Seeking Herd Immunity for Our Relationship Pandemic

While the word ‘change’ normally refers to new beginnings, real transformation happens more often when something falls apart. Richard Rohr

For the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccine is moving us toward herd immunity.  For our relationship pandemic, we are moving toward cultural disintegration. When it comes to relationships, our ability to wound and harm has outstripped out ability to heal and restore. Like our health care system at the height of COVID, our relationship infrastructure is overwhelmed.

We face two relationship challenges: isolation and polarization. Isolation is withdrawing from others in a way that contributes to loneliness and even depression. Polarization is letting our differences feed contempt, anger and ultimately hate that divides us. Both separate us and each contributes to the other. 

What does a relationship pandemic look like? In the aftermath of COVID, Mental Health America reports that the number of people looking for help with anxiety and depression in 2020 was up 93% over 2019. Even prior to COVID we were a society compelled to coin a new term “deaths of despair” to adequately describe soaring suicides and drug overdoses. Sixty-eight mass shootings occurred in the past two months.   

Our cancel culture has intensified as the new normal, simultaneously condemned and practiced by partisan groups on all sides. Increasingly your brand of sneaker, fast food choice or the type of car you drive is a tribal signal of virtue or evil. Professional sports teams and other corporate brands are caught in the middle of competing ideological movements and at times even increases  the divide regardless of what they say or do – or don’t. 

Congress wallows in gridlock, unable to act on issues such as immigration and infrastructure. Local schools are fighting street corner by street corner over Critical Race Theory curriculum. 

Edelman has coined the term “infodemic” to capture the reality that people don’t know where or from whom to get reliable information.  News content and providers are now heavily influenced and incentivized by tribal affiliations to mostly tell one side of a story. Trust in all news sources has hit record lows with traditional media seeing the largest drop in trust at eight points globally last year.  

Clearly, COVID accelerated our dependence on technology and social media. It can be a powerful force for good, and it also enables relationship isolation and relationship warfare on a scale never seen before.

Where do we look to find sources of constructive societal change that helps us lower the hate and increase the love? The government, religion, corporations, non-profits?

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places  

What the hell is wrong with us?  California Gov. Gavin Newsom after the May 26 mass railway shooting killing nine in San Jose

It is a question we are all asking but I think it is the wrong question. It implies that there is something present that needs fixing. Rather, there is something missing. Not something we need to perfect but something we need to add – that might bring wholeness. 

What is it? It seems we have moved from a culture that espoused the idea of ‘love your neighbor’ but practiced it very poorly – to a society that honors hate which it increasingly practices with passion and precision. Where did the ideal of love come from? For many historically it came from faith – no matter how poorly practiced. This faith taught love of neighbor, and because love is such a challenging ideal, it was filled with failure and hypocrisy as evidenced by priests preying on children, greedy religious leaders and exclusion based on race/gender/sexual orientation. Nonetheless the ideal mostly prevailed. 

Today ours is a society that increasingly points with secular pride to ridding ourselves of the hypocrisy of faith and particularly organized religion without acknowledging the attendant discarding of its aspirational ideals. It seems, at least in the public square and in much of social media, we have dropped any pretense of loving our neighbor. Hate is the new “love” – we seem to love hating our enemies. 

The authors of an article in Science Magazine, citing an extensive review of recent survey data, have coined a new term, Political Sectarianism to describe a major shift in today’s brand of polarization. Historically our differences related to ideological policies and goals. Today they reflect more of a desire to dominate our abhorrent opposition – our enemies. Our politics are driven less by what we believe and more by who we hate.  

In a society where so many cultural leaders have discredited and disabled faith, we have also discarded teachings, as old as recorded history, that help restore and heal our very predictable broken relationships. Sure, we still have a government whose laws address relationship challenges and conflict: murder, theft, adultery, divorce, assault. We have made great strides in writing laws that deal with discrimination and hate based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. Yet conformance to the law is a poor substitute for acceptance and love of the other.

In recent years we have also seen larger, often public companies move to become more socially responsible regarding gender and racial equality. But for-profit companies charged with earning a return for shareholders, whose pay practices have often fed a growing income equality gap, are unlikely to be a credible force for cultural change in building stronger, loving relationships. As we have seen recently, their involvement can actually fuel the fire of cancel culture and polarization: Just ask Coca Cola and Home Depot who were targeted for boycotts as they became embroiled in Major League Baseball’s removal of the All-Star Game out of Atlanta over changes to Georgia voting laws.  Or, Apple who during anti-government protests in Hong Kong, removed an app that helped protesters track the police, after facing intense pressure from the Chinese state media.

So where shall we look for a cultural-altering force to restore relationships? Often historically the “go-to” answer for solving big problems was finding a better king. In today’s world where politics is the new religion, the hope is that we can elect the right President, gain control of Congress for our side or pass the right laws and install the right policies.  Clearly stronger, better leadership is a key, but in a democratic system, it is voters who elect leaders and in recent times they have been drawn to dividers more often than uniters. How do we become a culture that values and chooses greater relational cohesion?

Seeking Cultural Change

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Peter Drucker

Culture also eats good political and corporate intentions for dessert. The restoration that we need will require a level of cultural change that shifts the soul and spirit of our society including the type of politicians we elect. We need a cultural revolution that yields a relationship revival. 

Interestingly, the word culture has its origin in the Latin word colere which means to till, cultivate or grow.  UNESCO has defined culture as the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society or a social group." Culture is much like the wind, mostly you cannot see it but you can see its effects – we might refer to it as spirit or breath of our society. When we combine “relationship,” from the Latin relātus, meaning to bear or to carry, with “culture” – relationship culture – we get: cultivating the spirit to bear or carry each other. 

So how do you “re-form” a culture? It is a question that CEOs, coaches, pastors and other leaders face daily. Louis Gerstner former CEO of IBM astutely observed: “management doesn't change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.” Cultural change is not something you can command, force or buy.  It is by invitation, it is RSVP – our citizens can accept the invite or send their regrets. 

Change will start when we become so weary of this relationship falling-apart that we decide to think and act differently – failing forward. As former General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said regarding the sectarian violence in Iraq: “If the Iraqi people as a whole decided today that, in my words now, they love their children more than they hate their neighbor…this could come to quick conclusion.” The same challenge applies to us: Can we love what unites us more than hate what divides us? 

Today’s relationship pain now presents us with a choice to make and an opportunity to seize. In the famous words of Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff under President Obama and mayor of Chicago: “never let a serious crisis go to waste.”  Our relationship crisis, punctuated by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, now provides the opportunity – what change experts call a burning platform – for a new generation to let go of our dysfunction and cultivate a more cohesive relationship culture.

A Relationship ‘Bill of Responsibilities’

In a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is easy to say we need cultural change that restores our relational bankruptcy – but cultural change to do what?  Cultural change is hard and always incurs resistance – especially when imposed top-down.   What set of beliefs and actions for change could be compelling enough to reshape us into a stronger relationship culture?   There is no snappy answer.

As a place to start though, let me suggest four relational practices that are breath-takingly old, obvious and, yes, religious – not to be confused with easy – and that seem to have fallen out of fashion in today’s culture. Think of them as a ‘Relational Bill of Responsibilities’ – not Rights. If as a culture we could re-purpose and re-value them, it might enable progress toward herd immunity for our relationship pandemic:

1.    Practice gratitude: Being thankful for everything and everyone you are in relationship with is life-altering. An executive that I worked with for nearly a decade recently thanked me for my most valuable advice: keep a gratitude journal. Oprah has shared that being thankful is the best thing we can do for ourselves and others. As a culture, these words are golden: “He who knows he has enough is rich.”  So often our relational poverty – racism, classism, elitism, cancel culture – comes from our inability to appreciate what others bring. So many of our deepest wounds come from others who will not see us “wholly” – our attributes and our deficiencies.

If we could be more thankful for whatever attributes we have as a country, it might inform and soften the debate about our weaknesses – the evil empire vs. American Exceptionalism disagreement. â€œHelp me be thankful for what I’ve got and let go of what I’ve not.” Don’t let what you have-not, undermine what you have.

2.    Admit our wrongs.   Having a spirit of admission or confession begins with a very simple assumption: We are imperfect, frequently miss the mark and there is much mystery out there that no one understands. We are not God. So, if you believe in God there should be no problem of mistaken identity. If you don’t believe in God – case closed – it is very inconvenient to believe you are what you do not believe exists. Confession of our wrongs is where we start. No relational healing, trust or restoration can take place without it. It is not optional.   

Self-righteousness seems to be an ego-born, relationship-wounding virus infecting the globe. Richard Rohr calls opinions: “an idea you have wrapped your ego around.” Unfortunately, often in the name of righteous compassion and caring for one group, we have wrongfully inflicted pain on another: Being blind to our role – well-intentioned or not – that has actively or passively contributed to race-based discrimination. Abuse or discounting of women. Supporting women by degrading whole groups of men.  Using our faith to condemn other faiths or non-belief as a weapon to attack religion.  Condemning racial discrimination by indiscriminately hating others.  Richard Rohr nails the goal: “oppose hate without becoming hate.”  

3.    Turnaround when you are wrong: Confessing only works if we take the next step: turnaround. In the original Hebrew translation, repent meant ‘turn about’, change your direction. Sometimes that means re-calibrating our beliefs but often it doesn’t. Given the rise in political sectarianism what is most needed is to change how we treat each other, in spite of our ideological differences. I recently introduced the term “relational moderate” to differentiate between our ideological beliefs versus how we treat others. “Relational moderates” agree to listen to those with whom they differ, be open to being influenced and treat the other side with respect. Ideology does not need to define relational treatment. 

Turnaround is another word for change. What does that look like today? It means a press seeking the truth even when, and especially when, it is counter to their beliefs or tribal “religion.” It means politicians who have a higher value for their country than their re-election or their party. This applies not just to the press and politicians, but also to each of us. Psychologists and theologians agree confession is good for the soul but what makes it sustainability is being accompanied by an openness to changing our actions and behaviors.

4.    Seek and offer forgiveness.   Cancelling and punishing offenders of our beliefs and values have become culturally today’s go-to move. If we are to have any hope, restoration and redemption must be our aim. That means we must become agents of forgiveness willing to offer forgiveness to those who have victimized us and to seek forgiveness from those we have offended. The word for offense in the original Greek was “skandalon” which referred to the bait-mechanism in a trap. Unforgiveness is the trap that shackles us all. A society that does not practice forgiveness leaves oppressors and victims alike trapped, unable to move forward. 

Often there is concern that generous forgiveness undermines accountability.  But the opposite is true. Absence of forgiveness leaves oppressors and victims unaccountable. It is in restored relationship that there is the greatest hope for accountability.    

What if as a culture, we applied these four relational practices – individually in way that cumulatively, bottom-up changed us – moved us closer to herd immunity? Unfortunately, there exists no relationship vaccine or a God-like superpower that will magically appear. It requires hard, trying work.  I believe in a transcendent God whose highest aim is to help us love and be in relationship.  Not everyone does. Regardless, I believe these are inspired relational tools that can help restore relationships. 

It is time. Our relationship pandemic is too precious to waste. 

Robert’s latest book, “This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith” is now in paperback. A “recovering CEO,” he has authored 200 published articles and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The CEO Magazine, The Atlantic. His website: www.robertehall.com