A Personal Perspective: America's health and greatness flow from unity, not division.
Key points
Our tribal instincts are driving us to vilify one another instead of seeking unity.
The truth that sets us free is one we already know: We are to choose love and unity over hate and division.
AI is transforming our world. Let’s use it to overcome division and build a brighter future together.
If you feel anxiety about America's future, especially with the 2024 election approaching, you're not alone. It's a peculiar kind of madness when our right arm attacks our left, each fighting for victory while we bleed from the wounds that are created. Yet this is precisely what's happening in America today. Our adversaries insidiously amplify our divisions as we tear ourselves apart from within, knowing they don't need to defeat us. We're doing it ourselves, ignoring unity's imperative.
Our Founding Fathers and spiritual leaders warned us that division is downfall. Jesus's words "a house divided against itself will not stand" were so profound that Abraham Lincoln invoked them before the Civil War. Hidden within this warning is an even greater truth: A house united will not fall.
We're behaving like two gigantic Red and Blue toddlers, breaking the toys we are fighting over. We've forgotten that "United" is America's first name, that "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one) was our original motto. This wasn't just wordplay. It recognized a fundamental truth: Our strength, our very greatness as a nation lies in unity. True greatness in leadership isn't about conquering the opposing party—it's about embodying and cultivating unity around these foundational principles that define the United States.
The Cost of Division
The price of forgetting this wisdom is mounting up. Over 12 years, America has fallen from 11th to 23rd in the World Happiness Report rankings while mental health challenges, especially among youth, have soared Alarming signs are emerging: rising political violence, growing extremism, and a collective sense of unraveling. Our health and greatness as a nation are inextricably linked to our degree of unity.
Lost in a Sci-Fi World
What’s wrong with our world? Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson captured our dilemma: "The real problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." Just as terraforming has caused climate change, the "technoforming" of our world is leading to psychological climate change—our digital world is reshaping our minds, relationships, and society faster than we can adapt.
We're thinking linearly about nonlinear challenges. Our ancient brains fail to process how rapidly our world is transforming. It’s like trying to get an old computer to run bleeding-edge software. A tsunami of change, particularly driven by artificial intelligence, is overwhelming humanity.
The truth we fear is this: The pace of change has finally exceeded our ability to adapt. We've created a world so misaligned with human nature that it's driving us mad. Consequently, we turn on one another and devolve into tribalism.
The Poison We Consume
In our disorientation, we seek someone to blame. The Other Side becomes our scapegoat, allowing us to avoid a harder truth: We're trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of mutual hatred. An ancient proverb warns, "Hatred is the poison we drink hoping the other person will die." Our hateful polarization is that poison, making us sicker as we mistakenly blame our neighbors for our pain.
The Truth We Already Know
This brings us to a profound realization: The Truth that sets us free is the Truth we already know. It's found in every major spiritual tradition and America's founding principles: We are here to choose love over hate, compassion over selfishness, and unity over division—even though we have the free will not to.
What exactly does the Truth set us free from? It grants us the greatest freedom we can know: freedom from hate, coupled with freedom to love. It also liberates us from the suffering caused by division itself.
Interestingly, "sin" in its original Greek and Aramaic roots means "missing the mark" in archery. If sin is missing the mark, what's the bull's-eye we're meant to aim for in life? We circle back to the Truth we already know—that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, not to hate them. Hatred is failure—not just missing the mark but turning our arrow away from love's bull's-eye to aim at our neighbor's heart instead. We cannot make America great with hate. Whatever temporary victories we gain through hatred are spiritual defeats that will divide our house and cause it to fall.
When we love our neighbors as ourselves, we create unity. Like individual jewels within Indra's net, we each reflect our unique selves in one another, interconnected and interdependent. As U2 captured in "One," "We're one, but not the same...we get to carry each other."
Aligning Technology With Truth
As Thich Nhat Hanh taught, "We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness." Einstein echoed this truth when he observed that our sense of separation is an "optical illusion of consciousness." We must remember: It is Truth that sets us free, not our tribal loyalties.
Now, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, we face a profound choice: Will we design AI to reinforce tribal beliefs, or harness it to help humanity discover deeper truths? The greater the truth we find together, the freer and more secure we become. United in pursuit of truth rather than divided by tribal loyalties, AI could help us transcend the very divisions that keep us from solving our greatest challenges—like poverty, climate change, and social inequality.
This is our extraordinary opportunity: to align this powerful technology with humanity's highest values. AI has the potential to help us see truth more clearly, rising above partisan distortions to reveal our common ground. Together, we can use AI to unite our house around shared truths that serve all humanity.
Unity: Our Only Path Forward
The challenges of our complex, interconnected world demand greater unity than humanity has ever achieved. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned, we must "learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." Unity isn't just our best path forward—it might be our ONLY path forward. Our strength lies in diversity united by shared purpose and truth.
Choosing Freedom Through Unity
The path forward requires us to make clear choices daily:
Put Unity First: America's greatness flows from uniting diverse perspectives toward shared purpose.
Choose Unity's Side: When asked which side you're on, reply: "I'm on the side of Unity."
Choose Love Over Hate: Reject politicians who build platforms on fear and anger. Choose leaders who build bridges.
Seek Balanced Truth: Choose news sources that prioritize facts over partisan narratives. If your news consistently vilifies one side, it's feeding division, not Truth.
Remember Our Connection: There is no "me" without "we"—we rise or fall together.
Be the Change: Share messages that unite, not divide. Connect with others on shared values and purpose.
Start Conversations Today: Talk with those who hold different views to understand hearts, not change minds.
Demand Bipartisan Solutions: Call for a powerful bipartisan commission focused on reducing polarization.
Help Build Tomorrow: Join the One Unity Project, where we're blending human wisdom with AI's exponential potential to solve humanity's greatest challenges. Think Wikipedia meets problem-solving---an evolving platform to bridge divides, crowdsource solutions, and create the unity our future demands.
Building the House United
Humanity stands at an existential fork in the road. If we had to place a Cosmic Wager on humanity's survival, we'd all bet on unity as the odds-on favorite. This truth we already know—that our deepest purpose is to unify—must light our path forward.
A house united will not fall, but first, we must choose to be that house. The stakes couldn't be higher as AI transforms our world beyond anything we've experienced. If we miss this mark, the House of America, and perhaps even Humanity itself, may fall.
Our choices are clear: Do we choose love, compassion, and unity over hate, selfishness, and division? We merely have to search within for the Truth we already know for the Answer that hits the bull's-eye.
The transformation begins with us. It always has. Let everyone know by proclaiming "I Choose Unity," and let's make unity go viral. Together, we can create the world John Lennon could only imagine.
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