“Everyone is the hero of their own story,” but “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
In this time of radical social and political polarization, it seems to be the case that every Twitter persona and street protestor carries a self-appointed righteousness that they believe would fix the world’s problems, if only the “others” would get out of the way.
They believe this so fully in fact that they’ll kill over it–whether it’s Kyle Rittenhouse killing liberals in Kenosha, or Michael Reinoehl killing conservatives in Portland. While most don’t go this far, the sense of indignation, moral superiority, and hatred that drives such violence seems to dominate the behavior on both ends of the American political spectrum.
It’s become clear in our modern society that if you’re not in 100% agreement with any group, you are the enemy. By not conforming, you are labeled as the worst possible epithet that can be slung your way so as to declare you worthy of being killed, owned, destroyed, or attacked.
Question the left in any way shape or form, even if it’s just for clarification, and you’re labeled a Nazi fascist, making you “somehow” equivalent to those who put Jews, homosexuals and gypsies into ovens, gas chambers, and firing lines.
In the same manner, if you question the right at all, if you even suggest that perhaps some forms of racism, sexism, homophobia are still permeating our culture and laws–you’re now declared a communist snowflake: making you now somehow equivalent to the like of Stalin and Mao Zedon who are responsible for at least 35 million deaths.
When we think in such simple binary terms, it’s no doubt that we break the world into Good vs Evil, where our team are the saviours and any action we take is justified because we’re destroying Evil.
This was a tactic commonly used by the actual Nazi’s, where they consistently referred to jews as rats and parasites in order to dehumanize them and make it more palatable to kill them. And we are now doing the same thing, referring to those who disagree with us as the most heinous evil we can think of so we don’t have to consider their humanity, so we don’t need to extend any empathy toward them. In such a paradigm, our “so-called” liberal and christian ideals of tolerance can be ignored without feeling we are being hypocritical and acting without virtue.
Of course, the great irony here is that both sides are engaging in this type of behavior because they genuinely think it will make the world a better place.
They genuinely believe by angrily yelling at the “other”–by making people feel like stupid and evil losers who will end up on the wrong side of history–that the “others” will eventually see the error of their ways. They genuinely believe that this hostile approach will change the behaviors of the “other” for the better and sway them switching “sides.”
And that is the goal of course. You want your movement to grow in size and have more voices added to your cries for change, so that with your power in numbers you will ultimately be able to persuade culture and the government to change in ways that match your vision of a better future.
In all actuality, though, this approach is having the complete opposite effect. Not only does this aggressive form of activism push people away from your movement, but it increases radicalism of the very kind you’re trying to prevent. And increased radicalism worsens the world for everyone in the process.
And I have some neuroscience to prove it.
Science Of Backfiring Activism
In the human brain, there are two parts that very often work against one another. One is the amygdala, and the other is the frontal cortex. When one is more active, the other is usually inhibited or less active. You can think of it like a see-saw. For one side to go up, the other must go down.
Now the amygdala is one of the oldest parts of our brain, and as such it is deeply tied to a primal sense of survival. As the home of our “fight or flight” response, it activates most readily when we’re scared, stressed, or anxious. During states of activation, the amygdala makes us assume and prepare for the worse, and by doing so it makes us more aggressive and more selfish.
Working against the amygdala on the other side of the mental see-saw is the newest part of our brain, the frontal cortex. Amongst many other things, it’s largely responsible for acquiring new information, information processing, and decision making. It enables abstract thought, language, long term planning, and the organization of ideas. It’s also home to the most unique and rare neurons in the animal kingdom–the von economo neurons–which play a major role in empathy and openness towards others. And lastly for our purpose, it plays a major role in regulating emotions–for instance, it stops the amygdala from letting us get angry when it’s not necessary.
Now if you think about it, this see-saw dynamic makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. If you’re being threatened by a wild animal, you don’t need to keep your anger in check, you don’t need empathy, you don’t need to worry about language, and you certainly don’t need to worry about long term planning–if you die, there is no long term to plan for.
And so, when we feel threatened, stressed, or anxious, our brains shut down the unnecessary functions of our frontal cortex as a way to conserve brain energy so that we can focus purely on survival–on getting our muscles and movements exactly right so we can kill or get away from whatever is causing us to be concerned.
Unfortunately, this same dynamic is what is at play everyday for us as we navigate our socio political conflicts. Any social psychologist will let you know this dynamic is nearly as strong in social situations as it is against a wild animal. That’s because when we were evolving, being rejected by our peers meant being removed from the safety of the group, which was just as good a death sentence as going up against a panther.
And so, as we accuse each other of being Nazis and Communists, as we tell each other we want to destroy them, as we embrace this simple-minded roleplaying of good vs evil in the streets and online, all we’re doing is causing each other to constantly feel threatened, stressed, and anxious.
We are therefore forcing the other person’s amygdala to take over and for their frontal cortex to go offline.
To start with, this means we’re turning off those empathy neurons. But perhaps even more importantly: it means we’re turning off the part of the brain that acquires, processes, and makes sense of new and complex information.
In other words, we make the people we’re attacking biologically incapable of learning.
Unless, of course, the thing they’re learning is hatred or fear.
And that’s because when the frontal cortex shuts down and the amygdala gets more active, the connection between the amygdala and our hippocampus (where our memories are stored) strengthens. What our brain is doing is shutting down our ability to learn and recall anything that isn’t fear related–that isn’t relevant to survival in that moment.
It’s our brain’s way of saying two things: 1) check all past experiences of fear to see if there’s anything useful we can use in this moment, and 2) remember everything that is about to happen so that if we run into a situation like this in the future, we’ll know what to do.
And because the goal here is to go with what worked in the past, some of the strongest brain activity in these moments takes place in the habitual brain circuits. So when we’re stressed or threatened, our brain is telling us to return to the thoughts and behaviors that are the most comfortable and familiar to us. In other words, do what we know how to do best, using the ideas that have provided us safety and acceptance in the past.
Now let’s say that one more time, and really consider what we’re saying in relation to aggressive activism:
When we are threatened or stressed, we stop learning new information unless it scares us, and instead we become more selfish and aggressively focused on our most comfortable behaviors and ideas.
And so, by attacking each other in our socio-political conflicts, we’re actually making it almost biologically impossible for other people to be able to hear any of the information that we’re providing, and instead we’re making them more likely to aggressively defend and feel connected to the very thing we’re trying to convince them to stop believing.
How Your Activism Makes A Radical
Let’s look at an example.
Say you have a straight white man who was raised in a homogenous and conservative culture, who isn’t overtly racist, sexist, or homophobic, but who has mostly been around patriarchal white people who are straight. Now along comes a movement full of strong women, people of color, and people who are non-conforming in both gender and sexuality.
They virtually declare war on everything he knows.
Without knowing him personally, they declare him a Nazi fascist who is fragile, toxic, and privileged–they let him know he doesn’t deserve anything he’s ever earned in his life. They force him to stand as the representative of a group, not as an individual.
Now this man knows that some of the people who are verbally attacking him in this way are closely tied to people that are also physically attacking people in the streets.
In his mind, whether he wants it or not, the battle lines have already been drawn and he’s been forced to be an enemy.
Under this threat, his amygdala activates and his frontal cortex goes offline. He’s no longer biologically capable of learning why you might say Black Lives Matter instead of All Lives Matter, and he’s no longer able to learn or understand that when you say masculinity is toxic and that you want to smash the patriarchy you aren’t simply declaring hatred of men. This would require complex, frontal cortex learning, where he could abstractly play with ideas and metaphors.
All he can do now is what his biology allows when it’s under threat: retreat into the familiar, into those habitual brain circuits, into selfishness and a strong desire to fight or flee. And don’t forget, his brain is also now focused on storing in his memory everything about this current threat so in the future he will instinctively fear it more.
So the first thing that happens is his habitual brain circuits tell him what’s familiar and what he needs to fight for: in this case, it’s the safety of traditional, white, straight, patriarchal society.
At the same time, his fear centers begin wiring together with his memory, and now this experience is teaching him that labels like “black”, “queer”, and “female” represent a danger.
It may sound silly to think it’s this simple or that he can’t just resist this train of thought. But there’s little choice in the matter when under threat–evolution wired him this way in order to keep him alive in the wild and in social situations. So every time he’s attacked by this coalition of the left, his brain will strengthen these negative associations, continually seeing his familiar world as safe and in need of defending, and the labels of black, queer, and female as dangerous threats that he must fight against to survive.
Now, this is just an example from one side. But of course the exact same is true when the tables are turned.
When white straight men are attacking black queer females, for example, the hippocampus will be wired to associate white straight men as dangerous and a threat to survival.
Knowing this, it shouldn’t surprise us that we so often see these factions speak of the opposing “labels” as a threat to our civilization’s survival. The brain has literally been reshaped to see things this way, and in their minds they truly believe the “other” is attempting to destroy them.
Bringing It All Together
The point I’m trying to make here is that all we’re doing with these overly-simplistic and hateful attacks on one another is blocking people from the learning and empathy we need to make true progress, and instead causing them to become more radicalized.
Instead of creating a space where people can learn from our ideas, can see our humanity, and can potentially change their minds in a way that will allow them to lend their support to our cause, we are forcing people to retreat-into and more aggressively champion the very ideas we want to stop.
And as we push people further and further away from the middle ground of compromise, respect, and dialogue (where true progress happens), all we’re doing is creating more extremists who bring all of society down with their civil-war-like hostility towards one another.
But Imagine The Alternative.
If we could instead engage each other with respect and kindness, then we would instead be able to use our frontal cortices. We’d be able to use that part of our brain that allows us to learn from one another. And then we could use the organizational power of abstract thought and language to plan complex and long term strategies that will allow everyone to get what they want. We could access those empathy neurons. We could learn that, aside from a few contentious issues, all of us basically want the same thing–that there’s far more that unites us than that which divides us.
And if we unified in this way, we’d unlock a feedback loop that simultaneously calms the culture wars and solves the societal issues so many of us are concerned with.
Let’s look at how this could happen:
If our opposing factions can come together to engage in difficult yet respectful conversations, can actually hear and learn from one another, then either compromise can be found, or–at the very least–certain differences can be ignored for the sake of solving issues affecting both sides.
Then we can begin to come up with ideas or approaches that both sides can agree on. Now our numbers really do grow, our movement gains traction. Rather than a nation split into two, we become a unified mass. Now we can turn our attention away from fighting each other and instead bring the fight to our government–the people who are actually failing us and causing most of our problems.
With our increased numbers, we can make it so that politicians have to support the will of our new unified front to get elected–they’ll no longer be able to use the “us vs them” game to distract us while they partake in behaviors that undermine our well-being.
We can begin making true progress on serious issues like our failing education system, our failing healthcare system, and our failing infrastructure. We can start enacting policies that get to the root of why the average American (regardless of political stance) is struggling to afford rent, food, and medicine. We can explore why suicide, depression, and anxiety are at the highest levels they’ve ever been in American history, far surpassing the vast majority of developed countries.
As we address these issues and our quality of life subsequently increases, we’ll also see a reduction in fear, insecurity, and stress.
And as we already learned, that means less amygdala activation. Which means less hostility towards those who are different than us, less selfishness, more empathy.
In a world we create such a unified improvement of society, our newly safe brains no longer will be so inclined to perceive the “other” as a constant threat. We will literally become biologically less concerned with people who have different races than us, different sexes, different sexualities, different political parties, whatever.
And just as beneficial, we’ll also be less susceptible to bad actors who seek to weaponize our identities against one another for their ill-gotten gains–because without the threat of poverty, pain, and stress, we are less likely to retreat-into and become defensively attached to our labels.
What basic neuroscience therefore tells us is that our willingness to engage in difficult conversations with people who are different than us truly changes our society in a way that not only improves our lives and the lives of all those around us, but it actually removes the biological pressure that was causing a vast majority of the issues that divided us, like racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Now to be clear, none of this is to say that if you’re kind we’ll instantly create a utopia, or that problems wouldn’t exist if we would just be nice about it. There are real issues facing those on both sides of the political spectrum right now, and they are in dire need of being addressed.
But the road of hostility and righteousness seems scientifically guaranteed to stop us from ever actually addressing those issues.
And so the only alternative is a willingness to debate and disagree, to risk offending and being offended, and to provide a good faith interpretation of the other. To remember in our moments of anger and indignation that the majority of us, even when someone is doing something shitty, are doing so from a place that believes we’re genuinely fighting for a better world. Even in those moments when we feel like someone is saying something fucked up and hateful, we must remember that to respond to them in the same manner and to punish those like them for this one individual’s shortcomings is to empower your enemy and to undermine your ability to grow your movement.
So if you actually care about increasing the quality of life for yourself and those around you, then the only real option is to be kind and respectful to people who disagree with you.
Only by doing so can you allow them to use their frontal cortex, and only then will they even physically be capable of learning and remembering your ideas. And if your ideas are as good as you think they are, eventually they’ll find themselves convinced, they’ll see our shared humanity, and then together we can fix the systematic issues that are causing all of us to be shitty to one another in the first place.
And why not take this approach? Isn’t it worth trying respect rather than just watching the world burn?
