Us vs. Them: Clearly they’re the problem

Something bothered me on Facebook this week. No surprise there, right?

One of my friends shared a post that gets recirculated every few years, but the gist is that a certain group of people (pro athletes, media personalities and Hollywood entertainers) isn’t important, nor are their voices, but another group of people (doctors, teachers, farmers, mechanics, plumbers and house painters) is vital to society. It equates the writer’s need for the latter group of people to render them more important than the former.

As someone whose primary income comes from teaching, I’m supposed to feel honored to be lumped in with the good guys. Clearly, those other guys are the problem, so I just need to keep confidently doing what I do as part of the in crowd. What’s the harm in demonizing a whole swath of people in contrast to other non-affiliated vocations?

This Us vs. Them mentality has bothered me for years, because it serves as a secret signal that unlocks our innermost cavemen bent on survival at all costs. Perhaps pitting my tribe against the other was important during our primitive past–when the other tribe’s survival meant certain death for me and vice-versa–but most of society has grown beyond that mindset as a need.

Why do we insist on clinging to “Us vs. Them” if it no longer serves us?

The peddling of fear

There’s a lot of money to be made in the peddling of fear. Should I be interested in gaining more power and keeping it (and should I be fine ignoring my moral core), I just need to make the people in my care afraid.

The 18th-century Irish statesman Edmund Burke once said, “No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

Second U.S. president John Adams said, “Fear is the foundation of most governments.”

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho once wrote “If you want to control someone, all you have to do is make them feel afraid.”

If global history is any indicator, all of these people are correct. And when we circulate unfounded conspiracy theories or rhetoric that pits Us against Them, we’re feeding into that fear for someone else’s gain.

Fearful people wield fear

Do you know what Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein have in common? Not only were they all ruthless dictators, but each of these men was physically abused during childhood.

Rather than process that abuse and determine that they never want anyone else to experience such pain, each dictator took the paralyzing fears of their childhood and weaponized them, inflicting equally-paralyzing trauma on their subjects.

They saw first-hand the power of fear mongering, and they used it to their own selfish gain. Unfortunately, this is far more common in leadership positions than it should be. Fearful people wield fear, and they do so at the detriment of those living under their power.

An alternative approach to Us vs. Them

What’s so wrong with “Us and Them?” Why is that such a difficult concept to grasp?

Someone else’s gain is not always my loss. The world is far too big for such dualistic thinking, and we as humans gain more power from collaborating than from demonizing. Once we realize that core fact, we can begin to free ourselves from the control of malicious rulers.

By finding humanity in the Other, we gain new allies that empower us to achieve more good. When we befriend the demonized, we reclaim our shared value in opposition to the “divide and conquer” approach of unfit leaders.

Wielding my own power

My goal in this post is not to equip the masses for some violent uprising. Rather, I’m much more interested in individuals reclaiming their own power over fears so that we can actualize our best selves moving forward.

Just because someone is in power doesn’t make that person the enemy, either. On the flip side of the coin, just because someone is in power doesn’t make that person flawless. Question the motives of those who wield power over you while lauding the accomplishments of leaders who achieve great things without stooping to that trend of fear mongering.

“We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice,” Martin Luther King Jr. once said. “Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.”

Not only should we seek to be led by the justice-loving, humanity-loving leaders, we should aspire to be those kinds of leaders ourselves. Just like the divide between Us and Them need not be there, the line between subject and leader need not be permanent. Some of you have tremendous leadership potential within you. Assuming that you can never live up to that potential is just more Us vs. Them thinking.

We each have a responsibility to society. That responsibility is not to sow divisiveness against the people groups not like us. That responsibility is not to wield fear as a leader with an iron fist. The responsibility we have as conscientious humans is to display compassion where others would give into fear.

In what ways can you display compassion today? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.