What’s remarkable is not that human societies fall apart, but that we humans can form coherent groups of more than a few hundred individuals at all—no other primates can. Chimpanzee groups are typically 40-50 individuals; baboons may get to 200. Human brains enable a remarkable social alchemy, which can create coherent groups of thousands or even millions.
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Yet those same powerful forces that create every human society—including modern American society—can always spin out of control. And this danger is amplified by how hard our brain, locked away in a bony skull, must work to anchor us to reality. Its processes make every society susceptible to those sowing discord. Yet, as humans, we also have the power to understand how that’s happening…to know our own minds.
To start, consider this slightly dizzying thought: Identities help create cultures at the same time cultures help create identities. Distinct systems in the brain help you answer the question “Who am I?” The systems create your social self, which is about how you perceive others perceiving you—and which can be exploited to sow division, because the inevitable consequence of belonging to a group is seeing others as outside that group, or in a group of their own.
Fortunately, there’s more to your identity than the social self. Our brains also produce a narrative self. This is the self that weaves together your past life’s parts to situate you in the present, and project you into the future. And this is a self that can reach beyond groups. Or, better yet, help create larger, more commodious ones.
An extreme example from an extreme place: In Germany after World War Two, people who had been active Nazis were helped to resculpt their narrative self—the story of who they were, are, and could be. They did it not by running from memories of their pasts, but by embracing selective parts of their narratives, becoming members of a conservative West Germany who took pride in economic success.
Modern American society is a far cry from Postwar Germany, but it’s undeniably polarized. Simply demanding that anyone from the “other side” abandon their past wholesale won’t work. Whether you identify as “MAGA” or “BLM,” those groups are part of individuals’ narratives. But a larger question — “Who am I as an American?” — should be roomy enough to incorporate elements from both.
How do we get there? One way is by paying attention to how we think. It’s what separates us from chimps and baboons. Humans have the ability to be aware, for instance, that we form habits of thought, or hear only what we want to hear. Metacognition, “thinking about thinking,” rests on your brain’s most human region, the frontal pole that sits behind your forehead. You can stop, reflect, and judge your own judgments about what you perceive, feel, and think.
Most wonderfully, we can all enhance our metacognition. Simple methods include taking a third person perspective on yourself. Or, as the wise leader Winston Churchill did during World War Two, surround yourself with people who (constructively) challenge you. Indeed, since ancient Greece and China, self-reflection has been central to wisdom.
We will need wisdom in our time. Discord can get out of hand and lead to violence. In America today violent threats against both left and right are far higher than twenty years ago. China, Russia and Iran sow discord in America to weaken society, as a recent Trump Administration report describes. Defending against powerful foreign bureaucracies requires, in part, capable agencies to detect and counter them using technologies like artificial intelligence—although always in ways consistent with a free society. But central to any defense is also always the concerned citizen: you.
What can a concerned citizen do? We all contribute to the identity-culture spiral in our societies, by choosing how to act on social media, at work, in our communities. Metacognition is key to wiser actions—to stop and reflect before we either: push back where needed, or avoid unnecessarily inflaming tensions, or reconcile where possible. On social media where much social discord brews, for example, reflecting before reacting is the first step to wiser responses.
Is metacognition—thinking about thinking—perfect? No, but it’s amazing, and our best hope.