Destructive Division: The Hyper-Intensified “Us vs. Them” Crisis
How to begin? Well, in short, we have a problem. And, it’s a big one. No, I’m not talking about the climate crisis, racial injustice, LGTBQIA+ issues, immigration discrimination, sexism, the wealth gap, the global pandemic, international tensions, or a plethora of other massive issues that presently plague the United States. However, it is something that contributes to all of these issues and hinders us from finding solutions for them. I’m talking about the colossal socio-political divide we are facing today that is progressively getting bigger by the day. It affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.
People have radically different opinions about every issue, and it appears that we enjoy being contrarians to one another-- except to those who share the exact same view as you on a variety of topics. This stems from an oversimplifying mentality in psychology regarded as the “Us versus Them” theory. In this theory, also known as the Social Identity theory developed by psychologists John Turner and Henri Tajfel in the 1970’s, we create two social groups in our mind. The first group being with people who share similar values and opinions to your own; the one that you identify with. The second being the social group that has different values and opinions to your own; the one you don’t identify with. If you consider the second group to be foreign and unknown your mind may instinctively be apprehensive towards them. Thus, creating the “Us versus Them” dichotomy. Potentially, this mentality was initially created as a survival technique, and in modern day can be found in a variety of situations including those that are less sinister like in supporting a specific sports team over another. However, in other situations there are detrimental and far-reaching issues for maintaining this mentality.
Please note that this is a simplified breakdown of the Social Identity theory and if you would like more fleshed-out information there are countless resources that could be found through a google search on the theory. I encourage you to explore them if interested.
It seems today that if someone has a different opinion than one’s own then one has a jump reaction to vilify this person in some way. Even I, someone who considers themselves to be a mostly open-minded person, have been noticing that I sometimes have this jump reaction. Over the past few years, I have begun to be pretty stubborn when it comes to my opinions on social and political issues. After realizing that this stubbornness was happening in me, I first wrote it off as getting an education and being more aware of said issues. In general, I am more conscientious of social issues. I have been noticing that if someone presents to me a different view of a topic than I initially agree with then I might become uncomfortable and draw conclusions about this person in my mind without them being able to explain themselves fully. To some extent it is good to be skeptical of opinions (even your own), but this goes beyond skepticism. We are creating real division between ourselves and others.
We can see this acute division overtly on the political spectrum. Democrats and Republicans are more likely to vote with their party more than it seems ever before. This isn’t just the people on Capitol Hill that are becoming what appears to be more fond of this method, but the everyday voter, as well. Voting with party over policy can get into some pretty dangerous territory. We can see these dangers over the past few years more prominently with not just minor policy changes. And if you think people are becoming more strongly aligned in more dramatic ways with one party over the other, you are observing the populace appropriately. It not only appears that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is becoming larger, it actually is.
Since the mid-1990s, the gap between the median Republican and the median Democrat has grown exponentially. More radical of a divide between these two groups began in 2011 and has continued into the present.* This divide is so immense that many believe that bipartisanship is increasingly becoming impossible.
You may be asking, “why did this increase in division occur?” One of the reasons I can deduce in what I am sure is a plethora of issues is that the way we consume media began to change in the mid-1990s with the advent of the Internet. Up until this point, the only real way for the general public to receive information about local and global news was through a few forms of media. There were just less options for information to be presented to the consumer.
The Internet and, more significantly, social media have skewed the way we all consume information. I know there are many people around my age who get a lot of their knowledge on current events through apps like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Governmental investigations have even shown other nation’s to have interfered with political information presented on Facebook, but we won’t go into that more here. Google contributes to this information crisis, as well. Depending on where you live, previous searches you have made, and other factors people are submitted to certain dropdown list searches that differ from what you or I may receive. To put it frankly, we are receiving different information from each other. And if we are receiving such vastly different information from one another, how can we possibly create a consensus on what the “real” truth is?
This may sound dramatic but I believe it is a fair statement to make: this divisional crisis could devolve into chaos on a global scale. We already see the dangers of people receiving certain information about members outside of their “us” group. There are mass shootings in which the active shooter claims their intentions were to hurt a certain group of people due to race, gender, and sexual identity. Clearly, this division has the ability to be dangerous and fatal.
There has to be something we can do to combat and reverse this division crisis. Here are some simple ideas I can think of:
When choosing a news source look into their credibility. If you aren’t familiar with the platform you are receiving information from, take the information it presents with a grain of salt. Find other sources and see if they present similar findings and conclusions on that topic. Finally, look for experts on the topic
Don’t just read or view sources that share the same opinions as you. Look into thoughts and ideas of the other side. As long as the information they are presenting is not harmful to anyone, it could be just as valuable to know as the information presented by a source with the same values and beliefs as your own. In short, try to consider different perspectives.
Learn about people and cultures that look nothing like your own. I guarantee you that you will find similarities with them, even if they may be small.
Above all else, meet new people. Just because they may be different to you doesn’t mean that they are scary. In fact, they are probably awesome once you get to know them. Meeting new people may actually make your life more full. I know it has for mine.
All of these suggestions above have one constant: be open-minded. People will surprise you (in a good way!). This “Us versus Them” mentality may have been good for us as a human race at one point in time, but it is doing real harm for our society now. It is up to all of us to try to reverse the damage that it has already caused. The only way we can do that is, you guessed it, together.
*Ghosh, I. (2019, September 25). Charts: America's Political Divide, 1994–2017. Retrieved October 05, 2020, from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charts-americas-political-divide-1994-2017/
Further resources:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charts-americas-political-divide-1994-2017/
