, we can­not hear the oth­er side’s crit­i­cisms of us and we believe in our heart of hearts that the oth­er side is wrong, bad, poten­tial­ly or actu­al­ly evil. Too many of us are so lost that one of our plea­sures is rev­el­ing in mock­ery and ridicule of those oth­ers, in put-downs, insults, offens­es and right­eous out­rages. We are too often angry and sad. Per­haps we would­n’t say we get plea­sure from the mis­for­tunes of the oth­er side, but pri­vate­ly or uncon­scious­ly there it is.

I’ve been study­ing con­flict for thir­ty-five years, ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of Dri­ving Fear Out of the Work­place in 1990. One of the mes­sages of that book, although it is about orga­ni­za­tions, not soci­eties is that par­ties in con­flict tend to stay in con­flict because of what is called a cycle of mis­trust – essen­tial­ly a rec­i­p­ro­cal set of neg­a­tive beliefs and behav­iors direct­ed toward one anoth­er, dis­played sub­tly or overt­ly, but always against the oth­er. “She’s manip­u­la­tive.” “He’s patron­iz­ing.” “They don’t care.” “He’s out of touch.” Such cycles are act­ed out through with­draw­al or behind the scenes bad­mouthing, side-tak­ing, or a pletho­ra of oth­er pet­ty behav­iors; if bad enough via out­right attacks and efforts to humil­i­ate sup­posed ene­mies and “win” pow­er over them. When a cycle of mis­trust is oper­at­ing, peo­ple don’t even have to artic­u­late their neg­a­tive beliefs; they don’t have to say the words because feel­ings are picked up quite eas­i­ly when the back­ground beliefs have mor­phed into fixed truths.

Extrap­o­lat­ing to the cul­tur­al divide today the fixed truths are every­where and are extreme: “They’re racist.” “They are fas­cists.” “They hate Amer­i­ca.” “They want to shut down free speech.” “They are cor­rupt.” “They are hate­ful.” “They’re sex­ist.” “They’re Marx­ists.” “They’re not real Chris­tians.” “They want to tear every­thing down.” “They are vio­lent.” It goes on and on, each side feel­ing offend­ed, work­ing hard to cre­ate the most telling, sav­age crit­i­cisms (though, iron­i­cal­ly, often entire­ly the same, such as accu­sa­tions of hypocrisy) that quick­ly devolve into per­son­al insults, jus­ti­fied esca­la­tions, rote con­dem­na­tions. As a soci­ety we are lost in the work of prov­ing our alle­ga­tions, argu­ing about beliefs as if they were facts, as if they were absolutes.

Nobody in this war is actu­al­ly try­ing to under­stand why somone else might feel offend­ed. It’s frankly ludi­crous to even imag­ine it now on a scale that would mat­ter, peo­ple open­ly ques­tion­ing, ask­ing for infor­ma­tion; for instance, ask­ing: “you know, I notice you say­ing you think I’m author­i­tar­i­an. Help me under­stand what it is I’ve said or done (or not said or done) that’s caus­ing you to feel I’m a fas­cist.” Or, to use a counter exam­ple: “you know, you’ve sug­gest­ed I hate this coun­try. Help me under­stand what I’ve said or done (or not said or done) that’s caus­ing you to see me as hat­ing Amer­i­ca.” As I say, ludicrous.

No, no one is doing this because the divide is not about cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty for mean­ing­ful dia­logue; it’s about pow­er and being right, active­ly deny­ing dia­logue pre­cise­ly because we believe the oth­ers don’t want it or are not gen­uine, are deeply wrong, are ‘bad peo­ple’ or some oth­er ratio­nal­ized cause asso­ci­at­ed with the cause of sav­ing Amer­i­ca. One or both sides might well con­sid­er such an invi­ta­tion to talk direct­ly, hon­est­ly, mean­ing­ful­ly as either naive or as a trap, a sign of the very mis­trust that keeps dri­ving the con­flict. As I say, it’s crazy to even imag­ine res­o­lu­tion, in part because it’s like­ly there’s be no agree­ment on what dia­logue even might look like in the con­text of this war. (It’s cer­tain­ly not a “debate” or an argu­ment.) No, at present we are locked in a more vis­cer­al com­bat aimed at tak­ing peo­ple down intel­lec­tu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, moral­ly, as part of an increas­ing­ly phys­i­cal war based on defend­ing, pro­tect­ing and jus­ti­fy­ing our views while insult­ing and attempt­ing to hurt oth­ers — from accu­sa­tions of whataboutism, com­ments that “own the libs” in a what’s sup­posed to be a sat­is­fy­ing way to cut­ting off Maga mem­bers of fam­i­lies as if they are dead. This is the way, painful­ly, the neg­a­tive cycles esca­late, lit­tle by lit­tle as they say and then all at once based on ret­ri­bu­tion, con­tempt, inten­tion­al loss of con­nec­tion and delib­er­ate and con­scious retal­i­a­tion. Each side wants the oth­er to pay — despite claims and self-right­eous claims to the contrary.

“Here, let me explain the truth to you.”

“Here, let me explain the truth about you.” 

It’s awful. This is the mechan­i­cal and pow­er-based tragedy we enforce on our­selves and oth­ers, attack­ing one anoth­ers’ dig­ni­ty, try­ing to wound and can­cel one anoth­er out based on our cer­tain­ty that we under­stand each oth­er’s motives and char­ac­ter; a war in which ulti­mate­ly every­one is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly vil­lain and vic­tim with the pur­pose of claim­ing “it’s not our fault.” It’s only nat­ur­al to won­der who active­ly ben­e­fits from such a war in which actu­al assas­si­na­tion is quick­ly becom­ing a fringe norm.

In my expe­ri­ence, such neg­a­tive cycles end only when peo­ple begin to chal­lenge their own inner absolute beliefs about oth­ers and begin instead to ask for feed­back about them­selves and their own behav­ior. This process of rehu­man­iza­tion hap­pens when peo­ple final­ly decide they are sick of fight­ing because it’s got­ten them nowhere, when they are hurt­ing enough, when they are alone and exhaust­ed enough to begin giv­ing up on their neg­a­tive assump­tions about one anoth­er and are will­ing to talk to each oth­er in mean­ing­ful ways. (And again, not as an argu­ment or debate, but as a real desire to under­stand and con­nect.) Often there’s an inkling that maybe the oth­er side is more human than we thought; a flick­er of a notion that they mir­ror us in some impor­tant way.

Appar­ent­ly, we aren’t there yet. But maybe we’re begin­ning to get ready. And what are we will­ing to do about it, real­ly? That’s the lead­er­ship inquiry — one we’ll prob­a­bly have to make into our own souls.