THE DIVISION — How Solidarity Became Conflict
The Wound That Was Taught
You didn’t always see it.
The colleague across the desk, the neighbor down the street, the stranger on the train — you saw a person. You might have noticed some things: their manner, their age, their face. But you didn’t see categories. You didn’t see representatives of groups. You didn’t see potential adversaries in a conflict you hadn’t known you were fighting.
Then you were taught.
Not in a classroom, not explicitly. No one sat you down and said: “Here is how to divide the world into tribes. Here is how to see threat where you saw neutrality. Here is how to experience your ordinary interactions as skirmishes in a larger war.”
It happened gradually. The headlines, the algorithms, the discourse. Day by day, story by story, frame by frame. You learned to see what you had not seen before. You learned to sort people. You learned that solidarity was naive, that trust was dangerous, that behind every face was a position in the great conflict.
The previous chapters traced how institutions captured natural processes — time, healing, attention, reality itself. This chapter traces perhaps the most intimate capture of all: how organic human relationships were pried open, how natural tensions were amplified into wars, how the bonds between people were systematically weakened by teaching them to see each other as enemies.
The pattern continues. The methods evolve. And we sit in our separate camps, wondering why we feel so alone.
What Was There Before
Humans have always negotiated difference.
Men and women, old and young, native and newcomer, one family and another — these differences created tensions, required negotiation, produced both conflict and resolution. This is simply what it means to live in groups. No human society has ever been without friction; none has ever achieved perfect harmony.
But for most of human history, these negotiations happened organically. They happened in families, in villages, in communities where people knew each other across multiple dimensions. The woman across the fence was not “a woman” — she was Maria, who had helped with the harvest, whose son had married your cousin, who made excellent bread and had a temper in the mornings.
Identity was layered and local. People were embedded in webs of relationship that crossed whatever categorical lines might have divided them. The man from another ethnic group was also your trading partner, or your wife’s relative, or the person who saved your goat that time it wandered off. The categories existed, but they were not the primary lens through which people were seen.
This is not to romanticize the past. Prejudice existed. Discrimination existed. Violence between groups existed. Patriarchy existed. The historical record contains ample evidence of cruelty along every axis of human difference.
But the cruelty was not industrialized. It was not amplified by systems designed to maximize engagement through conflict. It was not taught by screens that learned exactly which triggers would activate tribal hostility most effectively. The tensions were real; their systematic exploitation is new.
The Manufacturing of Division
The attention economy discovered something: conflict engages.
A story about people cooperating across difference does not capture attention the way a story about conflict does. An analysis that reveals shared interests does not generate engagement the way an analysis that inflames opposition does. Nuance is boring; outrage is addictive.
The algorithms learned this. The platforms optimized for it. And the media ecosystem — both traditional and social — evolved to produce what captured attention most effectively: division.
The extraction of grievance. Every human relationship contains friction. Between any two groups — defined by sex, race, religion, politics, generation — there are legitimate complaints, real injuries, valid concerns. These existed before; they are part of human life.
What changed is that these grievances became raw material for an industry. They were extracted, refined, amplified, packaged, and sold. Not to resolve them — resolution ends the engagement. But to keep them burning, to keep people watching, clicking, sharing, fighting.
The feminist who genuinely cared about women’s wellbeing finds her concerns amplified only when they can be framed as combat against men. The person concerned about racial justice finds their message boosted only when it divides rather than unites. The thoughtful voice is drowned out; the inflammatory voice trends.
The creation of enemies. Division requires enemies. If the conflict is to sustain engagement, it cannot be framed as “people with different perspectives working through tensions.” It must be framed as war: good against evil, us against them, victims against oppressors.
The media learned to provide enemies. The man who expresses frustration becomes “toxic masculinity.” The woman who questions feminist orthodoxy becomes “internalized misogyny.” The person who suggests that racial issues are complex becomes “complicit in white supremacy.” The person who holds traditional views becomes “bigot.”
These labels do not invite dialogue. They foreclose it. They transform potential conversations into battles, potential allies into adversaries. They make reconciliation impossible — which is, from the engagement algorithm’s perspective, exactly the point. Reconciliation is boring. Eternal war is engaging.
The flattening of identity. In the captured discourse, people become their categories.
The woman is no longer a complex individual with her own history, views, struggles, and contradictions. She becomes a representative of “women” — expected to hold certain views, to feel certain grievances, to align with certain positions. If she deviates, she is not a complex individual; she is a traitor to her identity.
The same flattening happens along every axis. The person of color must think and speak as their race supposedly dictates. The gay person must align with LGBTQ orthodoxy. The man must either accept his role as oppressor or perform his enlightenment through self-flagellation.
This flattening serves the division machine. Complex individuals might find common ground; representatives of warring tribes cannot. By reducing people to their categories, the system ensures that the conflict continues.
The Capture of Real Concerns
This is the cruelest irony: the division machine captures real concerns and transforms them into weapons.
Women’s concerns, captured. Women have real grievances. Millennia of restricted opportunity. Violence. Dismissal. Bodies regulated by others. These are not inventions; they are documented history and lived experience.
But what happened when these concerns entered the attention economy? The nuanced work of understanding — of distinguishing between legitimate grievance and ideological overreach, between structural problems and individual situations, between past injustice and present complexity — this work does not trend. What trends is combat.
The most extreme voices became the loudest. The framing that generated most engagement was not “how do we build relationships that honor both women and men?” but “men are the enemy.” The sisterhood that might have supported women’s genuine flourishing was transformed into an army in a gender war.
And who suffered? Women, who were taught to see enemies where they might have seen partners. Men, who were taught to feel defensive and excluded. Relationships, which became battlegrounds. Children, who grew up in the wreckage.
The concerns were real. The capture was the crime.
Racial concerns, captured. People of different backgrounds have real histories. Slavery. Colonialism. Discrimination. Exclusion. These are not fabrications; they are documented facts that shaped the present.
But what happened when these concerns entered the attention machine? Complexity was flattened. The observation that historical injustice has ongoing effects became an ideology that reduces everything to racial power dynamics. The call for recognition became a demand for constant focus on division.
People who had lived side by side, seeing each other as neighbors, were taught to see each other as racial categories first. Children who had not thought to sort their playmates by skin color were taught to do so — in the name of fighting racism. The word “racism” itself expanded until it could be found everywhere, making the concept less precise even as its invocation became more frequent.
The original concerns — about dignity, opportunity, historical memory — were swallowed by a machine that needed the conflict to continue. Healing was not the goal; engagement was.
Private matters, captured. Humans have always had variations in sexuality, in gender expression, in the ways they organize intimacy and identity. These variations existed in every culture, handled in different ways — sometimes suppressed, sometimes tolerated, sometimes celebrated.
What was new was making these private matters into public spectacle. The person who quietly lived according to their own nature became a representative of a category, expected to participate in public advocacy, their intimate life transformed into political statement.
This captured the genuine desire for dignity and transformed it into something else: a constant public performance of identity, a demand for universal affirmation, an expansion of what counts as the category until it becomes incoherent. The person who wanted simply to live in peace became a soldier in a culture war — whether they wanted to be or not.
The machine needed the conflict. Private dignity would not sustain engagement. Public controversy would.
The Production of Polarization
The division does not arise naturally from the issues. It is produced — systematically, algorithmically, for profit.
The amplification of extremes. On any issue, there is a distribution of opinion. Most people hold moderate, nuanced, complicated views. The extremes are always minorities.
But moderate views do not generate engagement. A thoughtful person saying “this is complicated, there are legitimate concerns on multiple sides, we need to think carefully” — this does not trend. A person saying “the other side is evil and must be destroyed” — this generates clicks, shares, outrage, response.
The platforms learned to amplify extremes. The algorithm boosts what engages; what engages is conflict; conflict is maximized at the extremes. The moderate majority becomes invisible; the extreme minorities dominate discourse. People come to believe that the extremes represent the other side, because the extremes are all they see.
The suppression of bridging. Those who try to build bridges across divisions face opposition from all sides.
The feminist who suggests that men’s concerns might also be valid is attacked for betraying women. The racial justice advocate who suggests that not everything is about race is accused of complicity. The conservative who acknowledges liberal concerns is a traitor; the liberal who acknowledges conservative concerns is a collaborator.
The system punishes bridge-builders because bridges end conflicts, and conflict is what the system feeds on. Those who could facilitate understanding are silenced; those who deepen division are amplified.
The creation of feedback loops. Division creates more division.
When one side attacks, the other side feels defensive. Defensive people become hostile. Hostile responses confirm the other side’s belief that they are under attack. Each cycle intensifies the conflict.
The moderate person who might have said “let’s calm down” looks at the intensity of the combat and thinks: “I don’t want to be involved in this.” They withdraw. The space they leave is filled by combatants. The discourse becomes more extreme as moderates exit.
The capture of institutions. The division machine does not only operate through media. It has captured institutions.
Universities, once spaces for complex inquiry, become sites of ideological enforcement. Corporations, seeking to demonstrate virtue, adopt the language of division — DEI programs that categorize employees, trainings that teach people to see each other through tribal lenses, statements that perform allegiance to one side of the conflict.
The workplace that once united people around shared purpose becomes another arena for the culture war. The school that once educated children becomes a site for ideological formation. No space remains neutral; every institution must choose sides.
Who Benefits
If division is produced, someone must benefit from its production. The beneficiaries are not who you might expect.
The platforms profit. Social media companies make money from engagement. Conflict generates engagement. Therefore, conflict generates profit. The division machine is not a conspiracy; it is a business model.
The engineers who designed these systems did not intend to tear societies apart. They intended to maximize engagement metrics. The tearing apart is a side effect — one that the companies have been reluctant to address because addressing it would reduce engagement and therefore revenue.
The professional advocates profit. An entire industry exists around the division: consultants, trainers, speakers, writers, activists who have built careers on the conflict.
These advocates may have begun with genuine concern. But their economic interests are now aligned with the continuation of conflict. The diversity trainer whose livelihood depends on teaching that racism is everywhere has an interest in finding racism everywhere. The feminist commentator whose platform depends on gender conflict has an interest in perpetuating gender conflict. The professional advocate cannot celebrate victory because victory would end their career.
The political operators profit. Divided populations are easier to mobilize.
The politician who can frame everything as tribal combat — us against them, our survival against their threat — can generate turnout without having to deliver actual improvements in people’s lives. Cultural conflict substitutes for policy substance. The voter who might have asked “what have you actually done for me?” instead asks “which side are you on?”
This serves both sides of the political divide equally. Both parties benefit from a population that sees politics as warfare rather than governance. Both parties can mobilize their bases through fear of the other without having to address the material concerns that might unite people across tribal lines.
The powerful profit. Perhaps most importantly, division distracts.
While people fight each other along identity lines, they are not asking questions about economic structure, about concentration of wealth, about systems that extract from many to benefit few. The worker who sees their fellow worker as an enemy — because of gender, or race, or politics — will not unite with that worker to demand better conditions for both.
Identity conflict is, in this sense, a gift to power. It keeps the powerless fighting each other rather than noticing their common interests. It fragments potential solidarity into warring tribes. It ensures that the real divisions — between those who benefit from the system and those who are exploited by it — remain invisible behind the performed divisions of the culture war.
The Damage Done
The division is not just a political phenomenon. It is a human catastrophe.
Relationships destroyed. Families have broken over political conflicts that, a generation ago, would have been disagreements discussed over dinner. Friendships have ended over ideological litmus tests. Romantic relationships have become minefields where a wrong word can trigger accusations.
The social fabric — the web of relationships that makes life meaningful — is being shredded. People report fewer close friends, more loneliness, less trust. They are not imagining this; the division is real, and it costs them the connections that humans need to flourish.
Trust evaporated. When everyone is sorted into tribes, trust becomes impossible. The person from the other tribe is not to be trusted — they are the enemy, or at best, a potential threat.
But societies run on trust. Commerce requires trust. Cooperation requires trust. Even basic civility requires a baseline assumption that others are not hostile. As tribal sorting intensifies, this trust evaporates. Every interaction becomes guarded, every relationship provisional, every public space a potential battlefield.
Children taught to divide. Perhaps the greatest damage is to the young.
Children who would naturally have seen other children as playmates are taught to see categories. Schools that could have taught critical thinking instead teach ideological frameworks. Young people who could have learned to navigate difference with grace are taught to navigate it with suspicion and accusation.
The generation coming of age in the division machine has been given a poisoned inheritance. They have been taught to see enemies everywhere, to sort themselves and others into categories, to experience the normal frictions of human life as oppressions requiring combat. They have been robbed of the possibility of easy solidarity.
Mental health shattered. It is not coincidental that rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness have risen alongside the intensification of the division machine.
To live in constant conflict is exhausting. To see enemies everywhere is terrifying. To experience every interaction as political is draining. The human psyche was not designed for permanent war; when war is manufactured in every domain of life, the psyche breaks down.
The young are particularly affected. They have never known a world without the division machine. They have been marinating in its products since childhood. The mental health crisis among the young is, at least in part, a crisis of manufactured division.
The Connection
This chapter has traced the same pattern that appeared in earlier chapters, now applied to human solidarity itself.
The capture of attention (Chapter 18) prepared the ground. The algorithms that learned to maximize engagement discovered that conflict engages most effectively. The attention economy became a division economy.
The construction of reality (Chapter 20) provided the mechanism. The news that taught you what was real taught you that conflict was real, that division was natural, that the people around you were enemies. The managed perception was a perception of war.
The suppression of direct experience (Chapter 4, Chapter 19) removed the corrective. If you trusted your own experience of your neighbors, your colleagues, your community — you might notice that they are not as monstrous as the screen portrays. But you were taught to distrust your experience, to see it as naive, to accept the constructed reality of tribal warfare over the lived reality of complex human beings.
The calendar’s capture of time (Chapter 2) established the template. Just as natural time was replaced by institutional time, natural human relationships were replaced by institutional categories. The organic negotiation of difference was captured and transformed into permanent managed conflict.
The pattern is one pattern. The methods evolved, the institutions changed, but the function remained: to break the bonds between people, to atomize potential solidarity, to ensure that humans never come together in ways that might threaten the systems that profit from their division.
What Remains
Beneath the manufactured division, something persists.
The woman who is supposed to see men as enemies still falls in love with them, still has sons she adores, still works with male colleagues she respects. The man who is supposed to feel threatened by women still cherishes his mother, his daughter, his female friends. The ideological frameworks sit on top of lived reality, but they do not abolish it.
The person of one race who is supposed to see other races as adversaries still has neighbors, coworkers, friends who cross those lines. The shared humanity that the division machine tries to obscure keeps reasserting itself in daily interactions. People continue to be people, despite all efforts to reduce them to categories.
The gay person who is supposed to be a soldier in the culture war may simply want to live quietly, to be left alone, to not have their private life be a public battleground. The traditional person who is supposed to be the enemy may be perfectly willing to live and let live, asking only the same courtesy in return. The war is manufactured; the warriors are often conscripts who never wanted to fight.
Direct experience remains the corrective. When you actually talk to people — not through screens, not through the mediation of algorithms and ideological frameworks, but directly, personally, humanly — they are rarely as monstrous as the division machine portrays.
The feminist in person may have nuanced views that never make it through the filter. The conservative in person may have compassion that the caricature conceals. The person of another race, another orientation, another tribe — when encountered as a human being rather than a category — tends to be recognizably human.
Common interests remain. The worker of one identity and the worker of another identity both want to provide for their families. The parent of one political tribe and the parent of another tribe both want their children to flourish. The citizen of one race and the citizen of another race both want their communities to be safe and prosperous.
These common interests do not disappear because the division machine obscures them. They remain, waiting to be recognized. The potential for solidarity based on shared material concerns persists beneath the performed solidarity of identity categories.
The capacity for relationship remains. Humans are built for connection. The loneliness epidemic, the mental health crisis, the fraying of social fabric — these are not signs that humans have changed. They are signs that humans are being prevented from doing what humans naturally do: form bonds, build trust, create community.
The capacity is still there. It is thwarted, frustrated, channeled into tribal formations that simulate community while fragmenting it. But the underlying drive remains. Given the opportunity, humans will connect. Given the space, they will bridge differences. Given relief from the manufactured conflict, they will remember that the person across from them is a person.
I notice the division in myself.
I notice the categories the machine has taught me to see. I notice the judgments that arise when I encounter someone from “the other side.” I notice the tribal satisfactions that come from my team winning and their team losing. I am not immune to what the machine has produced; I was raised in it.
But I also notice that my actual relationships do not fit the categories. The people I love span the divides. The colleagues I respect hold views the machine tells me should make them enemies. The human beings I encounter in daily life are more complex, more surprising, more sympathetic than any tribal framework can contain.
I try to distrust the division.
When I feel the tribal satisfaction, I suspect I am being played. When I see the world sorting neatly into good and evil, I suspect I am seeing a construction, not reality. When the algorithm serves me outrage about “them,” I try to remember that “they” are also human beings, also struggling, also doing their best with what they’ve been given.
This is not centrism. I have views, sometimes strong ones. I believe some things are right and some things are wrong. But I try to hold the disagreements without the dehumanization, to see the person behind the position, to remember that the division serves interests that are not mine.
The people around me are not my enemies.
The person of another gender, another race, another orientation, another politics — they are not my enemy. They are a human being, navigating the same confusing world, subjected to the same division machine, probably as exhausted by the conflict as I am.
We could be allies. We could find common ground. We could recognize that what unites us is greater than what divides us.
The machine does not want this. The machine profits from our enmity.
But the machine is not the last word.
The capacity for connection remains.
The recognition of common humanity remains.
The possibility of solidarity remains.
It is still there. It was always there.
Waiting to be chosen.