Perpetual Long Division

If you were gripped with fear when you read that title, don't worry. We won't be talking about mathematics here.

Rather, a different kind of division is our concern. Social division.

Just last week I saw a Twitter post from a person I really respect. He is the editor of a reputable Christian magazine and has a significant following. I've never agreed with him on everything. But he often has helpful insights, and I appreciate his magazine.

His post made me cringe with embarrassment. How can I associate with a person who thinks like this? And then it made me mad. These sorts of posts are the reasons that people don't take us seriously, and even more, the reasons why we are accused of hypocrisy and judgementalism. In just a few words, he demonstrated the very kind of social division that I'm talking about.

In the 1860s, our society was well-divided over a significant issue -- the abolition of slavery. It led to the Civil War, pitting virtually half of the country against the other half. That's an extreme example of social division.

One hundred years later, we can see social division of a similar sort still at work. In the 1960s, various civil rights issues divided the public, but not in such a disastrous fashion as to lead once again to civil war. From a historical perspective, some advances were made to heal those rifts. Yet, we are all well aware that some matters from that time continue to fester.

Judging from the recent number of books, articles, and other commentary on the topic of social division, one might reckon that it's presently worse than ever. We regularly see the word "polarization" invoked as if we're radically divided and our society is falling apart. But if we consider the Civil War as a standard, things are clearly not that bad.

Perhaps what makes us feel particularly divided at the moment is just how much more aware we seem to be about the various vehement disagreements that cause social division. These phenomena garner easy attention across a variety of media. Some even claim that virtual environments like Twitter are toxic because of the intensity and prevalence of viciousness and vitriol exhibited between users of the platform. The post I read on Twitter was filled with the kind of anger that the platform easily turns into a contagion.

Our attention is drawn to what appears to be the ongoing fragmentation of our society into smaller and smaller groups, often referred to as "tribes," whose very existence is in part understood through the lens of enmity. To have an enemy is, oddly, a unifying experience.

Think of it this way: my tribe and your tribe disagree at a fundamental level and maintain an ongoing banter of criticism, castigation, and shame. In fact, these efforts sustain our existence as tribes, giving each a sense of identity. This trickles down to the tribe's "members." My participation in the tribe helps me know who I am, what I'm for, what I'm against, and feeds my need for a sense of community. My tribe helps me feel like I'm part of something. "We" have united against "them."

The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that we derive a sense of "righteousness" from our membership in a tribe. For example, your tribe's cause may offer the feeling that you are on the "right" side of history. Those who don't agree with you are considered evil, sick, maybe even something less than human. For the sake of achieving righteousness and justice, perhaps your tribe comes up with arguments to commit violence against those who disagree -- or seek to eradicate them altogether.

Humans tell stories to themselves about themselves. It helps us understand who we are. Tribes do something similar. They often have a story about a kind of loss or damage to something they believe is sacred. The late 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called this "ressentiment," borrowing a French term that includes what we mean by "resentment" in English, but also includes a sense of loss, a claim of damage, along with anger and rage. Tribes feel ressentiment. For example, the two most visible tribes we can point to in American culture are the right and left (or conservatives and progressives, respectively). Each tells a story about harm to America, blaming the other tribe for that harm. Both see themselves as victims, and the fault belongs to the other group.

While the specific harms always vary, each tribe goes on to develop a plan of action to address their unique problem. That action plan involves, at least in part, efforts to leverage all available mechanisms of power to advance their cause. The mechanisms might include politics or litigation using rhetoric and arguments. Or they might include shaming and defamation using various kinds of media. Tribes try to prevent or subvert the efforts of other tribes.

In our present moment of pandemic, we see these sorts of behaviors generated by the loudest disagreements that are getting public attention. Do we stay locked down or reopen? Do we surrender some of our freedoms and privacy for the sake of contact tracing? Should we wear masks, or is this a violation of personal autonomy? These and other concerns generate arguments that devolve into shouting matches, and worse, contempt for the other.

Let it be said for the record that no one is innocent when it comes to social division. Whether we actively participate in the arguments or not, all of us have moments when we simply don't understand another's perspective to the extent that we are willing easily to dismiss them right along with their perspective.

And writing as a Christian, I must admit that I too am guilty of this at times. It's easy to do because thinking is hard. Conversations that might achieve mutually beneficial goals, probably deriving from some kind of compromise, are harder still. I'm guilty of taking the easy route -- thinking poorly of others and better about myself. This move is the exact opposite of what Christians are called to do: "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let esteem others better than himself" (Philippians 2:3). Contempt of others can certainly make us feel good as well as righteous, but in the end neither is good nor helpful.

What could be a better way? The Bible offers an image that may help.

From the very beginning, the Bible teaches that all humans are made in the image of God. This means there is something we all have in common, something that is the same about all of us. And this sameness transcends our differences. That is, as a first priority, we ought to see each other through the lens of this sameness. Whatever differences we have are contingent, and thus secondary.

I had to check myself the next day after I read that post on Twitter. It had stuck with me. I was still angry, embarrassed, and frankly, disgusted. And judging by the comments, so were a lot of other people. I could have joined in the reactionary attack. Twitter makes it easy. But I don't know the guy personally. He's probably as well intentioned as many other people whom I've disagreed with, including people I love, like my parents, friends, and even my wife. Because I can easily see the image of God in them, it causes me to treat them differently, allowing our differences to be secondary. Thinking about this, I realized that I shouldn't have been so judgmental about the person who was posting something I disagreed with on Twitter.

Some consequences flow from the fact that humans are made in the image of God that we can articulate in the form of guiding principles aimed at healing our social division. We can each apply them in our own lives.

First, it is a category mistake to equate people with their ideas. That guy on Twitter said something I disagreed with, but I had to remember: people are NOT the positions they support, the ethics they practice, the religion they belong to (or don't), or the politics they adhere to. These things are contingent, and throughout a person's life, they may change. If people have something fundamental in common -- that we are created in the image of -- we are able always to discuss, debate, and critique ideas, perspectives, and convictions, all while seeking vigorously to avoid making ultimate judgments about the person. After all, who are we do say that we are ultimately right, and therefore righteous, while others are evil or sick? How can we have certainty about these ultimate judgments?

This leads to a second principle. If we cannot have certainty, we need to practice a kind of "epistemic humility." Perhaps this is especially important in a time of pandemic. That is, if we know anything at all, we know that we don't know everything. I'm certainly not right about everything, and I don't think that guy on Twitter was right either. As humans, there are limits to our knowledge. Furthermore, we are well aware that certainty about almost everything is inaccessible. New information and new experiences change our perspectives all the time. None of us can see with a "God's-eye-view." We are fallible, prone to mistakes, bias, and over-confidence. Our claims concerning what we believe is right ought to be supported with the best information we have. And we should exhibit a proper confidence about our convictions, yet one that retains an openness to further conversation, learning, and even being questioned, such that we may learn we are at times, wrong.

To get at our next two principles, we should take a step back from experiences we have with other people who have different perspectives and consider our own reactions when we run into disagreement. As we noted above, our participation in tribes unites us against common enemies. Yet, considering our human sameness means we need to rethink what it means to have an enemy. In fact, Jesus teaches that we should "love our enemies" (see Matthew 5:44). Instead of being against, we are called, in an odd and nearly impossible way, to be for our enemies. In light of the earlier example from the beginning of the Bible, Jesus is at least saying here that we ought to love all other humans because they bear the image of God.

It would be difficult, however, to argue that Jesus is saying love, in this sense, equals something like affirmation. That is, the Christian call to love is not necessarily a call to affirm. So we have our third principle: love does not equal affirmation. If people are made in the image of God, that doesn't mean I have to agree with or affirm everyone's ideas on Twitter (or elsewhere).

Affirmation is something we all desire. I think this is part of the reason we post things on social media platforms like Twitter and others. But there are very good reasons why we should not always receive affirmation. Parents and children know this well. There are behaviors and ideas that my parents did not affirm, like lying or disrespect or the belief that I should always get what I want. But this did not mean they did not love me.

If (and when) we are wrong, it may actually be a loving gesture when someone disagrees with us in an effort to help us gain a better understanding. So, love does not equal affirmation. It is another category mistake to expect complete affirmation from people who love us. We should embrace this understanding in order to chasten our expectations when interacting with others who share different perspective.

As a corollary, we should also embrace the principle that disagreement does not equal hate. From a biblical perspective, if Jesus was able to love everyone perfectly (which Christians claim He did), how should we understand His disagreements with others that are recounted in the brief biographies about Him in the Bible? Certainly, we should not assume that He hated those with whom He disagreed. Rather, He sought to correct them for the sake of their own understanding and flourishing. While I wish Twitter were a place where civil discussion existed, the platform isn't made for that. While I could have joined in heaping negativity at the guy whose post I disagreed with, that would have served no helpful purpose in achieving a better perspective. People don't change their minds because of contempt from others. Love, empathy, compassion, and doing the hard work of having difficult discussions is what we should be up to.

These principles are commendable. If our world needs anything right now, it's for people to find ways to see themselves and others through the lens of sameness rather than difference. Healing social division begins here.

I make this argument as a Christian, using Christian reasoning. But I'm well aware that I and many other Christians have failed in this regard. Call us hypocrites. I'll own this label until my dying day.

But that's why I stick close to Jesus. He continues to prod me -- sometimes gently, sometimes in ways that feel chastising -- to prioritize others in the way that He prioritizes you and me. You and I are so important to Him that He gave His life for us. So how can we let our fallible arguments or the causes of our groups and tribes -- even our own need to feel "righteous" or affirmed -- become the hill upon which we make our stand? Jesus died upon a hill. But it wasn't just for you or for me. And it definitely wasn't because we are righteous. Rather, He gave His life because all of us fall short and all of us need His redemption.

Jesus reveals there is a sameness which unites us with every other human. And He opens a space for us to move forward, no longer in perpetual division but together in love. Let's walk with Him.

How has your social media experiences been lately? With all the voices out there going in all directions, it's easy to get burned out with opinions and all the hyped-up rhetoric. How do you use social media? Do you have any special websites or blogs you like to spend time reading. If so, please share.

Written by Chad Lakies

You can share your thoughts on this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.

You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.

Changing the Mind of a Sheep

I like historical fiction: books, movies, TV. I especially like the kind that has a plot based on some kind of shadow agency, secret society, or cabal that is mysteriously at work in the story, yet lurk in the background. The Illuminati. The Culper Ring. The Trilateral Commission. All kinds of stories include groups like these meddling in world events, often for the sake of power. The identity of the participants in such groups is usually almost entirely unknown. The stories often play with a little bit of true history to create grandiose plots in which the fate of all humanity is at stake. They're fun reads.

Of course, I think they're fun because they're imaginary. Historical fiction is just that -- fiction. It doesn't claim to be anything else.

Deepfakes, Conspiracy Theories, and Extremism

Distinguishing fact from fiction is getting more and more difficult. I'm worried about the further development of deepfakes, for example. Deepfakes -- from "deep learning" and "fakes" -- are videos in which people appear to be saying things they never actually said, built by artificial intelligence (AI) computers using images and recordings of the speaker, mashing them together into coherent and convincing fictions that masquerade as fact. They're very hard to recognize, and they're getting harder. In fact, they've already been playing a part in global-political shifts and experts are concerned about their further disruptive capabilities.

Conspiracy theories are another example of the difficulty we have separating fact from fiction. Much like historical fiction, conspiracy theories try to explain the existence of factual realities using highly questionable evidence (but only if one is willing to raise the questions). For example, pandemics are often accompanied by conspiracy theories. Psychologist Stephen Taylor notes that, "Disease outbreaks are commonly the subject of conspiracy theories, especially when the nature of the disease is poorly understood." Taylor describes some of the theories that arose during the Bubonic Plague in the 1500s, the Spanish Flu in the early 20th century, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic at the end of that century.

We don't usually think about it this way, but beliefs, such as believing a deepfake or a conspiracy theory is true, are most often the sort of thing that are "caught" rather than, say, chosen. Stanley Fish describes coming to have a belief like catching a cold-rather than having beliefs or a cold, we're "had" by them.

Fish demonstrates this by sharing a story about an old NPR episode. There it was reported about a former member of a eugenicist extremist group. The group believed, among other things, that people with "defects" like cleft palates ought to be "put into special colonies or otherwise dealt with." When asked what "changed his mind" the person did not offer reasons, arguments, or evidence. Instead, he offered a narrative. He told a rather personal story, describing how, in fact, his own daughter was born with a cleft palate. As a father who loved his daughter, he suddenly realized he was caught up with the wrong beliefs and the wrong crowd.

Again, it wasn't reasoned evidence or arguments that accounted for his prior belief, nor his immediate rejection of that belief. It was an experience that could only be accounted for by a story. He didn't deliberate and weigh evidence. In both respects, his beliefs just seemed to happen to him, similar to catching a cold.

Think for Yourself?

We'd like to imagine ourselves as these incredibly thoughtful and deliberative creatures who don't believe anything without weighing the evidence first. In the old adage, we're the kind of people who "think for ourselves." But in fact, most of our beliefs have come to be what they are because of persuasion of various sorts. In fact, group pressure is perhaps strongest. When everyone around us seems to believe a particular thing, it's hard not to believe it too, if only because we don't want to be excluded. Yet we don't really deliberate in making that choice. Rather, it just seems to happen. Instead of thinking for ourselves, we end up thinking with others.

Group pressure is sometimes called herd or mob mentality. One place mob mentality affects us is online. Some have recognized and lamented this reality. Algorithms strongly influence our news feeds, delivering to us pieces that others read who share a similar algorithmic profile. So even if we don't know the mob we're a part of, the "omnipotent" internet treats us like a member and delivers content we'll like, all the while letting us believe we're in control of what we consume.

Social media does the same. But it goes further in encouraging us to actively participate in a mob. When we log on, we're asked what's on our mind. We are encouraged to read, share and hashtag the same things as our friends. This experience can be so overwhelmingly influential that we start to believe that's the only way to think. The only positions to advocate for and support are the ones the mob approves. A kind of "orthodoxy" quickly develops. And if you disagree, you're labelled a heretic.

The member of the extremist group faced a conundrum when having to choose between committing to the orthodoxy of his group or his role of loving father to his daughter. In choosing his daughter, we should recognize that he lost a strong connection to a community in which he probably found belonging, identity, and meaning.

We see this about many issues: racial, ethnic, political, environmental, sexual, gender, guns, speech, and more. The arguments boil down into zero-sum games. If you're not completely and fully for one side, you're ostensibly for the other. No conversation, no debate. Silence is violence, yet sometimes you're just told to shut-up. Your only option seems to be to listen and fall in line or live as a kind of outsider.

Sometimes falling in line with the mob is relatively trivial. I used to live in the Pacific Northwest. IPA beers are all the rage there, and that's what all my friends were drinking. I can't stand IPAs, so I didn't drink them. And while my friends might harass me for not liking their favorite style of beer, I was never at risk of losing their friendship.

At other times, falling in line with the mob is dangerous. Group pressure can lead to some very poor choices. The pressure of the group to remain faithful to the mob above all else begins to cost the loss of other social relationships. We experience fracturing and societal breakdown as people take sides, polarizing, and imagine those who are outside their groups as enemies.

All of this is frustrating and exhausting for at least two reasons.

Frustration and Exhaustion

First, the realities that people are arguing about are very important to many of us, and oftentimes people's lives are at stake. This is true for the ongoing racial tensions, the disagreements about whether to wear masks in public, and many other significant concerns.

Second, when the arguments function like a zero-sum game, there is no room for debate, discussion, or even slowing things down to learn more. Profoundly complicated issues get over-simplified. Emotion and reaction predominate. Confusion arises about the goal. Fruitful progress stagnates.

DO SOMETHING is often the passionate appeal. But "what" and "why" remain tremendously difficult to answer.

In the cartoon series Charlie Brown, there is a recurring scene in which Lucy holds a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Over and over again, Charlie lines up for the kick and just as he is about to kick the ball, Lucy pulls it up and out of the way, causing Charlie to fall onto the ground. Various iterations of this scene recur, sometimes with Lucy promising not to pull the ball. In one scene, she even signs a contract committing not to pull the ball. Yet, just as Charlie is about to kick it, Lucy inevitably pulls it anyway despite the contract.

Many people want to do something about the troubling issues of our time, especially those involving concerns of social justice. In a zero-sum game, over and over again well-intentioned people are told that they need to do something. Still, the very things they do -- even when they are doing something in line with the voices they've been listening to -- their actions are derided as not enough or in fact the wrong thing. Like Charlie Brown, those who try often experience Lucy metaphorically pulling the ball.

Exhaustion and frustration.

Perhaps people who want to help -- who want to do something -- are captive to a mob mentality much like the man with the daughter who had a cleft palate. And the factual truth of the matter begins to reveal itself when efforts to help and bring about change are met with rejection, silencing, and ostracism.

Covidiots and Sheeple

During the present pandemic, the debate about how best to helpfully behave for the sake of others has led to two unique labels. There's the COVIDiot (from COVID + idiot), a derogatory term used for those who do not follow the health and safety guides set forth amid the pandemic. There's also the "sheeple" (from sheep + people), a term that's actually in the dictionary due to its regular use over the last few years. Sheeple is another derogatory term that refers to people who mindlessly follow the crowd. The term is often used in the phrase "wake up sheeple," evoking the idea of being "woke," but applied in a new way in light of the coronavirus crisis. Getting "woke" in this sense seems to mean one of two things (leading to a rather ironic confusion): either you wake up and realize that following the public health guidelines is for everyone's good, OR it means you should claim your independence from the authorities who can't tell you what to do, like wearing a mask in public. We're facing group pressure in two different directions here.

In the Bible, the word for "sheep" is used more than 400 times. We learn that sheep are followers. They do what other sheep are doing, often to their own detriment. They have a herd mentality. They will follow the mob off a cliff. Sheep need someone to protect them from these dangers, a guide to keep them safe, a trustworthy voice to which they can listen.

Shepherds are the corollary image for sheep in the Bible. Shepherds were those who protected the sheep, lead them away from danger and toward safety as well as sources of life, like food and water. Shepherds were familiar to their sheep. Like many animals who develop relationships with humans, sheep find the voice of a shepherd to be trustworthy and comforting. Sheep follow their shepherd because they know their shepherd cares for them.

Who Are You Gonna Follow?

At some point, we all have to recognize that we're caught up as part of some mob. Maybe it's the mob that's actively dividing us. Maybe it's the mob that's criticizing that mob. Maybe it's the mob that's feeling helpless to make a difference because of frustration and exhaustion, resigned and giving up. And perhaps it's a mob that I haven't discussed yet -- the apathetic mob, who just doesn't care. Indeed, perhaps we've all been a part of each of these at some time or another. If we are "had" by our beliefs, and therefore caught up in a mob mentality without being aware of it, we can draw a striking conclusion:

We're all sheep then. And we all need a shepherd.

The Bible describes us well in this regard, saying, "All we like sheep have gone astray." (See Isaiah 53:6.)

Yet, this is not the last word. It's only the first one. If we have all gone astray and need a shepherd, where do we find one? Jesus says of Himself, "I am the Good Shepherd" (John 10.11a). Jesus says of His sheep that He knows them, and they know Him. They listen to His voice. He goes on to talk about more sheep who are not yet a part of His flock but will be, united under His leadership. We need a shepherd these days. Our world is in turmoil. Lives are at stake. A pathway forward and toward unity is not possible without the leadership of the Good Shepherd.

Written by Chad Lakies

You can share your thoughts on this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.

You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.