How Divide and Conquer Keep Winning...

...And what you can do to stop it

There has been a lot in the news lately about how much rich corporations make and how little they pay in taxes. The polls show that the majority favor closing those tax loopholes, and yet the elected officials just voted to keep those loopholes. How can this be? There are way more of us than there are of them! The key here is divide and conquer. While corporate lobbyists stay on target, we get bogged down in division over everything from class to what TV shows we watch. It is NPR listeners versus Monster Truck Rally attendees; working class ghetto culture versus suburban elitists; and Techno-pop versus Country.

There are a lot more of us than them, but we are also much more diverse—they use our diversity against us. Without a unifying set of values to make us cohesive, we turn into a thousand bickering subsets. And while we are kept busy being divided, the mega-rich conquer and run the world.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, I see many signs that things are shifting, and in this I find hope. There is much that we can all do to help move this shift forward. First, we have to become Aware. Without Awareness, nothing can change, because without Awareness, we don’t even know that a problem exists. So, let’s start with Awareness that divide and conquer is being effectively used.

The tools of divide and conquer:

Divided communication. Talk separately to people who have a shared concern (say, the environment). Start with the people who have the most power first, and use a mix of carefully selected events, facts, half-truths, and lies to show them how one or more others in the same group are actually working against them and their values. Keep the communications shrouded in secrecy, but not actually secret—you want others to know that you are talking, but not the details. It is important to keep everyone guessing and walking on eggshells.

Fear as a motivator. Make sure that you make it clear that people’s values are not just threatened, but are in immediate jeopardy. The more specific you can make the threat, the better. You also want to get people into a reactive mode—trigger their anxiety so you can keep them hunkered down and protecting their own job, project, title, etc.

Misdirection. Once misinformation seeds have been planted, keep people pointed away from you and towards the others in the group. You aren’t to blame, you just pointed out the potential disaster—so keep redirecting people to those you have pointed out as being to blame. Because no one is perfect, this works great—you can always find errors and mistakes that can serve as “evidence” of wrongdoing, unworthiness, or underhandedness.

Break trust. The scapegoating that arises out of misdirection and fingerpointing decreases communication and increases fear. No one knows who is talking to whom, or what about, so communications become even more fractured and perhaps stop altogether. Fear triggers a mass-attack of self-defensiveness, which also plays into the fractured or stopped communications; afterall, what I say might be used against me. When people act out of fear, they often say and do things that they don’t mean, and make mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise make. The more the fear increases, the worse this becomes, and out of these broken communications and actions, trust is broken. This is especially true for areas where trust never had a chance to develop in the first place.

End result: Division makes working together cohesively impossible and whatever the group’s concern had been (say, the environment) suffers set-backs at best and major defeats at worst.

Pretty depressing, huh?

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here is an alternative strategy—Unify and Grow:

Holistic communication. Holistic communication is clear, honest, and compassionate communication with self, and with others. There are lots of tools to help us here.

Starting with self communication, Byron Katy’s questions work is an excellent tool: “Is it true? Can I really know it is true?” It is difficult to get derailed by incomplete or inaccurate information when we ask these questions. We either have facts proving truth, or we don’t have the truth—and then we can choose to ask questions to get to the truth. For example, it is easy to make assumptions about someone’s actions. If a person answers the phone and then slams it down without answering us, we can assume that person is rude, angry, mean, etc. But, can we really know this is the truth? No. The only way to know the truth behind that action is to ask the person who answered the phone. It could be that their child just slammed their finger in the door and they had to run for help.

Katy has two final questions: “How does believing that it is true make me think, feel, or act? And, How would I think, feel or act if I did not believe that it is true?” Katy’s questions are deep and worthy tools for holistic communication. I would add these questions or areas of exploration when reviewing a specific action/event: What are the facts that you do know; in other words, what did you, yourself, see, hear, smell, taste, or feel? How do you feel about the action/event? What does that action/event mean to you? What do you want? What do you need?

Taking our insights to the next step, communication has to be unifying. This means that we must talk to the person or people involved directly. If there is a group involved in a particular event or issue, than the whole group needs to make an effort to get together and talk things through. This communication needs to be clear, honest, and compassionate.

Hope as a motivator. Communication with self and with others needs to be rooted in compassion. We non-verbally communicate trust, dislike, empathy, frustration, etc. when we are interacting with someone. If we assume the other person is acting out of greed or malice, then we will communicate this and our thinking will close down avenues of discussion. When we assume the other person is acting with good intensions, then we can listen with compassion and avenues of communication will be opened up. Starting with the assumption of good intentions is acting out of hope. It could be that our hope will not be fulfilled. It may be that the other person is, indeed, acting out of greed or malice. Listening with compassion enables us to live our values even with those who would hurt us (it could be argued that greedy, malicious people need our compassion even more), and avoids shutting down communication and fomenting negative feelings with those who otherwise would have worked with us.

Collective responsibility and problem solving. When everyone acknowledges and honors their responsibilities, including their responsibility for errors and mistakes, then we can all move forward together to effectively problem solve. This accepting of responsibility has to be realistic and balanced—we can only take responsibility for the things we have power over (either given or inherent). Please note: This stage cannot be reached without holistic communication. A lack of facts, assumptions, and strong feelings can all undermine or derail this process of owning up to responsibilities and problem solving.

Build trust. Holistic communication based on compassion; using hope as a motivator; and working together to identify responsibility and do problem solving all build trust. Trust is unifying, not divisive. It is also a lot of hard work, which is why division seems so much more effective—it is fast and easy, so it is ubiquitous. The Unify and Grow strategy is slower and harder, and it is also deeper and more resilient.

Every time you see symptoms of separate communication, fear, misdirection, and broken trust, you might want to ask yourself what is really going on. You might want to ask if holistic communication might be in order, if hope might be better applied, if collective responsibility and problem solving might be a better path to building trust and unity. You might want to ask who stands to gain if we fall apart? And, who stands to gain if we pull together? What might we be willing to risk for unity? Might we be willing to risk asking more questions? Might we be willing to risk assuming good intensions? Might we be willing to risk hoping for something better, and do the work needed to build trust?

I am not offering any quick fixes here. What I am offering is good, honest, hardwork, and the chance to grow a better future together.