How do I stop divisiveness?

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This world, everything is so divided. It’s always “us vs them”, and “them” are always the bad guys. Got into a heated message yesterday with friend (former friend) and ended with me fuming and blocking him and someone else I know who sides with him. I get POd with people who call themselves Catholic yet seem to actively go against church teaching. Seems like everyone is a hypocrite (including me). What’s the point of claiming to be part of a group when you don’t follow what it says?

Then I scroll through Twitter and read the news and get more infuriated and question my own beliefs again… Idk, this political climate, especially in America is so divisive. Amazes me how everything is almost always 50/50, or maybe 60/40 at worse. Just two polar opposites digging at each other and in the end I’m not sure either wins.

So caught up in anger and malice… I need to stop. How? I almost always do this, someone says or does something I find offense to or it triggers a past wound and I end up retreating, marking them off as bad or not to be trusted, then pushing them away.

I feel so disgusted with myself, being jobless now, back at home with parents, hardly doing anything. Mainly just feeding addictions to escape reality. I’m actually thinking of finally doing a social media detox… But if I have nothing else to fill it with its going to go terrible.

Feel like I’m fighting God, fighting others, and fighting myself and it’s tearing me apart. How the hell am I supposed to love myself let alone my enemies?
 
jtwp5 said:
So caught up in anger and malice… I need to stop. How?
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By realizing that we are all sinners, and that you yourself, like most of us here, are not perfect Catholics.

Let it go and work on improving your own faith. Be at peace, and perhaps apologize for your actions.

Channel your “energy” into doing something to help your parents around the house or by getting some physical exercise. And yes, take a break from social media. People are too wrapped up in what other people think and say.
 
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That’s a really great question- this world is never easy to practice love in. But OTOH, what value is this world and our existence without love? Otherwise things operate primarily on ego, more or less godless, empty, and futile living for all practical purposes. As Solomon said even back in the day: “Vanity of vanities everything is vanity…there’s nothing new under the sun”. Etc.

So we need to keep practicing anyway-keep looking for the way to place love first, along with its Source. And one way is to finally recognize how wrong the world really is, how wrong we all are in general terms, compared to God who, alone, is perfectly right, perfect in wisdom.

Humility is the right orientation for us all, while the pride that we prefer, and its counterpart, self-righteousness, cause most of our conflicts with each other-and within ourselves. In fact, the Church teaches that, at and due to the Fall, man became divided in some manner from God, from his fellow man, from the rest of creation, and within his own self. This is the state known as “original sin”, particularly as it describes man’s separation from God. Anyway we all need to look to Him first of all, rather than to ourselves and at each other. When we realize that all human beings have this certain “wrongness” about them, that falsehood reigns in the world of man in so many ways, then it’s easier for us to stand back a bit from it all and understand and forgive human ignorance.

Anyway, IMO, the Church has the answers in her teachings: the knowledge and reason for being able to see things from that larger perspective. Having said that, it can be really, really hard to retain peace and magnanimity and love in this world for long. Our own desires often throw us off by themselves. It takes knowledge-and experience-and practice-and humility-and prayer.
 
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A question to ponder: Even though it is popular in the extreme, and “everybody*” is doing it, might be a good time to take a break from social media. Consider it to be social-media distancing.

*Not this Catholic.
 
In my experience, political debates are often disguised as religious debates.

Make a decision that you will not get dragged into political fights. I used to be a militant debater of those who did not share my political views, it took years of prayer, practice and learning humility to stop however with God’s grace that part is (almost) gone. I feel my back getting reared up and I step back and don’t engage.

I don’t read divisive political websites of watch their videos.

Fill your mind with beauty, read things and watch things that uplift your spirit.
 
You will never look into the eyes of anyone who does not matter to God.

Look in the mirror; and when you come to understand that you matter to God; then you can apply that to everyone else you meet.
 
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