I grew up thinking that an ideal world was one in which there is no famine, everyone has shelter, and everyone gets along. Maybe I watched too many Disney movies, but it never occurred to me that people would enjoy dissonance. At Columbia Business School, we had “clusters” – assigned groups of 60 – 70 people with whom we would take most of our first year classes. In addition to getting to know each other from our like schedules, there were competitions across clusters to foster the bond through a common enemy. Clusters were introduced (I was told) when the school had a lot of sabotaging in the 80s. The school thought that using this known psychological approach would help decrease the negative competition overall.
While trying to beat out someone in a physical battle or through academic wits definitely connects you with teammates, it also surfaces the evil that lives within each of us when there is a scarcity mentality (i.e. only one person can win). Anger and pride and can bond us just as easily as problem solving and resolve, yet it then does the exact opposite of what creating a common enemy sets out to achieve. Hannah Gadsby says it well in her standout performance in Nanette: “Anger, much like laughter, can connect a room full of strangers like nothing else, but anger, even if it’s connected to laughter, will not relieve tension… It is a toxic, infectious tension. And it knows no other purpose than to spread blind hatred.”
When I set out to write this article, I didn’t realize how much leveraging a common enemy is promoted: divorce counselors, office environments, and parent/children dynamics to name a few. I’m not a psychologist, but what I read points to this approach as a short-term solution: it relieves some of the initial tension but doesn’t ultimately address the issue that made people disagree or the underlying issues lurking within each person. For example, when two children are fighting and a parent yells at them, it makes them bond together to defeat the parent. The children don’t address or try to solve their differences.
The longer term, more effective approach to uniting people is known as a superordinate goal – a goal that rises above and unites people through some ultimate goal, like world peace. This can only happen though if this is something we all truly want, which I’m starting to question. Our political situation in the US has become so divisive that people are not always rational, only siding with people because that person is AGAINST someone else. The “Us vs. Them” environment promoted throughout our culture breeds this idea that you have to take a side rather than trying to rise above a situation for some ultimate good.
But it’s never too late – luckily each day presents us with the opportunity to change and turn down a different road. We can stop focusing on banding together to fight against someone and instead fight together for something that benefits us all. How do we find this superordinate goal in an environment that seems so divided? As Ina Garten’s cookbook says, we go back to basics. We respect our commonalities as humans who all were created outside of ourselves. We dig deep within ourselves and bond over the rights we find each human desires. We… love.
Leslie Delery 