“Love your enemies?” Seriously?

Some worthy re-reading, spurred by our accelerating, metastasizing discord. 

    

Republicans and Democrats today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable to that of Palestinians and Israelis. In both cases, the two sides think that they are driven by benevolence, while the other side is evil and motivated by hate. Therefore neither side is willing to negotiate or compromise. As a result, the authors found, “political conflict between American Democrats and Republicans and ethnoreligious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians seem intractable, despite the availability of reasonable compromise solutions in both cases.” 

Think about what this means: We are headed to the point where achieving bipartisan compromise, on issues from immigration to guns to confirming a Supreme Court justice, is as difficult as achieving Middle East peace. We may not be engaging in daily violence against each other, but we can’t make progress as a society when both sides believe that they are motivated by love while the other side is motivated by hate.

Brooks, Arthur C.. Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (loc 305). Kindle Edition.

That reads like it was written this morning. He published that book in 2019. I bought and read it straight away. It warrants review in light of all this "Disagree Better" stuff of late in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder.

 

"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?"

 

Well, I have little trouble getting to "abide your adversaries," but the "enemies" thing is rather more complex (in part given my reluctance to accord inordinate cognitive energy thinking about "enemies").

 

And, that rumination takes us over to our increasing susceptibility to clutching the pearl hair-trigger to being "offended" by anything that irks us.

"You gain the strength of the temptation you resist." —Thomas Szasz 

We might also recall this:

“Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 

 

Back to Dr. Brooks.

 

Unless you inhabit a hermit cave with no internet access, you’ll know that we live in the Age of Offense. With high levels of polarization and innumerable ways to broadcast one’s every thought to strangers far and wide, it is easier than ever to lob insults and to denigrate ideological foes. Not surprisingly, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, 47 percent of Americans believe that people saying things that are “very offensive” to others is a major problem in the country today, whereas only 11 percent say it is not a problem. (The remainder says it is a minor problem.)

You might conclude that the solution is for people to stop offending others—good luck with that!—but consider another statistic in the same poll: A larger percentage of Americans (62 percent) says another big problem is “people being too easily offended by things others say.” These are not at all mutually exclusive findings; they suggest that we are simultaneously too offensive and too thin-skinned.

The second issue, however, is the one on which I wish to focus, because, for most people, being too easily offended is worse for one’s own quality of life than being obnoxiously rude. So instead of spending your efforts trying to stamp out what you find offensive, you should work on being less offended in the first place…

'eh?

 

"The Age of Grievance," anyone?

  

 

"LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?"

 

 

Right. He will not be loving his "enemies from within."

 

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