In 2019, the majority of Americans probably would have described the CDC as a valuable and important institution, staffed by medical experts whose mission is to protect the public from dangerous illnesses. Today, many of those same people view the CDC as a deeply corrupt organization with a powerful political agenda, deep pockets, and shady ties to the pharmaceutical industry. For millions of Americans, the CDC paradigm has been utterly destroyed and replaced by a very different one.

What caused that? Why did so many people believe one thing in 2019, only to believe something totally different just two years later? What can we learn from this, and how might it apply to the broader spectrum of political discourse?

We don’t necessarily think a whole lot about paradigms, but they’re always with us. In fact, they run our lives. Virtually everything that we think, say, or do happens within the context of one or more paradigms. If you want to change the world, you first need to change the paradigms that govern human thoughts, words, and actions. If you can achieve that, it’s all downhill from there.

But changing paradigms is hard; they tend to be extraordinarily stubborn. If facts and reason are to prevail, however, we must find a way to circumvent the distortions that paradigms impose upon human thinking.

Want to win people’s hearts and minds? Go after their paradigms.

So what exactly are paradigms, and why do we have them?

As human beings, we’ve developed mechanisms through which to make sense of the world. Language, for example, is a collection of abstractions that help us to organize reality into useful chunks of information.

When I look at an object in the middle of the room and think “chair,” I’m making certain assumptions about that object’s attributes, such as its ability to hold up under the weight of an average adult. When I think “chair,” I’m implicitly imbuing that thing with purpose. Chairs are for sitting on. That’s not so much because they’re exclusively suitable for that function, but rather because my “chair” paradigm tells me so; that’s what it’s for.

The “chair” abstraction also becomes the model through which I see reality. Even in the absence of any immediate need to communicate with another person, I still carry this linguistic abstraction for “chair” everywhere I go. Even when I’m alone, my thoughts conform to the linguistic models that are available to me. I rarely look at a chair and ask: “I wonder if I could use that as a stepladder.” OK, perhaps occasionally, — but generally speaking, the “chair” abstraction itself tends to dictate the boundaries of my thoughts about these things.

This is a mental shortcut, of course. Because I have a linguistic abstraction for “chair,” I can save myself the effort of constantly analyzing the world around me, struggling to determine which objects I can safely sit on, and which I cannot, — or what the hell that object might be doing in the middle of the room. Abstractions bring order to this quaint little universe that I live in.

Paradigms are similar, but more complicated. They’re mental models that purport to explain how the world works. They are our primary means for making sense of things. Just as I have an inherently limiting abstraction for “chair”, I also have mental models for how the world works.

By their very nature, paradigms create boundaries that limit the range of useful and acceptable thoughts, words, and actions. If an incoming fact falls outside of my paradigm, then it’s not real. It’s not possible. It’s not even worthy of my consideration.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t respond to those incoming facts, though. If my own paradigm is under attack, I might very well be motivated to destroy that threat. Why do we see such widespread popular support for limits on free speech? Someone somewhere is feeling insecure about their paradigms, and they really don’t like hearing it. Granted, there’s a lot of social engineering going on here as well, but whoever is doing it clearly understands the power of paradigms.

Unfortunately, paradigms cause us to filter out information that might otherwise be important. As human beings, we like to think that we collect facts and then draw conclusions. In reality, we draw conclusions (that is, we adopt paradigms), and then we filter all incoming information such that it confirms and validates our point of view.

Consider this: “Government exists to serve the people. Despite some abuses, it’s fundamentally good. The more government can help people, the better.”

Or this: “The more government purports to help people, the larger it grows and the more corrupt it becomes. Government is quickly perverted to serve its own ends.”

If my mental models tell me that big government is inherently corrupt, then my default stance on a proposed government program will be somewhere between skepticism and outright rejection. If I’m driven by the belief that government should be predisposed to intervene and help people, my default position will be favorable.

Is Donald Trump a criminal, or a populist hero? Was January 6th an insurrection spawned by the outgoing President, or an elaborate influence operation conducted by anti-Trump forces inside the government? It depends on whom you ask. We’re dealing with very different sets of facts, because we’re operating from different paradigms.

As human beings, we tend to embrace any information that validates our paradigms. We reject information that challenges them.

The problem, of course, is that other people are following the same pattern… except they’re not like us. Those people have “bad” paradigms!!!

If you want to persuade someone to your point of view, you can continue to flood them with a barrage of facts, but keep in mind that you’re up against a very powerful filtering mechanism. Paradigms can be extraordinarily stubborn things.

A better strategy is to present people with questions. Prompt them to inquire. Let them find their own answers, if they’re intellectually honest enough to do so.

What Breaks a Paradigm?

There are two ways to destroy a paradigm. The first is a slow, steady drip. Like a trickle of water falling in the spot on the same stone for hundreds of years, the paradigm is gradually worn away until it loses its grasp. A new paradigm slowly emerges to replace it, often imperceptibly, over a long period of time.

Patience may be a virtue, but few of us have it in such large quantities. Sometimes it takes an entire lifetime.

The second pattern involves a sudden and sometimes traumatic realization, often brought about by crisis. A powerful but undeniable event occurs that falls squarely outside the boundaries of the old paradigm. It simply cannot be true, and yet it is. Something impossible happened. Cognitive dissonance ensues. The old paradigm simply no longer works. We struggle to make sense of it all, piecing together new paradigms to replace the old ones.

9/11 was a paradigm-breaking event. COVID, too, has turned the world upside-down. At a personal level, paradigms might be broken apart as a result of a diagnosis, a layoff, the death of a loved one, or some other traumatic event.

For the passengers aboard the Titanic, the paradigm shift came too late. The “unsinkable ship” paradigm turned out not to be an accurate model for reality. And so they just kept dancing…

As I said, paradigms are stubborn.

Traumatic life events are uncomfortable when they happen, but the resulting paradigm shifts often prove to be a net positive in the long run. That’s what happens when we hear someone say “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” It’s hard to imagine, but for those who have been through it, there is triumph in survival.

Not all precipitating events are necessarily bad, of course. Sometimes it’s that “Aha!” moment when someone realizes that they are capable of much more than they ever thought. That creates a wonderful kind of paradigm shift that can be equally life-changing.

Who creates your paradigms?

Keep in mind that when old paradigms die, new ones always replace them. Sometimes this happens organically, but in many cases there is a deliberate effort to shape the new reality. When crisis occurs on a large scale, social engineers get busy constructing and selling new paradigms to the population at large. Beware. When a crisis occurs, watch out for this.

The post-9/11 paradigm was “a new kind of threat”. That gave us the Patriot Act.

In the wake of COVID, millions have shifted to the paradigm that says “We’ve been lied to for years. Question authority.” That’s a good thing in my view, but it’s worth noting that not everyone has moved in a positive direction. Millions have adopted a new paradigm in which free speech (which they call “disinformation and misinformation”) has the power to kill people. In the context of that mental model, limits on free speech make perfect sense. Someone designed that new paradigm and they’re selling it to anyone who might listen.

Paradigms come to us from social groups, from the news media, and from popular culture. Persuasion techniques are constructed around narratives designed to develop and strengthen one paradigm or another.

The best defense is to watch for those hidden agendas and be open to new information. The best offense is to seek to understand other people’s paradigms, look for incongruencies, and apply gentle but firm pressure to bring them around to your point of view.

As human beings, we have a strong desire to shape our world and society. In our quest to make the world a better place, we often butt heads with one another over the differences in our preferred approaches. My desire is that people around the world can find ways to live with each other, seek common ground, and keep striving to make the world a better place… without hating each other.

That can be a tall order sometimes, but as human beings, we owe it to the world to at least try.

I currently serve as a State Representative in the New Hampshire legislature, Chair of my local school board, and director of the 603 Alliance, — a grassroots organization focused on restoring Constitutional principles at all levels of our government.

Those are all volunteer positions, so to earn a living, I write about software technology. I help companies explain complex topics that range from ERP software to AI/ML assurance, mainframe modernization, data governance, enterprise integration, location intelligence, and more. My ghostwritten work has appeared in Forbes, VentureBeat, CIO Review, Claims Journal, and numerous other industry publications. If you have a need for a good content creator, please reach out.

If you’d like to read my content every week, please follow me here on Medium. If you see something that intrigues you and you’d like to connect, please reach out to me.

All the best… Jim.

Immaculée Ilibagiza was born in Rwanda in 1972. As a teenager, she went to school one day and noticed that her teacher was taking attendance a bit differently than she had done in the past. Starting on this particular day, the teacher began adding a single word after each student’s name. Depending on the student’s ethnicity, that word was either “Hutu” or “Tutsi.”.

Immaculée describes this as the moment when she first became aware that there was any such thing as a Hutu or a Tutsi. It was the first time she realized that she was a Tutsi, and that most of her classmates were Hutus. It was also the day she learned that Hutus and Tutsis are supposed to hate each other.

That incident did not happen by accident. It was a very small element of a much larger campaign aimed at dividing the world into an “us” and a “them”. Tragically, that effort eventually achieved its intended purpose.

In 1993, the Hutu-led Rwandan government lent its support to a new broadcast service called RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines). The content on RTLM was characterized by a sharply anti-Tutsi slant. Announcers frequently referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches” that needed to be exterminated. They used their platform to cast blame upon Tutsis for the country’s ills, fueling ethnic hatred, often with fabricated stories about Tutsi plots to undermine the Hutu population.

In April of 1994, Immaculée returned from college for the Easter holidays, completely unaware of the terror that was about to unfold.

On April 6th, a plane carrying Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down during its landing approach to Kigali airport. Everyone on board was killed. That incident served as the catalyst for the genocide that followed, but the foundation had already been laid.

In the ensuing weeks, Immaculée Ilibagiza witnessed unspeakable acts of cruelty. She watched as her own brother was hacked to death with a machete, — his skull cut open by his attackers. Immaculée’s entire family was killed, with the sole exception of a brother who happened to be studying abroad at the time.

Immaculée herself took refuge in the tiny bathroom of a Hutu pastor. Hidden behind a bookshelf, that space measured just three feet deep by four feet wide. Picture a standard 2x4 foot ceiling tile. Lay two of those on the ground. Cut one in half and throw that half away. What’s left on the ground illustrates the size of that room. Immaculée spent three months in there, with seven other women.

All while, she was praying for her persecutors.

Let that sink in. They killed her family. They were hunting her and anyone who looked like her. Raping. Torturing. Killing.

Despite all that, Immaculée Ilibagiza spent 91 days in that tiny bathroom projecting thoughts of peace, love, and forgiveness upon those people.

This is precisely the kind of radicalism the world needs right now.

Polarization is power. Throughout history, unscrupulous people have used it to manipulate entire populations. The designers of the Rwandan genocide understood that very clearly. They knew that if they could isolate an identity group and characterize it as a vengeful, duplicitous enemy, — they could consolidate their own power and motivate members of their target audience to do virtually anything for them. It worked.

Human beings are tribal by nature. We instinctively divide the world into an “us” and a “them”. It’s a mental shortcut. It relieves us of any responsibility to engage in deeper discernment. It protects us from risk. If we just stick with our own people, — or so the argument goes, — then we will be safe.

There is a very dark side to that tribalist inclination, though. At some point, we no longer see each other as flesh-and-blood human beings. We become caricatures. Enemies. Cockroaches.

The seduction goes even deeper: enemies give us a profound sense of purpose. New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges captured that idea perfectly in the title of his brilliant 2002 book: War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. Tragically, it’s true.

In today’s America (and to a great extent, throughout the rest of the world), people are clamoring for meaning. They are finding purpose in fomenting political conflict. In some cases, they’re fighting over life-and-death issues. In others, they’re championing causes that seem utterly ridiculous. Micro-aggressions. Mis-pronouning. Cultural appropriation. Those issues nevertheless have the power to hypnotize people and motivate them to hate their fellow human beings. No offense is too small.

People are so desperate to find purpose that they will grasp at anything that might remotely qualify as an injustice. They commit to that mission with a religious fervor. They’ll taunt, scream, and bully. They will chase people down and run them out of the public square. They’ll burn entire neighborhoods to the ground. A few of them will even kill. If we’re really honest about it, perhaps it’s more than just a few.

Do any of these causes justify giving up our humanity?

None of this is happening by accident, of course. Someone is priming this behavior. People in high places understand quite well that polarization is power, and they’re applying that principle to manipulate you, -and me, with the aim of consolidating their power even further. They want us to hate each other.

The con goes like this: “I’ll help you. It’s those people that are causing all your problems. Give me your money, your vote, and enough control, — and I’ll protect you. Stick with me, do what I say, and together we’ll defeat them.”

The perpetrators of this narrative will do everything they can to amp up the fear and loathing. In marketing, there is a name for this: it’s called “fear appeal advertising.” It can be very powerful, and unscrupulous people use it with scientific precision.

The problem is that sooner or later, everyone lands on the wrong side of the us/them line. When Joe Biden and mainstream media outlets launched their “pandemic of the unvaccinated” campaign, their aim was to polarize us. They sought to isolate, target, and cast blame on anyone who objected to being shot up with an experimental drug that had dubious benefits and potentially dangerous side-effects.

Unfortunately for the people peddling this narrative, a large portion of the targeted group were actually members of their own tribe, — moderate independents and left-of-center Democrats. Suddenly, millions of Americans were confronted by cognitive dissonance. They unexpectedly found themselves in the designated “them” group. Virtually overnight, they became the outsiders who were to be blamed for ongoing disease, death, and mortal fear.

These people were faced with a choice: subordinate their deeply-felt beliefs and defer to the collective, or acknowledge that their own tribe was betraying them. Throughout their lives, they had seen the world through a predominantly collectivist lens. That impulse was still present, of course, — but now it came with a hefty price tag. Risk your life, your health, and your children, — or face the consequences.

For these refugees, the COVID mandates were a turning point. COVID exposed a gaping laceration in the establishment façade. Huge numbers of people were suddenly realizing that the self-declared champions of goodwill and tolerance might not actually be who they claim to be.

This is an opportunity to bring people together. We really should do our best not to screw it up.

We cannot control what the elites are saying about us and our fellow Americans. We can, however, control how we respond. They want us to hate each other, but we don’t have to read from their script. We don’t have to behave the way they expect us to.

Members of the “us” group are expected to join in condemning the targeted “them” group. The latter are expected to return hate for hate. In fact, if the out-group can be spurred on to escalate the conflict, so much the better. It just validates the narrative and polarizes us even further.

How can we interrupt that dynamic?

As long as we continue to fall back on the us/them paradigm, we will remain highly susceptible to manipulation. Labels are still useful, of course. We cannot (and should not) eliminate them, — but we can recognize them for what they are. In the current political climate, we might consider looking beyond the labels and beginning to engage each other as flesh-and-blood human beings.

The people all around you have sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. They have fears and aspirations. They have experienced trauma and loss. They appreciate beauty, friendship, and acts of kindness. And almost without exception, they love dogs.

The person you think of as a right-wing extremist or a left-wing loon undoubtedly has compelling life-stories of their own. Meet them in that place, and you might discover something remarkable. Labels begin to lose their power over us. So too does the false promise of finding one’s life purpose in fanning the flames of conflict. War loses its seductive power.

Personally, I’ve been making those kinds of connections with a few people here in New Hampshire over the past year. Can a far-left progressive and a staunch conservative have a conversation about gun control or abortion without screaming at each other? Actually, yes. But they first need to be willing to look the other person in the eye and acknowledge that there’s an actual human being in there.

That is how we interrupt this dynamic. They want us to hate each other, but we don’t have to play by their rules. We need to start talking to each other again. We need to start treating each other like human beings.

So where do we go from here? For starters, I’ll suggest these four guidelines that might help us to move in the right direction:

1) Be aware of the polarization dynamic. Simply by understanding and acknowledging that powerful people want us to hate each other, we can begin to break down our habitual ways of thinking, speaking, and interacting with the people who disagree with us. Whenever your gut reaction is to get angry, express indignation, put up walls, or call people names; hit the pause button. Is there another way to react? Can you interrupt the paradigm by refusing to read from the standard script?

2) Stop with the name calling. Do you want to fight, or do you actually want to convert people to your point of view? When you preach to the choir, you’ll probably have the approval and esteem of your audience, but you’ll never actually win anyone over. Calling people moonbats, racists, libtards, or haters does not do a damn thing to convince them of your point of view. Understand the inherent limitations of labels and tailor your words and thoughts accordingly.

3) Look for the humanity in other people. As you stand face-to-face with your so-called adversary, ask yourself what’s really going on behind those eyes. What are they afraid of? What motivates them? Is there anything about this person that connects you as human beings? Will they listen to you? Perhaps, — but you also need to be willing to listen and at least try to understand them.

The principal of our local elementary school offered me this sage advice: In any conversation that involves disagreement, look for the positive intentions in others. This may seem impossible at times, but it’s worth trying. If you can find even a single grain of good intention, then you might have a starting point for understanding. If all else fails, remember that even delusional people are usually motivated by some positive intention, even if it’s misguided. Do your best not to condemn the person or their intention; instead, wish that they might eventually see the truth. It might feel like you’re engaging in mental gymnastics at times. Be prudent, but also be willing to push the envelope.

4) Be willing to risk failure. Some people are simply not open to the idea of seeking common ground (yet). Not long ago, I tried to engage someone in conversation while standing outside the polls on election day. I pointed out that in today’s America, we seem to be operating from two entirely different sets of facts. I expressed a willingness to hear what he had to say, and invited him to a dialog. His response was to ask where I get my news and information. I told him, — and I added that I always try to gather facts from multiple sources and do my best to discern the truth. His answer was “Well then, you need to try harder.” Then he walked away. Accept that you won’t always get through, and don’t let it keep you from trying again.

EPILOGUE: I first presented this material as a short talk at an event held in Swanzey, New Hampshire on September 24th, 2022. Clearly it resonated with the people in attendance that day; many of them have reached out to express their appreciation for this message. Like me and millions of other Americans, they’re sick and tired of the divisiveness.

Meanwhile, we’re experiencing a continued escalation of the us/them rhetoric. The narrative has gotten much uglier over the past year. It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing an increase in violence as well.

On the same day that I first sat down to write this, news outlets were reporting on recent comments from former RNC Chair Michael Steele. In an interview with MSNBC, Steele referred to Trump supporters as “lice, fleas and blood-sucking ticks.” In the wake of Joe Biden’s Philadelphia speech targeting “MAGA Republicans” and the accompanying wave of commentary aimed at demonizing dissenters, this fits into a broader pattern of behavior that has ominous implications.

When I heard about Steele’s comments, I could not help but think of the Rwandan radio broadcasts of 1993 and 94, in which Tutsis were routinely described as cockroaches, and calls were made for their extermination. Steele stopped short of calling for the exterminator, but his comments fit into a pattern of rhetoric, the like of which has often paved the way for mass violence throughout history.

We have reached a dangerous tipping point. There are powerful people in our world who desperately want us to turn on one another. They have woven an elaborate narrative around identity politics, a powerful victim/oppressor paradigm, and the demonization of the other.

In fact, the violence has already begun. To date, it has been sporadic, but the frequency is increasing.

Politically motivated violence in America has not yet escalated to the point where people are going into hiding. Nevertheless, we might not be as far removed as we might think from the events that took place in Rwanda in 1994.

For those who would dismiss this concern as hyperbole, please look up the meaning of “normalcy bias.” When in our lifetimes has our civic dialog been so astoundingly uncivil?

Forgiveness is the solution. The problem is that everyone seems to want the other guy to go first. It’s not easy, it certainly doesn’t always feel right, and you will undoubtedly encounter people who will simply throw it back in your face. Understand that many of those people are living under a spell; they’re simply not ready to have this conversation yet.

In spite of that, I’m challenging you, — and myself, — to throw away the script, risk failure, and connect with your fellow human beings. Have a little courage. Our future as a civil society depends on it.

I’ll close with a few words of gratitude to my friend Samir. It was during our conversations at my parents’ house in North Carolina that I kept hearing this phrase: “They want us to hate each other.” He was so right. Samir, you have been a treasure to our family and a model of kindness and charity to the world. Thank you for all you have done for us. May God bless you a million times over.