Chapter 11: Us Versus Them

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Okay, let's unpack this.

Imagine for a moment the set of the original Planet of the

in incredibly realistic chimp and gorilla costumes.

Now, what do you think happened at lunchtime?

Everyone just mingling.

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

But no, no.

The actors playing chimps and those playing gorillas, they actually ate in separate groups.

Wild, isn't it?

It's wild, but it perfectly illustrates this core human thing we're diving into.

Like Robert Benchley said, there are two kinds of people,

those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.

And it seems like the first kind is, well, almost unavoidable for us.

Exactly.

So today we're really digging into our deep -seated drive to instantly create these us and them categories.

Indeed.

And our mission here in this deep dive is to understand just how fast, how automatically our brains do this, how malleable these categories are.

And maybe the biggest question, can we ever really overcome this human clannishness, the xenophobia?

And our guide for this is Robert Sapolsky's amazing work in Behave.

We're aiming to give you, especially if you're a student tackling this, a clear summary of the biology and psychology behind it all.

Okay, so speed.

You said fast.

How fast are we talking?

What's the science actually show about these immediate gut reactions?

It's honestly instantaneous.

Your amygdala, think of it as your brain's threat detector.

It can light up within just 50 milliseconds when you see a face from another racial group.

50 milliseconds.

Wow.

That's before you even know you've seen it practically.

Pretty much.

And get this, the fusiform face area, the part that's usually all about recognizing faces.

It actually responds less strongly to other race faces than same race ones.

So it's like your brain isn't even engaging as much with a them face.

In a way, yeah.

It's happening below conscious awareness, a kind of pre -conscious sorting.

That shows how deep it goes.

It's not just a thought, it's like a reflex.

So how do scientists even measure something that subtle and unconscious?

Well, that's where the implicit association test, the IAT, comes in.

It's fiendishly clever, really.

Okay.

How does it work?

Okay.

Imagine you're sitting at a computer, you see pictures, maybe humans and trolls and words, some positive, honest, some negative, deceitful.

You might have to press one key for human or positive, another for troll or negative, easy enough,

but then they switch the pairings.

So now it's human or negative, troll or positive.

Exactly.

And if you have this unconscious, automatic bias, pairing troll with positive, say, creates this tiny hiccup, a moment of cognitive dissonance.

So you hesitate.

Just for a few milliseconds, but that hesitation, that tiny delay, that's the test measuring the unconscious association.

It's automatic, not you thinking about historical grievances or anything, just a split second pause.

Okay.

So there's clearly a biological underpinning here.

What about hormones?

We hear about oxytocin, the love hormone, right?

Bonding and stuff.

We do.

But its role in us versus them is, well, it's complicated.

It's got a real dark side.

Dark side.

How so?

Well, while it definitely promotes trust and cooperation within your us,

it also seems to foster, let's say crappier behavior towards them.

Crappier how?

More preemptive aggression in games, like economic simulations.

People are more willing to sacrifice an outsider for the good of their own group when oxytocin levels are high.

So it's like a loyalty amplifier, but only inwards and maybe defensive outwards.

That's a good way to put it.

It's like a double -edged sword, massively boosting our tribal instincts.

And this isn't just humans, you know, other species are big on use them too.

Like the chimps in the Planet of the Apes story.

Exactly.

Chimps will literally kill males from rival groups.

And they've even done a kind of chimp IAT.

Chimps look longer at pictures that don't fit their bias, like seeing a picture of one of their group members next to something negative, like a spider, versus seeing an outsider with a spider.

So they have negative associations.

It's not just fighting over banana.

Right.

It suggests deeper negative feelings, not just resource competition.

Okay.

So ancient instincts, brain chemistry.

But it also seems like we can create these divisions out of almost nothing.

You mentioned minimal group paradigms.

Ah, yes.

Henri Toshville's work.

It's fascinating.

He showed you can group people based on completely arbitrary things, like did you overestimate or underestimate the number of dots you just saw on a screen?

Dots.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Totally meaningless.

But instantly people start showing in -group bias.

They'll give more resources, like points or to anonymous strangers who just happen to be in the same meaningless dot guesser group.

Wow.

So it takes almost nothing to trigger that us feeling.

Almost nothing.

It's like a psychological green beard effect, you know, sharing some tiny meaningless trait makes you feel an instant connection.

And this helps explain how invisible things like values or beliefs get attached or yoked to visible arbitrary markers.

Like a hat or?

Exactly.

A Stetson versus a sari.

Or think about a national flag.

It starts as just a colored cloth.

Right.

Arbitrary.

But it becomes loaded with meaning.

Something people will, well, kill and die for.

The symbol becomes the signified thing itself.

And this starts young, doesn't it?

Like really young.

Oh, yeah.

By ages three or four, kids are already grouping by race and gender.

They often have more negative views of the thems.

They even perceive other race faces as angrier.

Three or four.

That's tiny.

It is.

Even infants show a preference for same race faces in recognition tests.

It points to something really fundamental.

Is that just learned from parents, though, picking up prejudices?

Not necessarily.

And that's a crucial point.

Kids grow up seeing non -random patterns.

If an infant mainly sees faces of one skin color, the first face they see that's different stands out simply because it's different.

It becomes salient.

OK.

So novelty plays a role.

It does.

And we see this flip with adoption.

Kids adopted before age eight by someone of a skills for their adoptive parents race.

Their environment shapes their expertise.

Huh.

And even seemingly harmless things like a teacher saying good morning, boys and girls constantly reinforces these dichotomies.

It also shows why just not talking about race with kids, which some well -meaning people do, can actually backfire.

It lets those automatic ESM processes run without any critical thought challenging them.

Right.

You leave a vacuum and the automatic stuff fills it.

OK.

So let's recap this first part.

The power of ESM comes from its speed,

its automatic unconscious nature, the fact that we see it across species and tiny kids and how incredibly easy it is to create these groups from

basically nothing, arbitrary differences.

That sums it up pretty well.

It's a potent talktale.

So we know how it forms.

Let's shift gears.

What's it actually feel like to be in us?

What does that mindset involve?

And what are the downsides?

Well, being part of an us feels good, mostly.

We tend to inflate our group's qualities, right?

We think we are smarter, more moral, just better.

Our food tastes better.

Our music's the best.

Our way is the right way.

Yeah.

A bit of collective ego boosting.

Yeah, totally.

But beyond that, usness is deeply about shared obligations,

trust,

reciprocity.

Think about the prisoner's dilemma game.

Right.

Cooperate or betray.

Exactly.

In one -off games, betrayal often wins.

But play it multiple times where reputation matters.

Cooperation flourishes.

Groups naturally create that dynamic.

Economic game studies show we trust in -group members more, cooperate more readily.

Like that study with the soccer fans.

Perfect example.

Fans were much more likely to help an injured person if that person was wearing their team's jersey, that immediate sense of they're one of us.

That loyalty runs deep.

And it even affects how we handle mistakes, right?

Making amends.

Absolutely.

We feel a much stronger obligation to apologize or make things right if we've wronged someone in our us compared to an outsider in them.

And sometimes, weirdly, people might even try to show loyalty to their group by being nastier to an out -group.

Like the guiltier you feel about letting your own side down, the harsher you might become towards rivals.

Oh, whoa.

That's a dark twist on loyalty.

It really is.

And it brings up a key question.

When we favor our group, is the goal just for us to do well?

Or is it actually about doing better than them?

Hmm.

Is there a difference?

There can be.

Both happen.

Wanting to do better makes sense in zero -sum situations like sports.

Only one team wins.

And our brains actually reward us for this.

You get a dopamine hit not just when your team wins, but also when a rival team loses to someone else.

Ah, schadenfreude.

Taking pleasure in their failure.

Exactly.

Gloating.

Their pain is literally your brain's gain.

And historically, this can be horrific.

Think of Douglas Haig in World War I.

His strategy of ceaseless attrition.

Just grinding down the enemy.

Massive casualties on both sides.

Right.

The justification wasn't about the British forces achieving a clear objective efficiently.

It was about ensuring the Germans lost at least as many men, preferably more.

The goal became us beating them, no matter the cost to us.

Grim.

And you can actually trigger this.

Like prime people.

Yeah.

Studies show if you subtly prime people with concepts of loyalty, they show stronger in -group favoritism.

Prime them with equality.

And the opposite happens.

It's manipulable.

Okay.

So loyalty,

competition.

What about empathy?

Do we feel for them the same way we feel for us?

Often no.

Your amygdala fires up when you see fearful faces, sure.

But it's much more pronounced for faces from your us.

So seeing them scared doesn't trigger the same response.

It might not.

Or worse, it could even register as good news, depending on the context.

There's also this reflex, the isomorphic sensorimotor thing, basically.

You slightly tense your own hand if you see someone else's hand getting poked.

Okay.

That reflex is significantly stronger if you're watching a hand of the same race as you, compared to a different race.

It suggests empathy isn't always evenly distributed.

And we forgive us more easily too, right?

We do.

If one of us screws up, we tend to look for situational excuses.

Oh, they were under pressure or it was a tough situation.

But if one of them does the exact same thing, well, that's just how they are.

We attribute it to their inherent nature.

That's the fundamental attribution error, but applied tribally.

Okay.

So mostly we boost us and forgive us.

But what about when someone from our group does something bad that actually confirms a negative stereotype about us?

Ah, that's a fascinating dynamic.

It can actually lead to a harsher punishment within the group.

Harsher.

Why?

It's about signaling to outsiders.

Think about Rudy Giuliani, who built a career prosecuting mafia figures.

As an Italian American, he was acutely aware of that stereotype and, by accounts, fiercely motivated to show that Italian Americans weren't defined by organized crime.

So punishing your own to protect the group's image.

Exactly.

It underlines the idea that being in a group means someone else's bad behavior can reflect badly on you.

So sometimes the group polices its own quite severely to manage that external perception.

That adds another layer of complexity.

And thinking about group membership,

sometimes it feels transactional.

A pro athlete on a team, there are obligations, but they're defined maybe temporary.

Right.

What Sapolsky calls contractual memberships.

Obligations are finite, maybe even fungible.

You can trade players.

But then there are other memberships that totally feel different.

Sacred, almost.

Like religious identity or nationality for some.

Exactly.

Sacred values memberships.

These are non -negotiable, non -fungible.

You don't trade someone from being Shiite to Sunni.

Converts often face intense, sometimes violent backlash.

These values transcend simple cost -benefit analysis.

It makes you think about your relationship with, say, your country.

Is it contractual taxes for services?

Or is it a sacred fatherland demanding unwavering loyalty?

A very relevant distinction.

Okay.

We've looked at the U .S.

mindset.

Now let's flip it.

Let's talk about those thems.

Are there consistent ways we tend to view outsiders?

Oh, absolutely.

The patterns are pretty stark.

We tend to see them as threatening, often angry, definitely untrustworthy.

Threatening.

Like aliens in movies.

Funny you mentioned that.

One analysis looked at nearly a hundred space alien movies.

Almost 80 % depicted the aliens as hostile, malevolent.

80%.

And implicit bias studies back this up in the real world.

People are quicker to perceive anger in African -American faces compared to white faces, even when the expressions are neutral.

And get this.

When people feel hostile towards a rival group or nation, they literally underestimate the physical distance to that rival's stadium or country.

So threat makes them seem closer, more immediate.

Seems like it.

It's a very consistent negative lens.

Beyond just threat, what other feelings get triggered by them?

Disgust plays a huge role.

A really huge role.

There's a brain area, the insular cortex.

Normally it handles basic, gustatory disgust like rotten food.

But in humans, it's job expanded.

It also activates for moral disgust or aesthetic disgust.

So not just bad taste, but bad behavior.

Right.

Or things we find repellent.

Images of, say, drug addicts or the homeless often activate the insula, not necessarily the amygdala's fear circuits.

As psychologist Paul Rosen put it, disgust serves as an ethnic or outgroup marker.

How does that work?

Well, if you establish that they eat disgusting things, it creates this kind of slippery slope.

It provides momentum for deciding they also have disgusting ideas or disgusting morals.

Ah, linking physical revulsion to moral judgment.

Exactly.

And people who have generally strong negative attitudes towards various outgroups often have a lower threshold for interpersonal disgust.

Like, they really wouldn't want to wear a stranger's sweater, that kind of thing.

And what about making fun of them?

Ridicule.

Yeah, that's another common tactic.

When an in -group mocks an outgroup, it does a couple of things.

It reinforces negative stereotypes, obviously, but it also solidifies the social hierarchy.

Makes us feel superior.

People high in what's called social dominance orientation, basically.

People who are comfortable with inequality and hierarchy tend to enjoy jokes targeting outgroups more.

Okay, so threat, disgust, ridicule.

How do we think about them cognitively?

Do we simplify them?

Massively.

That's where essentialism comes in.

It's the tendency to view them as, well, simpler than us, more homogenous, like they're all the same, interchangeable, almost.

While we are all unique individuals.

Precisely.

They are seen as having this monolithic, unchanging, often kind of icky essence.

David Berryby gives examples throughout history.

Elites stereotyping slaves or lower classes as fundamentally simple, childlike, incapable of complexity.

Does that come from just not knowing them?

Lack of interaction?

Lack of interaction definitely fuels it, makes it easier.

But it's not strictly required.

Think about essentialist ideas people hold about the opposite sex, even with constant interaction.

It's a mental shortcut our brains seem prone to taking.

So thems basically come across as threatening, disgusting, maybe ridiculous, primitive and sort of interchangeable.

Undifferentiated.

Captures the main flavors, yeah.

Threat, disgust, ridicule, simplicity, homogeneity.

Okay, we've mapped out the quick formation, the US bubble, the negative view of them.

This leads to a big question.

How much of this negative thinking about them is just us justifying feelings we already have?

Are the thoughts just rationalizations?

That's essential tension.

We build these complex cognitive arguments, right?

They're taking our jobs, they're diluting our culture, whatever it is.

But a lot of research, like Jonathan Haidt's work, strongly suggests the core of e -stemming is emotional and automatic first.

The gut feeling comes first?

The reason follows.

Often, yes.

The cognitions are frequently post -hoc justifications.

Remember how quickly the amygdala, fear, aggression and the insula, disgust, activate?

That's happening before conscious thought really gets going.

The feeling seems to precede the elaborate explanation.

Are there examples where the original reason is just lost?

Absolutely.

Think about the cagos in France.

They were a despised minority persecuted for centuries.

But by the end, nobody actually remembered why they were originally considered pariahs.

The negative feeling, the e -stem division, persisted long after any rational basis, if there ever was one, was forgotten.

It highlights the automaticity.

And this tendency to dislike various thems, is it always specific or is it sometimes just general disposition?

Often it's more of a general disposition.

Theodore Adorno's work on the authoritarian personality suggested that prejudice against a whole range of outgroups often stems from a particular temperament, someone who's uncomfortable with novelty, with ambiguity.

It's less about a coherent set of beliefs against each group and more about an underlying affective style, a general negativity towards difference.

So if you dislike one outgroup, you're more likely to dislike others too, just because they're different.

Frequently, yes.

It seems driven more by feeling than by specific illogical objections to each group.

And the really strong evidence for emotions driving this is that you can manipulate the rational thoughts unconsciously, right?

Exactly.

That's some of the most compelling evidence.

Remember the study where priming loyalty versus equality changed how physically close people sat to members of their own group versus an outgroup?

Yeah, unconsciously shifting behavior.

Or the Moldova study.

People knew nothing about Moldova, but seeing subliminal happy or angry faces briefly flashed before the country's name significantly changed their overall opinion of the place.

Wow.

Just a fleeting image.

Totally unconscious.

Or that train experiment having two ordinary looking Mexican individuals just quietly chatting nearby subtly made commuters more supportive of stricter immigration policies, but only towards Mexicans.

The influence was specific and entirely below the radar.

So our feelings and even our policy opinions can be swayed without us even knowing it.

It appears so.

Even basic biology plays a role.

Carlos Navarrete found that white women,

specifically when ovulating a time of high hormones,

show slightly more negative implicit attitudes towards African American men,

hormones modulating the intensity of the use -essam bias.

That's wild.

And then there's that irrational magical contagion idea too.

Right.

The belief that essences can transfer.

People valuing JFK's sweater less after its wash or Madoff's belongings more after sterilization.

Or chillingly, the Nazis killing dogs owned by Jews because they were Jewish dogs.

It's completely irrational purely based on this idea of symbolic contamination.

So the feelings are powerful, automatic, easily triggered, and then our rational mind jumps in to explain it all away.

Pretty much.

That's rationalization powered by confirmation bias.

The hanging chads in the 2000 election is a classic example.

Instantly, both sides generated passionate, elaborate reasons why the other side's interpretation was not just wrong, but an existential threat.

We grab onto evidence that supports our feeling.

We remember it better, we seek it out, we test things in ways designed to confirm what we already believe, and we're way more skeptical of results we don't like.

Our thinking brain works overtime to make our gut feelings seem logical.

Okay.

This has painted a pretty sobering picture of human nature so far.

Automatic divisions, biases, rationalizations, but it's not the whole story, right?

Humans have some unique twists on this you -seem stuff, and maybe some hope for bridging the gaps.

Definitely.

It's not all doom and gloom.

A crucial human difference is that we belong to multiple you -sees simultaneously.

Ah, right.

I'm not just one thing.

Exactly.

You're a vertebrate, maybe a scientist, a fan of a certain team, a resident of a town, tons of categories, and which one feels most important can shift dramatically depending on the context.

Like that example of Asian American women taking a math test.

Perfect one.

Prime their Asian identity associated with math skill stereotypes, and they do better.

Prime their female identity associated with negative math stereotypes, and they do worse.

The salient us changes the outcome.

So these categories aren't fixed hierarchies.

Not at all.

And the idea of race as this fundamental biological use -them marker, it's actually pretty flimsy biologically.

It's largely a cultural construct, genetic variation within so -called racial groups is often as large or larger than the average variation between them.

So biologically, race isn't a very meaningful category.

Not in the way we often treat it socially.

And evolutionary arguments for it being a core divider are weak, too.

Our distant ancestors rarely, if ever, encountered groups that looked dramatically different in terms of skin color.

Other categories, gender, age, kinship, maybe language group, were likely far more relevant historically.

And even today, race can easily be overridden by occupation or shared interests or… Or even just wearing the same color shirt in an experiment.

Right.

The minimal group thing again, this malleability, this ability to shift categories, is key.

And this recategorization can happen even in extreme situations.

You mentioned wartime examples.

Yeah, some incredibly poignant ones.

During the American Civil War, there's a story of a wounded Confederate general giving him a sonic distress signal.

A Union officer, also a Mason, saw it and immediately risked his own safety to help him.

So Mason on Mason trumped Union Confederate in that moment?

Instantly.

Or think of the famous WWE Christmas Truce in 1914.

Soldiers from opposing trenches spontaneously stopped fighting, shared gifts, played soccer.

For that brief time, the salient identity became us guys in the muddy trenches versus them officers back in the comfortable headquarters.

The shared experience created a new us.

That's powerful.

It shows how context can radically redefine the boundaries.

Okay, so the boundaries can shift.

But how do we understand the different kinds of thems we perceive?

Is it always just threat or disgust?

No, it's more nuanced.

Susan Fisk's stereotype content model is really useful here.

It maps stereotypes onto two main axes.

Warmth, basically.

Are they friend or foe?

Do they have good or bad intentions towards us?

And competence.

How capable are they of carrying out those intentions?

Warmth and competence.

Like a grid.

Exactly.

It creates four main quadrants.

High warmth, high competence.

That's usually us, our in -group.

We feel pride.

Makes sense.

What about the others?

Low warmth, low competence groups, often stereotyped this way, include the homeless, maybe some addicts.

The feeling evoked is typically disgust.

High warmth, low competence.

Think of the elderly or people with disabilities.

Often seen as harmless, maybe even nice, but not very capable.

The emotion here is pity.

Right.

And the last one?

This one's really interesting.

Low warmth, high competence.

These are groups seen as capable, maybe even highly successful, but cold, untrustworthy, maybe competitors.

Think of stereotypes sometimes applied to rich people or historically to groups like Jews or Asian Americans in certain contexts.

The feeling here is envy.

Maybe suspicion.

Envy.

That's complex.

And different brain areas light up for each.

Yes.

Distinct patterns of brain activation are associated with pride, disgust, pity, and envy when thinking about these different groups.

And crucially, people and groups can move between these boxes in our perception.

Absolutely.

And these shifts can be incredibly consequential.

Give us an example.

Well, watching a parent decline with dementia might shift your perception from high

eye, pride, to high warmth, low competence, pity.

A business partner who betrays you might go from high, high pride trust to low warmth, high competence and vanguard distrust.

Okay.

Those make sense.

What about bigger group shifts?

Think about perceptions of Japan in the West.

Maybe initially low, low, disgust, pity after WWII, then shifting towards low warmth, high competence, envy, respect, as their economy boomed and made in Japan became a mark of quality.

Ah, interesting.

And you mentioned a particularly dangerous shift.

Yes.

The shift from low warmth, high competence, envy, down to low warmth, low competence, disgust.

This often involves humiliating a group perceived as competent but threatening, making them seem pathetic and disgusting instead.

Think of the Nazis forcing Jewish intellectuals to scrub streets or public shaming rituals.

Stripping away the confidence dimension makes them seem merely contemptible.

And moving from envy to disgust,

that paves the way for.

It seems to remove psychological barriers to extreme dehumanization and violence.

It accounts for some of the absolute worst episodes in human history.

Shifting from envy to disgust is a really dangerous path.

That's incredibly sobering.

Okay, so acknowledging all this complexity, the automaticity, the malleability, the different layers of prejudice, what can we actually do about it?

How can we lessen the negative side of estimating?

It's not about flipping a switch and turning it off.

Like you said about stress, it's probably baked in, but we can manage it.

Sapolsky outlined several approaches.

Some are kind of subterranean.

Subterranean, like unconscious.

Yeah.

Using things like subliminal exposure to counter stereotypes, showing respected figures from an outgroup or positive images associated with them.

It chips away at the automatic negative associations.

It shows that automatic doesn't mean fixed or inevitable.

Okay.

What about more conscious efforts?

Conscious cognitive strategies help.

Deliberately engaging in perspective taking, really trying to see the world from a them point of view, actively focusing on counter stereotypical examples.

Even just making your own implicit biases explicit, being aware of them through something like the IAT can be a first step towards controlling them and changing the categories themselves.

Absolutely.

That's huge.

Shifting, which us is most important in a given moment, focusing on shared humanity instead of race or shared professional identity instead of nationality, emphasizing superordinate goals.

Superordinate goals.

Yeah.

That comes from Gordon Allport's contact theory.

Just throwing groups together doesn't always work.

It can even backfire, but bringing them together under specific conditions can reduce prejudice.

Things like

having roughly equal numbers, ensuring equal status and treatment within the contact situation, making sure the contact is sustained over time, having institutional support, and critically,

having shared goals that require cooperation, goals that override the initial group identities.

Like the Robbers Cave experiment.

Yeah.

Getting the rival groups of boys to work together.

Exactly like that.

A common enemy or a common vital task.

And finally, a big one is consciously working against essentialism.

Seeing individuals, not stereotypes.

Individual, individual, individual.

Actively thinking of them as unique people with their own stories and complexities, just like us.

And working to lessen actual hierarchical differences between groups helps, too, as inequality often fuels the negative stereotyping.

This has been a really deep dive, unpacking so much about why we divide the world, and that analogy you brought up earlier is sticking with me.

We don't aim to cure stress, right?

Right.

It's part of life, sometimes even useful.

And maybe us stemming is similar.

We can't just excise maybe we wouldn't even want to completely, because that feeling of belonging, of being in us, can be incredibly positive.

Some of the best moments, feeling safe,

accepted.

Precisely.

That connection is vital.

So the goal isn't eradication, it's management.

It's about trying to make sure our you stem tendencies lean towards the side of angels, as Sapolsky puts it.

Okay, so key takeaways for anyone listening, especially students grappling with this.

First, be deeply suspicious of essentialism.

Recognize when you or others are painting a group with a single, simple brush.

Second, watch out for rationalization notice when strong feelings seem to come first and the elaborate reasons follow.

Third, actively look for and emphasize larger shared goals that cross group lines.

Makes sense.

Fourth, practice perspective taking.

Seriously try to imagine the other's viewpoint.

Fifth, focus on the individual, not the group label.

And maybe sixth, just be mindful of how we talk about groups.

Avoid that trap of blaming some other third party just to make our own us feel better or more united.

Excellent points.

It's about awareness and conscious effort.

Thank you for walking us through all that.

It really gives you a framework for understanding so much human behavior.

It's fundamental stuff, glad we could explore it.

Absolutely.

And maybe a final thought for everyone.

In the meantime,

perhaps give the right of way to people driving cars with the mean people suck bumper sticker.

Ha!

A universal us.

Maybe.

Yeah.

And just keep reminding everyone that we're all basically in it together against Lord Voldemort and the Hell's Slytherin.

Now there's a superordinate goal we can all get behind.