TRANSCENDING DIVISIVENESS IN OUR COUNTRY
There is a lot of pain in America today, and in many other countries too. Pain between friends, family and neighbors who find themselves divided against each other. Anger at those in power who breed barbed-wire words. Hurt from the insults and intimidations of social prejudice, whether hidden or overt. Fear about the direction of our democracy.
How did all this happen and what can we do about it? How can our country be less divided? And how, in the meantime, can we not only survive but thrive, living in a divided country? There are a lot of different forces that encourage divisiveness. Here are two of them excerpted from my forthcoming book: How to Survive Thrive in a Divided Country.
The media sell copy and set their clickbait traps by fomenting outrage and other emotions. The more adrenalin an article can force you to secrete, the more likely you are to read on, the more likely you are to respond to advertisements, and the more likely you are to remember the article and post it. Divisions and anger make money for media moguls. Anger doesn’t feel so great, it’s true, but it is memorable and the adrenalin can be quite addictive. Better than boredom.
Politicians use divisive tactics to gain votes and cement power. Some politicians can be diabolically clever at homing in on a populations’ anger/dissatisfaction and redirecting it in blame of a minority group which has limited voting power. Hitler was brilliant at this. It is not easy for most of us to avoid an angry reaction to this kind of manipulative political behavior, and yet, if we do, we’ve just got sucked into exactly what the divisive politician wants: anger on one side increases anger on the other in a truly vicious cycle. Anger vs counter-anger cements opposing positions and buttresses the divisive world-view.
There are ways around this trap which I will go into later. It’s much more than a political issue; it affects everyone, because we suffer from our own emotional reactions to what those in power do. Resentment, indignation, contempt, outrage, unease, worry, fear and anger don’t feel good to us at all. Nor do we need these feelings to energize our actions. In fact, without them, we are much more likely to be effective in connecting with others and in doing what we can to make a difference.