THE ENEMYFYING SYNDROME

This short, sharp conflict enabled me to feel in my gut a challenge that I had been thinking about for a long time. In order to make progress on this project, which was important to me, I needed to work with others. These others included people I did not agree with or like or trust. I slipped into thinking of them as my enemies. This polarization within our team put the work we were doing at risk. Moreover, in this small interaction within our team, we reproduced a central dynamic in the larger national system—mistrust, fragmentation, breakdown—that the project had been established to counter.

In this ordinary incident, I enacted a common behavior or syndrome that I call enemyfying: thinking and acting as if the people we are dealing with are our enemies—people who are the cause of our problems and are hurting us. In different contexts we use different words with subtly different connotations for the people from whom we differentiate ourselves: others, rivals, competitors, opponents, adversaries, enemies. We use these characterizations often, in both ordinary and extraordinary contexts, sometimes thoughtfully and sometimes casually, even habitually. But the enemies are always the others: those people. It’s like the jokes about the conjugation of irregular verbs, such as “I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.” The enemyfying equivalent is “I see things differently, you are wrong, she is the enemy.”

We see enemyfying all around us. It dominates the media every day: people identifying others not just as opponents to be defeated but as enemies to be destroyed. These others are variously labeled as nationalists and cosmopolitans, immigrants and racists, corporations and environmentalists, terrorists and infidels.

The 2016 US presidential election overflowed with enemyfying. Speaking of Donald Trump’s campaign, comedian Aasif Mandvi explained how enemyfying creates a self-perpetuating vicious circle:

Trump is essentially tapping into the most fearful, racist, xenophobic, fear-based mind-set in this country, but he’s also justifying that in other parts of the world. Whether it’s ISIS or it’s Trump—what they’re basically saying is: There’s a reason you should be afraid, there’s a reason you should feel disenfranchised, there’s a reason that you should feel angry, and it’s because of those people, over there.

Enemyfying, vilifying, and demonizing pervade political discourse around the world. And we enact this enemyfying syndrome not only in politics but also at work and at home.

I do a lot of enemyfying. I tell myself stories about how other people are messing things up: colleagues, clients, suppliers, neighbors, family. I know that these aren’t complete or fair stories about what is happening and that telling these stories isn’t a productive way to spend my time. I also know that many people do the same—for example, in couples counseling, which most people enter thinking, “Our problems are my partner’s fault, and I hope this counseling makes them understand that they need to change.” But enemyfying is seductive because it reassures us that we are OK and not responsible for the difficulties we are facing.

Enemyfying is a way to understand and deal with real differences. It simplifies into black and white our overwhelmingly complex and multihued reality, and thereby enables us to clarify what is going on and mobilize energies to deal with it. But, as journalist H. L. Mencken said, “Th ere is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Our enemyfying, which feels exciting and satisfying, even righteous and heroic, usually obscures rather than clarifies the reality of the challenges we face. It amplifies conflicts; it narrows the space for problem solving and creativity; and it distracts us, with unrealizable dreams of decisive victory, from the real work we need to do.