Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together | Hacker News Reader

Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

scientificamerican.com

77 pointsdraenei32 comments

I see this pattern a lot in history. Things are bad until something worse comes along.

There's some quote about each country needing a reasonably strong enemy. Without one, the country starts trying to find enemies and conflict within.

Same thing might be happening in these mediations. By adding a bigger "enemy", the two parties probably quickly back down from trying to defend against to enemies and compromise with each other.

It's a sad state of human nature but apparently works.

There's supposed to be some sort of Arabic proverb that's something along the lines of "Me against my brothers, me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my brother and my cousins against the world".

It feels like a lot of attempted global social policy of the past 50 or so years has been trying to create a stronger consciousness of "humanity" as a thing, with our new enemies being abstract issues like poverty, hunger, climate change, drugs, inequality, etc. The "War on [...]" branding is part of that. Doesn't seem like it really gets the blood going as much. We'll probably have to have conquering aliens to fight against before that happens.

Agreed. I think Ronald Reagan tried to evoke something like that during the cold war asking the lines of: imagine how well we'd get along if aliens discovered us

You see this in political parties too. When one fights hard enough to take power, infighting usually divides it and weakens it enough for the next party to take power

I wish people felt the same about going to space as I do. I think that if we were more knowledge focused as a species that we'd be racing to the stars which would mean an insanely different mentality than the 'tow the line' kind of thing I think we have nowadays.

I would very much like us to go to space.

Im a huge fan of learning about space, but sending human bodies seems impractical outside the novelty.

Everything is unfathomably far away.

There are lots of obstacles, near light speed travel is a necessity and we are nowhere near this ability, or that ability with a human undergoing the acceleration to light speed.

EDIT: So I suppose I'm suggesting putting our resources toward those beneficial causes on earth is better use.

The greatest enemy of us all is the Universe itself. It's the thing that is trying to kill each one of us individually, and all of us together, and to destroy everything we ever built or cared about, and then even tear apart the very atoms.

I agree. I've noticed that too. That's why I sometimes joke, that we could really use the threat of impending alien invasion right about now - even if completely fabricated. This feels like the only way for the world to get its shit together.

(And on the smaller scale, I think that the perceived decay and ennui in western countries stems from the fact that there's no unifying goal for the nation; everyone just fends for themselves.)

read "rally Americans against Russians[Democrats]/China[Republicans]"

Happened in South Africa. Opposition parties were all united against apparently errant president Jacob Zuma of the ruling ANC.

His fall removed the common enemy, and the discourse devolved to identity/race/class politics as the country polarises around the "land issue."[0] Non-white South Africans previously united around the common desire to liberate themselves from apartheid. With that enemy removed, society finds itself fracturing as the cracks in a democratic rainbow nation are strained.

Obama gave a great speech where he touched on what it means to be a democrat (among other things) at the Nelson Mandela Centenary Lecture.[1] His analysis of the current state of affairs was sufficiently general that it applied both in the South African and Global contexts. Definitely a sober note in the political narrative after the ousting of the former pres.

[0] https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-anc-will-su...

[1] https://youtu.be/6cWYiJKCWdI?t=2h14m56s

> Same thing might be happening in these mediations. By adding a bigger "enemy", the two parties probably quickly back down from trying to defend against to enemies and compromise with each other.

> It's a sad state of human nature but apparently works.

I don't think that's sad at all. In fact, it's brilliant that function is built in to us.

When aliens attack, do you really want the world powers to be wasting time with their chess game they've been playing since WWII? If aliens did attack, 99% of that nonsense would be put on hold overnight. Yeah, you'll probably still get some small groups who aren't going to play by those rules, but on the grand scheme of things, the human race still manages to make the whole group a priority even if it's out of convenience.

However, I don't think your assessment that the mediator is made an enemy is correct. In fact, it's the exact opposite. If the mediator was an enemy, the path of least resistance is to ignore the mediator and for both negotiators to continue to rationalize and cement their positions. But if the mediator isn't an enemy, but simply a disappointed helper, it would follow that the negotiators are more likely to resolve their differences in order to correct the group imbalance, which is a natural tendency.

I think some of us fantasize about cooperation and kindness as the tools that accelerate growth and bring us together.

However, it appears as in this study that conflict and competition are far better drivers.

I am almost not sure that the polarization in the US would be put on hold overnight

On the same note, sometimes when I introduce two friends who don't know each other, I get the conversation rolling by (not overtly) getting them both to poke fun at me.

You have any lines or ideas you use to do that?

Probably not useful specific ones, as they're mostly about my own idiosyncracies. But if you can find a natural way to introduce some foible you have into the conversation, especially if it's something they've joked about before, that's a good start.

For example if you're perpetually late to things you could say "...as you both know, punctuality is important to me." And that gives them something to swoop in on.

I think a related phenomenon plays a significant role in the current American political divide. Americans whose self-identity is threatened by increasing technology and connectivity make up for the loss by banding together against identifiable groups of others. Whether the opposing party did something to deserve the hostility seems to matter very little. What matters is that they can be blamed enough to facilitate a collective bond against them.

Reminds me of the starting quote of "The Toxoplasma Of Rage"[0] - "Nobody makes an IRC channel for no reason. Who are we doing this versus?".

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/

There is a great Austrian theater piece (now a movie as well) showing how a skilled mediator can unite a couple.. against him: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6904262/

Of course, if a paid therapist is the mediator, this advice can only have a very limited impact on their method regardless. They have a business to run, and that depends on them being liked.

Couldn't this simply be a test of the reciprocity principle? People who feel like they've wasted someone else's time are probably more likely to make an effort to resolve the problem so as to be less of an inconvenience to the other person, or to meet the other person's expectations. If the mediator is chipper no matter what, then nothing is socially at stake for the negotiators, and it shows that the mediator is unattached to the outcome(which isn't or shouldn't be true). On the other hand, the perception of being a nuisance also comes with the social implication that one isn't pulling their own weight of effort, and most of us naturally want to be judged well by the group we are a part of.

So perhaps it's less about hostility per se, but the covert social communication made through the hostility.

A hostile mediator also sounds more fair. Hearing your faults straight from someone who is not afraid to say it as it is might convince you to accept them.

Closeness-building hostility towards Emmanual Goldstein is literally a plot element of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

You can definitely see that in Russian politics. It’s very “enemy” oriented. Everyday we see on national tv that west countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works because it's the only news sourse for many people. It’s psychological thing that a common enemy brings people together. Really hope it will change. We even have this idiom — my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

"...Everyday we see on national tv that [insert enemy here] countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works..."

This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy. I'm born and raised in the US, and this is pretty much how news has been since I was a kid watching talking heads drone on about how dangerous the world is. (Especially, Arabs, Latin American rebels, and pretty much anyone from Eastern Europe.)

Nowadays we throw in China and certain other Asians as "dangerous", but you get the idea. I'd bet the news is like this in most other nations as well, just with a different set of "enemy" people or nations.

Using the narrative of a common enemy to create temporary unity has been a common tactic historically. Improvements in technology and media visibility in recent history has simply changed the dynamic in how this narrative is delivered.

It's funny how every time anyone says anything negative about Russia, someone feels the urge to say "USA is not any better". But not the other way round.

Like, seriously, notice any debate where Russia is mentioned, and this pattern is everywhere.

It's an old Kremlin technique[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

>This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy.

Yeah right, no[1].

My family moved to the US from Ukraine when I was 16, and I've been keeping tabs on the politics and media over there.

So no, you can't compare US media and Russian media. Just because 1 and 10 are both positive numbers, it doesn't mean they are close if you consider the interval [0, 10].

You know, from casual mentions that Russia is "the only country that can turn America into radioactive dust"[2] on prime-time TV news to, well, everything else - you just don't get this stuff here. (And please don't object if you haven't watched Russian TV in Russian! You don't have a point of reference to compare to!).

The US media has taken a large step towards Russian-style vitriol with Trump's campaign, which is when I started to suspect a Russian connection. In my opinion, that has been the largest (and, sadly, nearly irreversible) impact on this country - shaping (or, rather, destroying) the discourse.

To my surprise, many others have noticed it, and written about in major publications and blogs [3][4][5][6][7] - and yet it still remains largely under the radar in discussions about Russian influence.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[2]https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2816127

[3] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/is-trumps-chaos-a-mo...

[4] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/27/trumps-ru...

[5] https://theoutline.com/post/3522/donald-trump-and-vladislav-...

[6] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/how-russia-expor...

[7] https://amandarivkin.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/from-russian-t...

This appears to have played out against the Democrats in the last few years. Opposing politicians have found many new friends in enemies of enemies by forgetting some morals and rationality

I heard that a guy with funny mustache used this trick successfully a while ago...

Which is exactly why it's scary to see American politics dominated by the same hate towards Republicans/Democrats. When I read American media it feels like I'm reading a Russian newspaper back home.

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