What happens when a president speaks aggressively against particular groups of people? You have a few options:
- Join in and light more matches!
- Or, as long as you are not part of that group, you can ignore it.
- Or, you can slow down, notice the gas leak, and get curious about this word from systems thinking (Bowen theory): togetherness.
When a crisis strikes a community, people come together – shoveling driveways after a winter storm or hauling away a neighbor’s debris in the aftermath of a tornado. It is natural for human beings to come together for the common good.
It is also natural for human beings to come together when emotions are ramped up and society becomes a gas-filled room. We gravitate toward like-minded people who do not challenge our thinking, but affirm our thinking. In this kind of togetherness, we seek the company of those who agree and make us feel comfortable and correct. This way, we can like and dislike the same sorts of people.
“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”1
Hate can be a product of the togetherness force. We experience this…
- within families (in our family, we hate when people add vegetables to tater tot hotdish),
- or among friends (we cannot stand the White Sox2),
- or at work (the competitor is our mortal enemy),
- or in church (God forbid our grandchildren ever convert to that other dreadful religion),
- or in society (if you do not belong to my political party, you are so very Wrong).
The togetherness force allows us to hate with others and not alone. It is more comfortable to surround ourselves with people who would not upset the hate vibe, but simply agree in order to keep peace in the group. And, you guessed it, the silent gas leak in American society persists when we rely on this sort of unhealthy togetherness.
When we rely on hate to bind a group together, we join in ramping up emotions when it might be better to slow down and think alone. The group becomes a clump of people instead of individual, thoughtful selves.
Instead of blindly agreeing with the group, you might do some research on your own. Get curious and ask yourself whether the White Socks are really so bad. (Jim Thome, after all.) You can look at the group you are part of (family, friend group, political party, church, etc.) and recognize that a healthy group not only allows for individual thinking, but even individual, respectful disagreement.
When you step back from the group and ask your self some questions, this is called the individuality force.
You are your own person with your own unique beliefs, principles, values and goals. But when you are fused to a group (a political party, family, church, or friend group, etc…) and emotions ramp up, it becomes extremely difficult (like a camel going through the eye of a needle) to manage your own thinking without letting your emotions take the lead.
- Consider a subject you feel particularly passionate about these days. How much of your thinking has been inherited from your family or borrowed from a group?
- Consider a group you are formally or informally part of. Does this group bring out your best self and encourage you to stick to your principles? Or is it so emotional to be part of this group that you aren’t quite sure just what you believe when you are with this group?
A group of any sort that encourages hate is suspect. Hate is antithetical to the Christian faith.
Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:20)
Photo by Morgan Caradec on Unsplash
Lisa Lewton 