Society feels more divided now more than ever. Overcoming division that gets more serious every single day requires understanding the root causes and taking deliberate steps. Join Bill Courtright and Eddie Reece as they explore the psychological and societal factors that put people into extremes and the risks we could face if it continues unchecked. They discuss how media influences us to revert to our primal nature of tribalism, pushing us to react without thinking logically and simply rely on emotions in times of perceived threat. Tune in to find out what it takes to foster unity today, even when finding common ground seems increasingly difficult.
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Overcoming Division: Finding Common Ground In A Divided World
Introduction To The Couch Trip And Today’s Topic
Welcome back to this episode of The Couch Trip. I am Bill Courtright with our host, Eddie Reece. We will be talking all things mental health, counseling, and therapy with one of the best and brightest that I know on the planet. Appreciate your time. If you find this content valuable, please don’t keep us a secret. Make sure that you subscribe, hit the notifications icon, and we’ll let you know every time we have an episode to view or consume. Thank you very much. This episode is one that I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.
It is relevant. It is timely. At times, maybe even a little disturbing, but hopefully, it will be enlightening after we get to hear the knowledge, experience, and wisdom from one Mr. Eddie Reece. This topic, ladies and gentlemen, is division, specifically the divide that exists in our nation. We’re going to get into this right away. My first question for Mr. Reece, my friend Eddie, is as follows. There is a famous Lincoln quote, a house divided against itself cannot stand. What does that mean?
I think you can just take the literal meaning of it. If you’re infighting, and I would think, because I’m a stickler about, like you, definitions, what is divided? Because what family isn’t divided? You can disagree. You can have very differing views. I think in Lincoln’s quote, divided means to the point to where I have no interest in hearing anything you have to say. You are the enemy. I think that’s when you get to that point that you don’t want any information that you’re going to disagree with, and you’re going to fight at every opportunity about it. At that point, that’s when it’s not going to stand.
What is it exactly that divides us?
Fear. Again, we’ll go back to what we talked about in another episode about anxiety. Anxiety, I talk about as a threat. You feel threatened, and when you feel threatened enough, your brain, your nervous system, narrows everything down to four choices, fight, flight, block, or freeze. In order to get just those four choices, it has to, in a way, shut your frontal lobe down to where you can’t think logically or rationally. You’re not going to listen to another point of view. This has become a matter of life and death. That’s why we react with the reactions that we have. We’re divided because we feel threatened. The more threatened someone feels, the further to an extreme they’re going to go.
If you’re down to one of these four choices, I have to fight for my country or I have to move to another country, fight or flight, at that point, you’re going to be divided. At the heart of all divisions like that is a sense of threat. I believe what the other, and you’re going to split it always into an other, the other side, the enemy, I believe what they’re doing, what they believe, the way they want to do things is going to threaten my existence. That can be described as my country. They’re going to take my country away. They want this kind of a country. They want to destroy this. They want to create this. They want us to all live this way. I’m going to see that as a threat to my existence of how I want to live in my country.
I think you bring up the key word right there, which is that threat, in my opinion, that perception of taking something, whether it’s my peace, my freedom, my stability, my understanding, my perception of what it is. I think I definitely feel like people, specifically those that are averse to change or cooperation or collaboration, tend to glom onto what they believe they know.
I think therein lies some issue. What do you think is going on? As we record this, this is January 2023. In your opinion, why are we so divided? What’s going on that makes that threat, that perception of difference, that inability to collaborate, cooperate, or listen to an opposing view? What’s going on that is perpetuating this division?
Impact Of Media On Fear And Division
Media fuels the fear. Before social media, before the internet, if you want to go back to the ancient times of one telephone in a household with a short cord, we didn’t have enough information coming in that was fear-based. Eric Sevareid, a journalist from a while back, had a quote, and I’ve got it somewhere, so I don’t know if I can say it exactly as he said it, but the product of this nation, I would say the product of our culture, is anxiety. If I can produce enough anxiety in somebody, I can get them to buy what I want them to buy, because I’m going to offer the solution to that anxiety right on top of the anxiety. There wasn’t the outlet to sell so much anxiety like there is now, and there wasn’t the outlet for people, just run-of-the-mill people, to get the word out.
The word, the information, the news came from three networks on TV, and that’s all there was. Before that, they came from your local newspapers. The people that were on the extremes lived word of mouth, and so there weren’t as many of them until someone, some group, came along that could talk up enough fear to get the masses to take the torches out and to run out into the street and go and attack somebody, to lynch somebody, to go and assassinate somebody. It’s always been here. This is nothing new. This is human behavior. This is animal behavior. We’re all animals. It’s just a matter of it being amplified in a way that it’s never been amplified.
We can definitely agree that the consumerization or commercialization of information in major media outlets certainly contributes to the if it bleeds, it leads type phenomenon, or getting people back to the screens and getting people back to the applications on their phones, their social channels, or wherever they are. We could wax poetic for hours about the algorithmic detail that actually perpetuates this behavior. Maybe that’s a subject for another episode, but the fact of the matter is, it’s a business. These media outlets, they want to elicit a response, the more emotional, the better. I’m sure you can speak to what’s with the psychosis behind that, the chemicals that are being produced and running through our brains and bodies when we get excited.
Most media outlets only want to elicit a response from their audience. The more emotional, the better.
I think that’s all fairly fascinating, but it really, in my mind, begs another question, which is, there seems to be a segmentation, at least on the media side. There seems to be somewhat of a tribal type of, I won’t even use the word community because that’s too nice a word, but there’s definitely this tribalism going on, this groupthink, this almost gang mentality, and it seems to be prevalent. It’s something that gives me anxiety, Eddie. I can’t stand it. Can you speak to what is going on where people are attracted to what they think or what they expect, or maybe the search for information that validates a previous opinion, which causes that groupthink or that tribal mentality? What the heck’s going on there?
To the point where you started with this, you take the consumerism and the desire to sell a product. Radio and TV have always lived by that. They want to sell a product. The product that they sold in the beginning of TV, I don’t know that much about radio in the beginning, but I’m sure it was pretty much the same from what I’ve seen and heard, is they want to sell you soap. That’s how they got people to support the TV station. That’s how the TV station made money. That hasn’t changed. What is different is there were enough new outlets coming up. Think of UHF TV stations. There are more than three networks, and they learned they could sell, they could put on a half-hour or hour-long infomercial and make way more money than producing a TV show. That’s what they did.
Consumerism, Anxiety, And The Rise Of Media Outlets
People went and bought Pocket Fisherman. You could follow, just step by step, how someone figured out a new way to create anxiety and sell a product. As each one of these things showed up, you branch off into something that’s slightly off of Main Street and then slightly further off Main Street until you have enough outlets that there are enough different people who have always been that far off Main Street who said, “I can actually sell this.” Because it’s always sold to a small number, and if what you’re selling is fear, that’s going to sell very quickly.
It’s evident. It’s true. I guess there’s the phenomenon of safety in numbers, and people just want to be around people that they feel they’re like, or like them.
Remember, fight, flight, flock, or freeze. I feel threatened. I’m going to flock. I’m going to get with the other part of your question. I’m going to find a tribe so that I can feel safer, and if that tribe feels threatened enough, they will eventually move to fight. You have gang members, you have the militia people, you have all these different factions of people who are scared of their particular thing. They feel threatened by that, and they have their way of handling that. They may feel threatened enough to launch something legally and go through the court systems to fight the threat and get rid of it, or they may feel threatened enough and think in such a way that their tribe goes and buys guns and piles up the guns and ammunition.
Let’s go there for a second.
What I’m saying is, this tribe is going to use the court system. This tribe is going to use guns. They’re exactly the same. I have to do something. I have to reduce the threat in my nervous system. This is how I’m going to choose to do it.
This is important. I want to expand a little bit on this in maybe a slightly different context, which is, you’re speaking a little bit to consequence. You’re speaking a little bit to reason or possibility. But my next question is, if we continue along these paths, if we continue down this road, what risks are we exposing ourselves to? What risks do we face if unaddressed?
Parallels Between Animal Behavior And Human Division
Death. I saw a documentary that was talking about the historical context of what’s going on politically. It’s all these historians, and they’re talking about what’s happening as pretty much the same as what happened under Hitler, under Mussolini, under Attila the Hun. They can go all the way back to human history and say the same thing. And then this one historian came on and said, I go back to the chimpanzees. As soon as he said that, I went, Bingo. Here we go. He said, “Remember Jane Goodall? Remember she lived with the family of chimps and the family was all very cooperative and they all took care of each other.” He said, “That’s what we saw. What we didn’t see is quite a while after she left that family, that family group did what every family group has always done. It got too big. It wasn’t going to be able to work with one alpha.” It’s not that the chimps had this figured out.
This is basic animal behavior. What happens instead is an alpha wannabe comes up and dethrones the alpha, and he’s the alpha of the whole group. What happens is an alpha wannabe comes up and starts turning toward the other alpha wannabes, slapping them around, mistreating them, and getting them to do what he wants them to do, to look at him as an alpha. At the same time, he starts to go and sort of pick at the alpha. Once he has his minions in line, he goes and attacks the alpha. They follow. They kill and eat the alpha. He doesn’t become the alpha of the group because the alpha had all of these people outside of his minions and the followers of the minions. They turn around and do the same thing down the line. It splits into two groups. They are a house divided, and it won’t stand. Two alphas come up, and the groups are at eternal war.
It’s fascinating.
We’re headed there, Billy. That’s what scares me.
We might be there.
We are, in that there’s been enough violence in our history, and that violence is ramping up. Not that there’s an overall more violent society. Overall, we are the most peaceful society in human history. I think we will continue to be and grow in that direction, but the extremes who feel the most threatened are going to choose fight over flock with the larger herd, not with a tribe. Imagine a Philadelphia Eagles fan and a New York Giants fan being great buddies and loving to go to the game together. That’s what has to happen.
They still yell and scream for their team as vehemently as they can, but they slap each other on the back after the game and go, “That was a great game. Too bad you lost, loser. That’s because you cheated,” and they can do that, and they’re best buds. That’s what has to happen, the way that I think it was Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan had a drink at 5:00 every day. That was quite a session. That doesn’t happen anymore.
We’re aging ourselves, both with the corded telephone analogy and Tip and Ronnie. In my opinion, that was a golden age of political theater. For those that don’t know, Ronald Reagan, who would be called a rhino likely, was a Republican president who supplanted Jimmy Carter. Tip O’Neill was the Democratic Speaker of the House. They enjoyed each other. I think if Tip was honest with himself, he would tell you that he had a bromance with Ronald Reagan. He liked Ronald Reagan. He liked who he was.
I think a lot of men at that time liked who Ronald Reagan was, the entertainer, the performer, the handsome man, debonair, classy, yet stern, strong, and assertive in a way that he was successful in getting things done. I don’t think we’ll ever see a day where people will cross the aisle socially at 5:00, over a glass of wine, beer, scotch, or whatever. Why would it be great?
It’s going to take something that is truly unprecedented to happen because, again, this is what scares me, we are following the path of animal behavior. The family group is way too large. We’ve factioned off over history. We’re doing that in a way, not only in this country but in a lot of other countries, where the end result is going to be violence. It’s going to be incredibly destructive. The scariest thing, I’ll preface this by saying, as a therapist, my goal is to help people live in reality as best I can, is that good mental and emotional health is reality at all costs. I think the reality of the situation that makes this different from every other time this has happened in history is the fact that people in charge of a tribe have nuclear weapons, and that’s the difference.
I’m an optimist. I think you know that. I’m hopeful, and I’m selfish. I want to go to our final question, which is, from a place of self-interest, admittedly, what can we do about this?
Importance Of Finding Common Ground
What we have to do is push ourselves. If we’re out here, figure out where you are. If you are really fired up about, say, the divide in politics to the point where you see the other as an enemy, they need to be off the face of the earth, or they need to all be voted out, that’s really the same sort of thing. That’s an indication that you’ve got to do some self-exploration and then get some help to be able to sit down with the other side and find enough common ground. You don’t have to agree on anything. You don’t have to change your mind about any of your stances. But go find enough common ground to help turn the other into a human being, which you are. To go out and wish for the destruction of the other is to wish for your own destruction, because that’s the only place it can lead to.
Whether that destruction be a physical destruction or a political, legal destruction, it’s the same thing. We’re going to push the extremes further out, and we’re going to push more and more people toward those extremes. It takes the people on the very edges of it, along with the people along the way who are just far enough over, to not say to the extremes, “This has to stop. I’m going to do it differently.”
It’s my belief, and I think you’d agree, that as individuals, as a nation, as a people, we’re far more alike than we are different. We have so many more common goals and so many more common aspirations. We can talk about Maslow next episode, but when you look at really what we’re looking for as people, as men and as women, whether you’re a protector, provider, collaborator, or enabler, I think we all want some level of peace. You made me think of something I say to my wife, which is, I make the conscious decision many times to be happy rather than right.
Being right is not always important to me because, out of respect and appreciation for the sanctity of marriage in my house, if mom isn’t happy, nobody is happy. I would very much like to concede where I can to protect that peace in my house because she is incredibly important. I would defer to her in a lot of things as it relates to the important parts of raising our children and keeping our home. Some of the things that we disagree with just aren’t that important.
I would tweak that a little bit by saying they are important. They’re actually vital, the things that we disagree on in certain circumstances, but we can’t let the disagreement be a fight. To your point about being right, there’s an old story of the newbie counselor sitting in with the expert, the older mentor, during a counseling session with a couple, and it’s their first session. The therapist starts out with, “Tell me your side of the story,” and then, “Tell me your side of the story.” When they’re both finished, he looks to one of the people and says, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Then he looks to the other one and says, “And you, you’re absolutely right.” The newbie goes, “But you just told them they’re both right.” He goes, “And you, you’re absolutely right.”
Find enough common ground. You do not have to always agree on everything or change your mind about important matters.
Message received.
When we can understand and implement that, we’ll be okay. A lot of people, and it’s going to take, really, I think, what it takes is for the people closer in to get motivated enough, which means they’re going to have to feel threatened enough to actually do something. I think if you actually told people in a way to get an accurate count, it really is a bell-shaped curve. The people on the extremes are the very small percentage of people. The people in the middle are the big bump in the middle. There are more people who go, “This is all crap. I’m not listening to that. I’m not participating in that,” because those people have jobs.
When everyone can find ways to achieve consensus about today’s biggest topics, we will be fine as a society.
They have to go to work. They have to raise their children. They have to try to learn to get along in the world and better themselves. They don’t have time for this madness. It’s those people who are going to have to somehow, I think in this way, turn over here and figure out a way to say, “I’m not doing that. I’m going to take a path to where I want to hear, listen, and work out something for all of us that will work.”
Eddie, thank you. What I heard you say, and what I’ll end with, is, we as a nation, we as a people, certainly are divided, but we also have a decision or a choice, which is, do we choose to participate?
Moving Toward Consensus Over Compromise
That’s it. Participate in a way that brings consensus, not compromise. We can talk about that in another episode. The difference, I tell my couples, is, let’s not work out a compromise here. That won’t work. I don’t know a compromise, if you’re really divided, that would make both of you happy. But a consensus says, “That’s better than if I had got my way.” When both people can get there, and there are ways to get there on any one of these subjects, I guarantee there are, then we’re going to be fine. But this stuff on the extremes has got to somehow come to an end. It will, if we survive as a species. I really think it’s that important.
Closing Thoughts
I agree. Another thing that has to come to an end is our episode this week. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Eddie and I thoroughly enjoy sharing whatever information, inspiration, or influence we can in and around the subject of mental health, the world we live in, how we cope, how we react, and how we share. I think this episode really double-underlined a lot of really important things for us to consider and hopefully grow in learning. Again, if you found this content valuable, please don’t keep us a secret. Share with us your comments.
If you have any questions, maybe we addressed something that struck a nerve and you’d like us to go in-depth in a future episode, please let us know that in the comments. Please like, please subscribe to our channel, and click the bell notification so you know exactly when we publish a new episode. I’m Bill Courtright, on behalf of my friend, Eddie Reece. This has been another episode of The Couch Trip. We look so forward to sharing with you again soon. Take care.
Thanks.
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