Are we addicted to conflict?

It seems we always create division, just as we're making progress. There has to be a better way.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my son and the world he will step into soon.

Last week I shared an unsettling and illuminating encounter with administrators at his high school that gave me insight into the challenges he faces now. Girls face their own unique challenges — a lack of self-esteem and an obsession-addiction to social media that’s destroying their sense of identity. But I’m also seeing that boys struggle in ways that are no less daunting.

Recently, my son’s first girlfriend ended their relationship — not because of anything he’d done, but because of an abusive dynamic in her family. Understandably, it’s left her feeling fragile, unsafe, and awkward with intimacy.

My son is compassionate and has tried to be empathetic and give her space, but I can see the confusion in his eyes. He’s already learning from bros in his friend group that his ex-girlfriend’s journey is not an unusual one. These young men are doing their best to mold their emerging physical and emotional development to accommodate relationships with girls at risk from a panoply of traumas and social contagions.

Yesterday, my partner and I began to wonder: “Will our son be able to find a healthy relationship with a young woman?”

It wasn’t always this way. When my partner and I were dating it was still challenging to find the right “match,” but the challenges were different. Our biggest concern was finding a mate whose personality, career aspirations, and desire for children/family were in sync with ours. Now younger generations have to sift through potential mates who suffer from increasing rates of mental illness, domestic abuse, drug addiction, gender confusion, and increasing rates of chronic disease.

But there’s something else that’s fundamentally undermining relationships for young people: the growing rift between the sexes.

I saw this fissure emerge a decade ago, and it’s intensified in the last several years, becoming palpable and visible during the 2024 election. Increasingly, young men are moving to the political Right, and young women are moving to the political Left. We’ve long acknowledged the hard-wired differences between men and women (remember Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus?), yet lately we’re encouraged to believe that males are inherently more dangerous creatures.

How did we get there? How did we go from a society that treated women as chattel, then unleashed a feminist movement that empowered us socially and financially, and now positions us as victims of “toxic masculinity”? Why does it feel like we’ve suddenly abandoned decades-long efforts to bring balance to sex roles and relationships between men and women?

I think it’s part of a broader pattern that’s playing out: we crave progress, yet we consistently sabotage it.

Just as we begin to make headway in healing divisions between groups, something shifts. The pendulum that was moving steadily toward greater understanding suddenly reverses course, creating new rifts where bridges were being built. And all too often these new divisions are spearheaded by those claiming to advance the cause they inevitably undermine.

I’ve watched this phenomenon play out in relations between sexes, racial discourse, and LGBTQ+ rights, and it begs the question: As humans, do we actually crave conflict? Do we unconsciously sabotage our own progress because harmony doesn’t provide the meaning or purpose that struggle does?

The relationship between men and women has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past century. In the span of less than 75 years, women gained the right to vote and enter the workforce en masse, secured reproductive rights, and achieved unprecedented financial independence. By the late 1990s it seemed we were heading toward a society where men and women could relate to each other both as equals and complements.

That progress continued steadily until sometime in the early 2000s when the conversation took a sharp turn. Rather than celebrating the natural complementary nature of masculine and feminine energies, we began to frame masculinity itself as problematic—even “toxic.”

Today, young men are confronted with a confusing message: their natural masculine instincts and behaviors are inherently harmful and need to be suppressed. Yet rather than channeling masculine energy in positive directions, we pathologize it. Is it any wonder that boys struggle in education, young men are retreating from relationships, and male suicide rates continue to climb?

Meanwhile, young women face their own crisis. Despite unprecedented opportunities, studies show girls today have lower self-esteem than previous generations. They question their identity more than ever, buffeted by social media pressures and contradictory messages about what it means to be female in the modern world.

It’s a painful irony: just as women gained the freedom to define ourselves on our own terms, new social pressures have emerged to replace the old constraints. Just as men were learning to embrace emotional intelligence alongside traditional strengths, they were told their fundamental nature was problematic and even dangerous. We were making genuine progress toward understanding the two sexes as complementary, rather than competitive. Then, seemingly overnight, we pivoted toward framing gender relations where one “side’s” gain must come at the other's expense.

I’ve noticed similar pattern in race relations. Decades after the Civil Rights Movement we saw saw steady, if imperfect, progress toward integration and equal opportunity. By the early 2000s, racial attitudes had improved significantly compared to previous generations. I witnessed and experienced this first-hand.

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 should have represented the culmination of our progress. It was tangible proof that America could elect a Black president, and for a brief moment it felt like an opportunity to celebrate how far we’d come as a society. But then something shifted. Rather than building on this success, the national conversation pivoted sharply toward emphasizing how far we still had to go.

Instead of mere acknowledging Obama’s race, it became the focal point of his candidacy. Instead of acknowledging his biracial heritage — his mother was White and he was raised by White grandparents — he was uniformly recognized as “Black.” This lop-sided recognition of this ethnic identity was dangerous for a variety of reasons, and the first became clear in the early years of his presidency: it was impossible to criticize Obama without being accused of racism.

The focus on Obama’s race also laid the foundation for intensified discussions of “systemic racism” and critical race theory—frameworks that reduce complex social dynamics to simplistic power struggles between racial groups. The result? By many metrics, Americans report feeling more divided by race today than they did before Obama’s historic election. Polling consistently shows that both Black and White Americans believe race relations have deteriorated, not improved, over the past fifteen years. Once again, just as we appeared to be making substantial progress, the pendulum swung back toward division and conflict.

The evolution of LGBTQ+ rights has followed a similar trajectory. The gay rights movement made remarkable progress over several decades, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. This was the capstone on what had long been the movement’s primary goal: legal recognition for same-sex relationships.

The Obergefell victory should have been a moment for the gay and lesbian community to consolidate gains and focus on building broader cultural acceptance. Instead, the focus shifted immediately and dramatically toward transgender issues—a set of concerns that, while important, are fundamentally different from questions of sexual orientation. The LGB umbrella inexplicably expanded to bring TQ+ Americans into the fold to justify a new battle with new enemies.

The movement that had successfully argued that consenting adults should be free to form relationships regardless of sex suddenly pivoted to complex questions of gender identity. Rather than allowing time for society to adjust and assimilate to one significant change, activists immediately demanded acceptance of an entirely new paradigm that was disconnected from the scientific reality of most Americans. The result has been predictable: backlash towards gays and lesbians, confusion, and division where there might have been continued progress through gradual evolution.

This is a troubling pattern we need to reckon with.

The foundational, classical liberal values of Western society were engineered for progress, yet whenever our efforts begin to bear fruit we’re compelled to shift the conversation in ways that reopen old wounds and create new divisions, new battlefields and new antagonists to replace the old ones.

Which brings me back to my questions: Do we inherently crave conflict and challenges, even when our lives are going well and we are making progress? As a society, why is it so difficult for us to acknowledge victory and move on to new challenges that don’t undermine the progress we’ve made?

Maybe there’s something psychologically compelling about struggle. Maybe being part of a movement fighting for change offers community and a sense of moral clarity that can be addictive. Or, as humans, perhaps conflict and challenge provide meaning, purpose, and identity in our lives that harmony doesn’t.

Activists obviously play a key role in undermining our progress. People who built their identities around fighting specific injustices don’t simply retire when those injustices are substantially addressed. Organizations that raised millions to combat specific problems don’t dissolve when those problems go away. It’s also undeniable that political parties thrive on conflict; they distinguish themselves from the opposition by focusing on divisive issues with binary solutions. And of course the media exploit and amplify division the moment they catch a whiff.

This isn’t to say that all is well in our society. Although the equality gap for women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and transgender Americans has narrowed significantly, it hasn’t been eliminated entirely. But we have to find a better way forward.

I think the first step requires us to recognize the pattern we’re trapped in.

We need to celebrate our victories instead of immediately moving the goalposts. Acknowledging our success doesn’t require us to minimize remaining challenges; it builds goodwill, demonstrates that positive change is possible, and encourages us to work together to build on that progress. It allows us to direct our energy toward legitimate new problems — like the growing class divide that threatens Americans all across the socio-political spectrum.

We need to embrace nuance and complexity instead of reducing social dynamics to simplistic power struggles. Men and women aren’t adversaries; they are complements whose differences, both biological and cultural, create the rich tapestry of human experience. Accepting how far we’ve come in race relations doesn’t require us to deny how much further we have to go. Progress isn’t binary; both realities can coexist.

We also need to acknowledge that human evolution is a process, a series of advances and retreats that occur gradually through relationship building and good-faith dialogue, not through shame and moral condemnation. Demanding immediate and total transformation of deeply held beliefs and longstanding social structures is unrealistic, counterproductive, and invites the backlash we’re seeing on many fronts now.

Finally, we need to ask ourselves some deeply uncomfortable questions about our own motivations. Do we genuinely want harmony and understanding between different groups? Or do we derive meaning, purpose, and identity from the struggle itself?

It’s possible that one the most challenging aspects of human progress isn’t fighting against oppression, but learning to live without the meaning and purpose that struggle provides. Learning to find fulfillment in harmony rather than conflict, in bridge-building rather than battling.

That’s a psychological frontier we’ve yet to explore, but I think it holds the key to breaking our vicious cycle of progress and division and helping us moderate these wild pendulum swings. It could also empower us to build on genuine advances instead of undermining them.

So, can we overcome our craving for conflict long enough to preserve the progress we’ve made? Or are we destined to swing between extremes, forever approaching but never quite reaching the harmony we claim to seek? The answer may depend on whether we allow ourselves to recognize this dangerous pattern — and our own role in perpetuating it.

This is why FAIR’s role remains vital, now more than ever. By promoting pro-human values, FAIR creates space for the bridge-building we desperately need and challenges us to envision what genuine progress might look like if we stopped treating social advancement as a zero-sum game. What might we accomplish if we approached our differences with curiosity rather than condemnation? What bridges might we build if we recognized our shared humanity first and our group identities second?

The path forward isn’t through more division, but instead reminding ourselves what we’ve forgotten in our conflict addiction: lasting progress comes through understanding, not antagonism; through dialogue, not demonization; through seeing others as individuals, not merely as representatives of groups.