The Enemy Within: How Division Hijacks Humanity

Unity, not division, could be our greatest rebellion.

Key points

• Tech companies profit from our hatred—the attention economy literally monetizes our political division.

• Our stone age brains are drowning in digital complexity, triggering tribal instincts we can't control.

• To survive existential threats, we must expand our compassion, but we must overcome the enemy within first.

  
  

A Tale of Two Dinners

As a psychologist who's spent 25 years studying human behavior, I wasn't surprised when two brilliant comedians took opposing stances on a moral dilemma. Bill Maher recently shared a story about dining with Donald Trump, describing a surprisingly human encounter with a man who laughed, admitted defeat, and displayed humility. Maher's conclusion was measured: "I'll tell you what happened, and you can decide what it means."

Larry David's satirical New York Times op-ed, "My Dinner with Adolf," imagined a charming Hitler to warn against excusing dangerous behavior. Both comedians highlight a shared dilemma: How do we navigate divides without losing our values? When do we engage or set limits?

This tension between engagement and boundary-setting isn't just political—it shows up in families, friendships, workplaces, and yes, therapy rooms.

The Shared Suffering Beneath Our Division

Heated politics divide us, yet shared suffering unites us. In my practice, clients across the political spectrum express identical existential fears about our future. They wonder what kind of world their children will inherit, if there will be one at all. A conservative father and progressive mother may disagree on policy, but both share the same nightmares about tomorrow.

What's striking isn't their disagreements but their common suffering. Each side believes the "other side" is destroying America, yet both are caught in the same trap of fear and rage. I often think of that ancient wisdom: hatred is the poison we drink, hoping the other person will die.

The Merchants of Division

And make no mistake—something is profiting from this poison.

The attention economy—that vast digital nervous system capturing our eyeballs—thrives on conflict. The algorithms of attention promote extreme voices and inflammatory content. Our fear and hatred aren't just psychological states—they're now valuable commodities. When we demonize our neighbors, tech companies convert our division into dollars.

Our divisions have become tools in someone else's business model. We now spend about 30 percent of our waking life glued to smartphones when, for millions of years, we spent zero time on these devices. Meanwhile, the platforms reap billions. The attention economy isn't evil, it is soulless. It feeds off keeping Americans distracted, scared, angry, and divided.

Our digital world acts like an autoimmune disorder, with our defenses attacking the society they should protect.

The Evolutionary Roots of Our Current Crisis

This isn't just political disagreement. The roots are in our ancestral past—evolutionary mismatch. Our hunter-gatherer brains, evolved for small tribal groups, are drowning in a digital ocean of complexity. As Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson noted in 2012, "The real problem of humanity is that we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." We've inadvertently created a world that's making us all a little crazy.

Source: Mike Brooks & Peeyoos / Original Work

In my practice, I see the "Treadmill of Life" racing so fast, people neglect grounding, joyful, deep connections. My clients are overwhelmed with the worries of the world as the attention economy hooks them into endless doomscrolling. As our attention becomes hijacked, we lose sight of what matters most to our health and happiness, meeting our basic needs (sleep, exercise, time in nature) and, most of all, our in-person relationships. The attention economy profits at our expense as it lures us into a cycle of fear, tribalism, and mutual hatred. Perhaps we need to put an end to the attention economy before it puts an end to us.

The Moral Dilemma of Our Age

Are Larry and Bill right to disagree? Both are wrestling with the question millions of Americans feel in their bones: What is the right thing to do in a morally complicated, rapidly changing world? How then shall we live?

We're living in a time when even a dinner conversation can become an indictment of not only our values, but who we are. Larry David's concern about normalizing behavior that challenges democratic values is legitimate. At the same time, Bill Maher's curiosity about engaging across divides reflects a genuine yearning for understanding and change. Our challenge is formidable given that half of America views Donald Trump as the Savior, and the other half views him as the Antichrist.

But both comedians are deeply concerned about America's trajectory. They're allies asking different versions of the same question: How do we keep this house divided from imploding?

Existential Stakes in an Interconnected World

It's a question worth asking—because the stakes have never been higher. The threats we face are existential: nuclear war, climate collapse, future pandemics, struggling democracies, and now artificial intelligence. As mind-boggling as it sounds, within a handful of years, humanity may no longer be the most intelligent species on the planet. These challenges don't care whether we vote red or blue. Reality doesn't care about our ideas about it. And our shared reality is this: We cannot solve collective problems using divided approaches in an interconnected world.

That's why the deepest test of any president—and any person—is not whether they're "nice" over dinner or even whether they're always right. The real test: Do they bring us together, or tear us apart? Do they expand our circles of compassion, or shrink us to loving only our side of the house? Do they free the better angels of our nature, or summon the devils within?

The Wisdom of Unity

Jesus warned that a house divided against itself will not stand. So did Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers spoke of unity not as a feel-good afterthought, but as a precondition for democracy. John Adams called division "the greatest political evil under our Constitution." They understood this foundational truth: Our success and greatness as a nation are inextricably linked to the skillful balance of unity and freedom.

We've forgotten that "United" is America's first name. There is no "me" without "we." We say "we the people," but behave like enemies. We've traded mutual respect for mutual contempt.

Beyond Political Fiction

The reality is that both the left and the right are guilty of hypocrisy. The left wants everyone to be accepting of differences, but not if you don't accept their ideas about acceptance. The right loves freedom, except when you disagree with them on what freedom should look like. Both sides fail to reason that, from an evolutionary standpoint, politics are fiction. Our evolutionary heritage predates our political battles and culture wars by millions of years.

Trump is like a lightning rod for both our hopes and fears. But what if our greatest enemy is within—the fear inside, whispering to us that those other people are bad, foolish, and threaten our lives? Yet, both sides fear and hate one another in the same way. Ironically, this makes us alike and not different.

The Path Forward: Expanding Circles of Compassion

We don't have to agree on everything. But we must agree on this reality: United we stand. Divided we fall.

We are one nation. One house. And right now, we are the ones destroying it. We can only control our own state of consciousness and behavior. This means we must all look in the mirror and be the change we wish to see in the world. As Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh taught, we must be at peace to make peace. In a world designed to profit from our division, choosing to rebel for unity may be our most powerful act of resistance.

The real question isn't about dining with foes, but simpler: How do we stop seeing enemies in our neighbors? Our hatred for others frees our greatest adversary, the enemy within. But when we expand our compassion to include everyone, something magical happens: we have no enemies. When we achieve this, our house united will not fall.

References

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