Who is the Real Enemy?

There is real divisiveness in the world, and there always has been, but perhaps many people today also lack the experience of having real enemies. The kind you want to beat but also respect…

There is a shock that can happen in wartime, when we paint the other side as monsters, and realise that they are also just as human as we are. Conversely, we may feel sorry for them because we consider them to be innocent victims against our war machine, and later discover the atrocities they commit against their own women and children, leaving us not so sure anymore.

Some people also experience this shock or reversal about a former bully, be it a schoolmate or parent, later seeing them in a new light: as a scared and damaged victim of their own circumstances. For some, this can make it possible to move on and not hold on to impossible ideas such as, “They were just evil because they loved hating me,” something which our mind seems to have difficulty accepting, and which leads to obsessive thoughts of, “How can they be like that?”

Yes, some people may be evil, but this is not always consistently true for the people who irritate, challenge, and hurt us. They are usually not simply “pure evil souls” who wake up in the morning with the singular thought of calculating how to do maximum damage to everyone around them, and caring nothing about the fact that no one likes them. Often, they are also damaged and flawed, and create chain reactions of suffering that stem from their own pain.

I can’t let them off the hook completely; they also have the opportunity to reflect and make amends. But they are also not simply “happy people doing evil because they just love evil so much”. That is not really possible, and deep down, this idea doesn’t make sense to us. That is why our brains get stuck, and we find it impossible to “let go” and move on. We can’t resolve that initial idea, because it cannot be the complete truth, and part of us knows it.

Coming to terms with who the enemy really is requires an internal battle against our own egos, because we might be wrong – though our own hurt tells us we must be right. I have no idea how common or rare this realisation is, that we suddenly see the other as a human with dreams and fears just like us, but I am convinced that it happens much more often in real life; face-to-face. Online, it seems, we create situations where we seem to get more proof than not that our distorted image of these opponents who are trying to “destroy us and our way of life” and “take away our freedoms” and “make everything unfair” (to use a few popular quotes I see every day, from people who say they are on the left or the right) – is actually an accurate picture of the real enemy we face: a group of monsters who actually think those thoughts word-for-word, and hate everything about us.

The more I read and hear vivid descriptions from someone on the left about what someone on the right is like or thinks, and vice versa, the more I think that I have never actually met someone in real life (or, face-to-face) that truly fits that description. It is so often just a caricature that we use to make it easier to hate them. And when our hate feels justified, we revel in it.

Very early on, children develop strong feelings about what is fair and what is not. Experienced teachers have to navigate between resolving situations, and allowing them to resolve naturally; between helping children directly and encouraging them to find solutions on their own, because the perspectives of children can leave them looking at a single situation in multiple ways. I am afraid that this idea of balance between perspectives that are not 100% right (none of us see reality completely objectively) is eluding the section of society which is fighting all their battles online and experiencing every feeling of unfairness as proof that a large portion of the population needs to be silenced, re-educated, or removed, or even that the whole system needs to be torn down.

Adults, it would seem, are not that different from children. They are, however, capable of much more violence if they go for too long hating their enemies and thinking that if they can’t “win”, the only way out is to destroy everything rather than letting their “enemy” get a hold of it.

Finally, when we distort, vilify, and demonise our enemy, we take pleasure in their suffering, and delight in any violence done to them (including even something as small as enjoying watching someone get “destroyed” in an online conversation or debate). But isn’t that exactly what we are accusing our enemies of: taking pleasure in hurting us and seeing us suffer?

That, I would venture to say, not only provides a bad example to the next generation, but also makes us part of the problem. The solution? I don’t know, but when I actually talk to real people in conversations that don’t involve “winning”, but are more connected with “searching”, I definitely get more hope than when I watch or read something online. Maybe get to know someone who you think is in the other camp? Maybe try to understand that you want the same things (fairness, safety, prosperity, etc.) but are both struggling to find practical solutions that would move things in the right direction?

Moving things in the right direction, even if it is just a little, is starting to seem far better than the total victory many are trying to achieve against an enemy that we have distorted so badly, we can’t tell the difference between their violence and our own.