I saw a Facebook post once (from Johnny Thomson, i think) saying that the most efficient way to unite opposing groups or societies is to give them a common ground to work with and a common enemy to fight against.
Here’s my answer to this logic.
I don’t think there’s a willing component in the equation for an enemy.
I think history reveals the common enemy is easier to employ than common ground. Fear sells…but not forever.
Athens and Sparta united for around 50 years to address the common enemy in Xerxes. Once that problem was solved it took less that 20 years for them to go back into civil war.
The most recent example was WWII and the US and USSR. We both tolerated each other as long as there were Nazi’s lurking in the weeds, but it didn’t take long after 1945 to go right back to the same animosity that existed in 1939.
Common ground seems to be a non-starter in that it requires dialogue and questioning identity.
Yes and when it comes to identity we’re back to a likely settled question as we’ve been discussing in another thread. People hate to not have certain things settled, particularly around questions of identity and/or anything involving not being right.
Just so.
And this is the ironic thing about the Bible. Ironic and very sad, not ironic and funny. Belief in its perfection, unity, historicity and moral worth can become so embedded in a believer’s psyche that they can’t tolerate ANY criticism of it.
So, people who could be rational and reasonable, moral and tolerant end up becoming irrational, unreasonable, immoral and intolerant. Because the Bible is all of the above.
This can be best seen on various YouTube videos where true believers sometimes show themselves to be monsters. By defending the dashing of infant’s head against walls, the enslavement of other human beings and the rape of virgins - because the Bible says so.
So, the promised regeneration of those who are born again of god into new creations can sometimes see them do the opposite - degenerate into misogynistic, violence-promoting bigots.
Thank you,
Walter.
I have come to the view that liberal Christianity is lipstick on a pig – the pig being Christo-fascism. In other words because the NT was written in an era that knew nothing of human / civil / equal rights, democracy, etc., it can only be authoritarian / patriarchal. Put another way – while the NT does in fact teach love, it also teaches to be a good slave or slave owner, for women to submit to men and keep silent in church, for all people to submit to “authority”, that government authority is of god, etc. Nor does it explicitly revise many of the morally repugnant pronouncements of the OT.
As such, it will always have an undergirding of support for humanity’s baser impulses, the kum-by-yah stuff being pretty frosting on a rotten cake. The net result is a lot of people demanding conformity and subservience, with love and light “for we, not for thee” if you’re an Outsider – and a lot of well meaning but hapless people who do not personally think that way but don’t stand against this, either.
As well meaning as people are who say that Christian Nationalism is based on erroneous interpretations of scripture, that “real” Christians are loving and not bigoted or hateful, I think that sort of cherry-picking is playing with fire and what we’re seeing right now in this country teaches us that we can’t afford their moldy old ideology.
You’re an atheist; you are already the enemy without having to do anything.
Why does it have to be a person or group, or human at all?
I mean bigotry, racism, and pernicious behaviour and beliefs might be classified as your enemy. I’d happily join in fighting prejudice, ignorance and bigotry.
Maybe our evolved tribal psyche can be used in a positive way?
Perhaps in the way that Natasha suggested? What would be needed is a common threat from outside that unites the disparate tribes of humanity in a common cause.
Two fairly recent movies point to different paths that such a common cause might push us along.
Independence Day : Resurgence posits humanity uniting against the common threat of alien invasion. As did the original movie in that franchise as did many other Earth invasion movies. They all owe something to George Pal’s 1953 original screenplay of War of the Worlds, where the same kind of plotline played out.
Don’t Look Up took a much more cynical stance. In that one, even when the Earth is threatened with a giant comet bearing down on it, humanity still acts stupidly, exploiting the gullibility of some for financial and political gain or turning a blind eye to the oncoming doom and denying that its real.
And the Covid crisis showed us, this second example, even though fictional, seems to be much closer to the truth. Here was an major global crisis that killed 7.1 million people, yet what happened? People still divided themselves along tribal lines. Remember the Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers versus the medical experts? The politicians who genuinely wanted to serve and protect the populace versus those who could only see their chance to make some personal gain out of the emergency?
Taking up Mordant’s point again and taking it even further… some people would rather be dead than be wrong. Even if that means putting others in harms way and dragging others down with them.
Walter.
Well we certainly have a common enemy to fight.
See Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Art of Being Right.
Excellent link, cynical1. 
Thanks for posting it.
Walter.