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.
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