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Us Vs Them Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about Us Vs Them.

Us Vs Them Quotes

“For people who feel disrespected and unseen, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. Politics seems to offer a comprehensible moral landscape. We, the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness. Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to be liberal or conservative, you just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible. Over the past decade, everything has become politicized. Churches, universities, sports, food selection, movie awards shows, late-night comedy— they have all turned into political arenas. Except this was not politics as it is normally understood. Healthy societies produce the politics of distribution. How should the resources of the society be allocated? Unhappy societies produce the politics of recognition. Political movements these days are fueled largely by resentment, by a person or a group’s feelings that society does not respect or recognize them. The goal of political and media personalities is to produce episodes in which their side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to formulate domestic policies or to address this or that social ill; he is trying to affirm his identity, to gain status and visibility, to find a way to admire himself. But, of course, the politics of recognition doesn’t actually give you community and connection. People join partisan tribes, but they are not in fact meeting together, serving one another, befriending one another. Politics doesn’t make you a better person; it’s about outer agitation, not inner formation. Politics doesn’t humanize. If you attempt to assuage your sadness, loneliness, or anomie through politics, it will do nothing more than land you in a world marked by a sadistic striving for domination. You may try to escape a world of isolation and moral meaninglessness, only to find yourself in the pulverizing destructiveness of the culture wars.”

PoliticsEmotionMoralityTherapyBelongingResentmentPartisanshipPartisan PoliticsUs Vs Them
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“Kahan devised a theory he calls “identity-protective cognition,” suggesting that when forced to choose between factual truth and group identity, most people choose the latter. “Individuals,” he concluded, “subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values.” The problem wasn’t that people are dumb, irrational, or even superficial, as I’d formerly assumed. We’ve simply evolved—as a species—in a different way than I’d imagined. “Once group loyalties are engaged,” Haidt says, “you can’t change people’s mind by refuting their arguments.”

Public SpeakingGroup DynamicsUs Vs Them
Book:I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection
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“It is critical to recognize that we live in an increasingly complex world - biologically, socially, politically, technologically, you name it - that holds many inherent contradictions. In the middle of this complex world are we humans, who have a natural tendency to seek coherence in what we see, feel, think, and do. When we experience conflict, this tendency intensifies. Conflict is essentially a contradiction, an incompatibility, oppositely directed forces, and a difference that triggers tension. When we encounter conflict, within the field of forces that constitute it, the natural human tendency is to reduce that tension by seeking coherence through simplification. Research shows that this tendency toward simplification becomes even more intensified when we are under stress, threat, time constraints, fatigue, and various other conditions all absolutely typical of conflict. So what is the big idea? It is NOT that coherence is bad and complexity is good. Coherence seeking is simply a necessary and functional process that helps us interpret and respond to our world efficiently and (hopefully) effectively. And complexity in extremes is a nightmare - think of Mogadishu, Somalia, in the 1990s or the financial crisis of 2009 or Times Square during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. On the other hand, too much coherence can be just as pathological: for example, the collapse of the nuances and contradictions inherent in any conflict situation into simple 'us versus them' terms, or a deep commitment to a rigid understanding of conflicts based on past sentiments and obsolete information. Either extreme - overwhelming complexity or oversimplified coherence - is problematic. But in difficult, long-term conflicts, the tide pulls fiercely toward simplification of complex realities. This is what we must content with.”

ComplexityCoherenceCognitive DissonanceOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“Human beings are driven toward consistency and coherence in their perception, thinking, feeling, behavior, and social relationships. This is natural and functional. Conflict intensifies this drive, which can become dysfunctional during prolonged conflicts. However, developing more complex patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, and social organizing can mitigate this, resulting in more constructive responses to conflict.”

ConflictComplexityTribalismCoherenceOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“In Jung’s view, “the mass State”—his term for government and its structures—has “no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.” Jung asserts that when we come to perceive “the other” as someone to be feared and shunned, we risk the inner cohesion of our society, allowing our personal relationships to become undermined by a creeping mistrust. By walling ourselves off from a perceived other, we “flatter the primitive tendency in us to shut our eyes to evil and drive it over some frontier or other, like the Old Testament scapegoat, which was supposed to carry the evil into the wilderness.”

GovernmentRelationshipsDistrustMistrustStateJungCarl JungUs Vs Them
Book:The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border
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“Of course, our natural impulse in these [intractable conflict] situations is to fight or flee. To lash out, blame, attack, or challenge someone, or otherwise try to get out and avoid the situation altogether. These responses make perfect sense in the short term, but likely will have little effect on the 5 percent [of conflicts that are intractable]. In fact, they may make matters worse in the long term. So if escaping or resolving this conflict is your goal (and we do not assume this is always the case), we suggest a different approach. And it begins with complicating your life.”

ComplexityEngagementAvoidanceConflict ResolutionPolarizationConflict ManagementOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictSocial Conflicts
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“Recall that the collapse of complexity that accompanies 5 percent [i.e. intractable] conflicts happens along many dimensions: - A very complication situation becomes very simple. - A focus on concrete details in the conflict shifts to matters of general abstract principle. - Concerns over obtaining accurate information regarding substantive issues transform into concerns over defending one's identity, ideology, and values. - The out-group, which was seen as made up of many different types of individuals, now are all alike. - The in-group, which was seen as made up of many different types of individuals, now are all similar. - Whereas I once held many contradictions within myself in terms of what I valued, thought, and did; now I am always consistent in this conflict. - Whereas I used to feel different things about this conflict - good, bad, and ambivalent; now I feel only an overwhelming sense of enmity and hate. - I've shifted from long-term thinking and planning toward short-term reactions and concerns. - Where I once had many action options available to me, I now have one: attack. This is the bad news about the 5 percent, but it's also the good news. The collapse of complexity occurs on so many levels, all leading to a similar state of 'us versus them' thinking, that reintroducing a sense of complexity and agency can also be achieved in a wide variety of ways. There are therefore many places to find points of leverage to rupture the certainty and oversimplification that rules in these situations. The question is how to find them.”

PerspectiveConflictComplexityTribalismFramingOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable ConflictConfliction Resolution
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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“See the system. When you find yourself stuck in an oversimplified polarized conflict, a useful first step is to try to become more aware of the system as a whole: to provide more context to your understanding of the terrain in which the stakeholders are embedded, whether they are disputants, mediators, negotiators, lawyers, or other third parties. This can help you to see the forest and the trees; it is a critical step toward regaining some sense of accuracy, agency, possibility, and control in the situation.”

PeacePerspectiveComplexityConflict ResolutionConflictsFramingPolarizationOversimplificationUs Vs ThemIntractable Conflict
Book:The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
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