Rejecting the culture wars
How to live with the insane populist drama that's doing its best to eat us all up and destablise society.
This week the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had his flagship immigration policy ruled as unlawful by the supreme court.
The ‘Rwanda policy’ (as it’s become known) states that anyone coming to the UK by an unofficial route will be sent 4,300 miles away to the African country for processing.
The judge ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that people who were genuine asylum seekers would be safe from being returned to their country of origin, where they may be at risk of harm.
So far the programme has cost £140 million.
No one has gone to Rwanda and it’s possible that no one will.
However, if the government can get around the ruling, it’s possible that a few hundred people might be sent there.
That’s against a backdrop of tens of thousands of people currently waiting for their asylum claim to be processed.
So, not exactly a big impact.
To be fair, the idea is to deter people from coming to the UK, particularly by small boats across the English Channel, and for good reason.
‘Cost to the British taxpayer’ aside, hundreds have died trying to get to the UK while people traffickers profit.
But will the threat of being sent halfway across the world act as a good deterrent and therefore justify the time, money and effort that’s being ploughed into forcing it through?
Not necessarily, according to the senior civil servant in charge of the department responsible for delivering the policy:
“Value for money of the policy is dependent on it being effective as a deterrent. Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.”
In short - it could be a big waste of government cash.
But this lack of evidence and the ruling of the highest court in the land hasn’t deterred the UK Government.
Their response? They are threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (which the UK helped to establish) and change the law to say that Rwanda is a safe country, so the UK supreme court has to agree that it is.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
And that’s exactly why it’s got everyone’s attention, splitting people into two, equally irate camps - one side feeling like Europe is interfering with our sovereign rights, the other accusing the government of human rights violations.
Elsewhere in the world, the nationalist, anti-immigrant vibe is also strong.
Yesterday in the Netherlands, the hard right candidate Geert Wilders had a shock win in the general elections with his overtly anti-Islam agenda and inflammatory comments.
He has pledged to make the owning a copy of the Quran illegal, called some Dutch Moroccans ‘scum’ and has publicly stated his aim is to ‘Make the Dutchman number one again!’
Wilders been referred to as the Dutch Donald Trump and, incredibly, it looks like the original US version - who famously pledged he would ‘build a wall and make Mexico pay for it’ - could be back at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation by this time next year.
And if he is, we are in for a ride.
The age of the culture war
But this isn’t a story about Trump or immigration. What ties all of these leaders together with others around the world - like Orban of Hungary and Javier Milei of Argentina (nicknamed ‘El Loco’ for his bizarre and undeliverable campaign pledges) is the rise of populism and the culture wars.
A culture war is defined as:
“The cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to the hot button topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values is seen.”
Put simply - it’s the process of whipping the general public up into a frenzy in order to make them turn on each other.
It’s why none of those policies need to be workable or realistic, because that’s not their real purpose.
What they are designed to do is touch on an issue that makes people very angry, gives them someone to blame and a hero who will save them.
People on the left love to talk about how the ignorance of many right-leaning voters causes them to be susceptible to this bait and switch style of politics.
But a culture war only happens with two sides fighting - and the smart thing these populist figures do is give two groups of people what they want, at once.
To the right, they present a threat - immigrants or wokeism, for example.
And in the act of doing so, they present the left with something to rail against - racism or biogtry, perhaps.
This is why politicians are increasingly willing to make batshit crazy promises, despite the likelihood that they will not be able to deliver, because the purpose of a culture war is to sow division and create distraction.
Why? Well, potentially because they have run out of answers.
We’re facing an ever more complex world that’s changing exponentially quickly.
Our political system is not geared for complexity and addressing wicked, longterm problems.
But everyone wants their problems solved now. And both the media and the public do nothing to temper that, demanding that politicians have simple solutions and snappy soundbites, at risk of ousting them if they don’t have a silver bullet for every tricky issue.
So how do you get into (or stay in) power when you can’t fully address the problems that people care about?
You just tell them you can and distract them from the complexity of the issue by making mad or wild claims and setting people against each other.
This allows you to get on with what you really want, which might be ideological (leaving the EU or the ECHR), setting up your next career move, playing out bonkers ego fantasies or just making a shedload of cash for your mates.
Seeing the drama for what it is
Motivations of authority figures aside, how do you stop yourself from being pulled about by the increasingly bizarre and inflammatory behaviour of politicians and the media?
And why should you?
It’s important to remember that this is a very messy and murky landscape.
There is a huge and growing network spreading disinformation of every kind.
With social media and now AI, every bias you have is being exploited by actors who would like society to be a more unstable place or want to shore up their paymasters’ positions.
And they are managing very well.
The most notable example is the storming of Capitol Hill on 6th January 2021, where online disinformation was deemed to have incited the violent unrest and was deemed tantamount to ‘radicalisation’.
You may think that you’re not susceptible but so does everyone who is taken in by manipulative politicians and influential social media narratives spread by our networks.
More to the point - you don’t have to be taken in by it to play your part in the destabilisation - all you have to do is react to it.
So, whether it’s about staying sane in an increasingly insane world, or trying to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions in the wider world, there are good reasons to step outside of the noise.
So back to the how.
One way to rise above it all is to see it for what it is. And a useful tool for this is a model called the drama triangle.
The drama triangle is a model of dysfunctional social relatoinships, created by psychologist Dr Stephen Karpman.
Used primarily to understand interpersonal conflicts and unhealthy relationships, it describes how people get caught up in zero-sum games (where it seems that only one person can win) that never result in anyone’s needs being met.
It suggests that people typically, unconsciously fall into one of three roles:
The victim - someone who is overwhelmed and powerless in the face of forces beyond their control.
The persecutor - who blames the victims for their problems and acts out their frustration.
The rescuer - who cannot stand by and watch the victim struggle, stepping in to help whether invited or not.
These archetypes work together to keep each other in a power-locked struggle as they blame everyone else for their frustrations, struggles and unmet needs.
A drama is initiated when an actor issues an invitation - words or behaviour that triggers a response in the other.
When taken up, the drama begins.
It’s an open-ended process because no one is taking responsibility for their situation and instead blaming someone, or something else.
Unless one actor steps out or changes their response, the games can go on for weeks, months or even generations.
We can this in the micro - minor fallouts between co-workers, for example - and the macro, where families, communities or even whole nations are locked in these spiralling, circular unending conflicts.
If we look at any of the current public and political dramas playing out, we can see how they all contain a hook that initiates one of the mass games we’re getting sucked into.
Take the Rwanda policy as an example. Politicians, the media and outside actors are doing their best to frame people in small boats as a threat, coming over here, sponging off the state, in search of a cushier life.
Certain sections of the UK population are encouraged to feel like the victims, unable to stop the flow of people who will threaten their safety and way of life, as well as draining money that should be spent on their public services.
And they are presented with their rescuers, politicians promising that they will solve the problem by threatening to send these people to an African country that experienced a genocide less than 20 years ago.
(Typically we would expect the rescuer to be acting out of their discomfort at seeing the victim suffer but in this instance we might wonder how much politicians and their backers truly care as they seem to be sticking to unworkable policies in order to please certain factions and remain in power).
The liberal left, incensed by the blatant exploitation of the issue for political gain or simply at the lack of compassion being shown become the persecutors, blaming those people who support the policy for being fearful, easily manipulated and - at worst - racist.
Increasingly, we have yet another fascinating level to this where the actor who initiates the drama and claims to be the rescuer, simultaneously presents themselves as the victim.
Think about Trump and his claims that the woke left is out to get him.
He initiates a drama with his supporters by inviting them to ‘protect’ him from the media so that he can, in turn,the drama triangle protect them from the asylum seekers, gays and other threats to their way of life.
The battle for our nervous systems
None of this would work if it weren’t for an evolutionary biological response to perceived threat.
Because when we’re stressed or provoked, a cascade of processes are triggered in the body which shift us into ‘fight or flight’, a state which also changes how we perceive the world around us.
We can’t help but find someone to blame for how we’re feeling and to correct or remove them so that we feel better.
We are less capable of seeing different perspectives, feeling empathy or making connections.
We just feel there’s a problem and it needs to be dealt with. Now.
If you’re the ‘put-upon British taxpayer’, you’re triggered into believing that people in small boats (and the ‘woke left’ that want to help them) pose a threat. If our leaders send some of them to Rwanda, others won’t come and we’ll stick it to the snowflakes.
Will that solve the problem of illegal immigration? Of course not. But when you’re in that state, it feels like it could, and it feels good. You are encouraged to feel angry and resentful to the people that stand in the way and you may choose to express that wherever and whenever you can.
You start seeing evidence of these threats all around you, in the everyday encroachment of ‘wokeism’ on your way of life, so you increasingly point it out and ridicule it.
If you’re someone who believes asylum seekers are vulnerable people who need care and compassion then you’re triggered into believing that large swathes of the British public (and the politicians that incite discontent), pose a threat to them and to the stable, accepting multi-cultural society you want to live in.
Your response is most likely to lash out at the callous policies, headlines and hateful comments, perhaps using insults, putdowns or patronising reasoning to get your point across.
Will this change government policy? Will it change the minds of people who are anti-immigration? Of course not, but in that moment you feel like it could, and it feels good.
And again, it doesn’t matter where you find yourself in this drama, while you’re a biological organism that is acting out your primeval urge to survive through modern tools and strategies, you’ll keep the game going and you will stay stuck.
This is how they get you - and it’s nothing new.
Politicians, dictators, media oligarchs, shady actors and bad bosses have been doing this for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years.
They know that if you want to control people, grab them by the nervous system.
The way out of the drama
Once upon a time I might have encouraged that you rise above it all - to ‘instantly dissolve the drama’.
I think that’s because I wanted that for myself.
I spent decades trying to clean out all my shit so that nothing could touch me. I got so fed up with being pulled about by the theatrics of politics and media, as well as the genuine suffering and injustice in the world, that I wanted to therapise myself into emotional invincibility.
It’s taken until my mid-40s to realise that I’m a human being that is always going to have an issue with people and the natural environment being exploited or harmed, and by other people actively not caring.
It’s normal and natural and makes me who I am.
However, there’s a ‘but’.
Do I want to feel frustrated or angry every time I stick on the radio or pass a newstand?
Do I want to be willfully manipulated by algorithms and comment threads?
Do I want to be sucked into the dramas that various actors invite us all into, and pit myself against my neighbours?
Absolutely not.
So there’s a balance to be struck.
What I aim to do is notice the physical signs and tensions that accompany certain conversations or experiences.
I know they alert me to the fact I am being urged to react - these are the invitations to drama.
I notice these moments and what happens to me, and I take a moment just see them for what they are: normal responses to external stimuli.
I will almost always just give myself a bit of understanding, internally take a step back and try to ease up.
I will often use a model like the drama triangle to see what’s going on. This immediately depersonalises the situation and helps to loosen my conviction that I know what’s going on and what needs to be done.
I can see the roles people are being cast into and how acting out my irritations, frustrations or anxieties won’t lead to any kind of constructive outcome.
If I haven’t just moved on with my day by now, I might notice where I’m invited to position myself and ask a few questions:
How am I called to react and in whose interest is that?
What’s really going on here? How could I understand it better?
Who else is involved? What are motivations and needs?
Who already understands this issue and what are they doing about it?
What would it take to actually address it and do I want to contribute?
And most days, I might not do any of this but just take a big, deep breath, put my phone down, close the tab on my laptop or turn off the radio and go engage with my kids, or my dog, or my work.
It’s particularly useful if I’m in an actual, difficult conversation. Someone else might be triggered or looking for a drama, but I can see or feel the invitation and choose to turn it down.
I can ask the questions that help me to see why they feel the way they do, which in turn gives me a better understanding of the complexity of the situation.
But just to reiterate, this isn’t about passivity or inaction. There are so many problems around us that do need our attention. They might be used to manipulate us but they are sources of real injustice.
Take the hot issue in the UK of asylum-seekers and ‘small boats’. People are genuinely suffering. Men, women and children are drowning in the sea and, even if they get here, the situation is being handled really badly. People have good reason to be upset and angry.
But anyone who truly cares wants meaningful action.
And meaningful action means addressing a complex issue with care and attention, not simply lashing out in reaction to populist policies and headlines.
Perhaps I can use my anger or despair to power my desire to do something meaningful, but at the same time, I don’t want to let it eat me up and burn me out.
Because no matter how much this thing is demanding my attention and provoking me to react, I’m not going to be the one to solve this problem and I’m not the victim. And I certainly don’t want to be the persecutor.
I might want to act or contribute but if I do that mindlessly, I’m just another pawn or collateral damage in the culture war.
So rather than turning the other way, it’s about seeing things for what they are and being discerning.
Because the thing about the culture wars is that it’s almost never about the drama that’s going on in front of you, but the agenda of the people behind the scenes.
And, in a way, the most powerful thing you can do is not fall for the distraction, but make sure you’re paying attention to the sleight of hand.
If you’d like to better understand the drama triangle and how to use it, I’m running a talk on the 5th December 2023. You can sign up here