This is part 2 of a 5-part article.
Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here
The Real Divide
Unlike elementary or high school culture, and unlike college, career and even adult culture, the real divide takes us all the way back to kindergarten.
Indeed it is one of those key lessons that we all should have learned in early childhood. In some ways (as humorously recounted by author Robert Fulghum), the lessons of kindergarten are the most important of all.
The divide of all humankind can be understood in the most basic terms: Some people spend their lives angry and afraid, while others live in the attitudes of hopeful and helpful.
These are the basis of the real world schism.
Angry and Afraid
The Scarcity Party sees a world of battling, competition, scarcity, winning or losing, and always trying to get ahead. It is the party of predators and victims.
Its members see others as either potential mates or potential enemies. They quickly notice differences between people, and they seek to get themselves and those in their group (family, race, religion, faction, nation, etc.) ahead of everyone else.
They want others to lose more, and for their own to win more.
In their anger and fear, they avoid pain, push for whatever they think will benefit them, and are willing to step on others to get what they want.
The Angry & Afraid Scarcity Party (A²) has a long and sad history of causing, escalating and reliving most of the problems in world history.
Hopeful and Helpful
In contrast, the Helpful & Helpful members of the Abundance Party (H²) spend their lives trying to help people, improve themselves, and seek better lives and a better world.
Because they are not afraid, it is fine with them if others don’t support them or do something different. They are secure.
For the Abundance Party, life is not about themselves. Yes, it is about becoming better; but even this goal is a merely a means to helping the world improve.
If they were angry, they would expect everyone else to join them in fixing the world, and even try to use the force of government to require charity.
But they are content to do their own work of improving the world and helping others, inspiring and urging them to be and do their best through exemplary leadership, rather than expend angry energy trying to force others to change.
Pretty much every nation, organization, philosophy, political viewpoint, religion, community, company and family has both A²s and also H²s.
The H² Partiers do nearly all of the good in these groups, while the A²s cause nearly all the problems.
If the H²s from all groups would work together, the mischief of the A²s would soon be mitigated.
But as it is, the H²s constantly find themselves in superficially adversarial positions from each other (due to their institutional affiliations) even though such conflict is not their purpose or their nature.
Party Folly
Ironically, if you have strong Democratic ties it is tempting to call Democrats the Hopeful & Helpful and label Republicans the Angry & Afraid; those with loyal Republican connections assign the opposite labels.
But neither type of labeling is truly accurate. There are a lot of H²s and A²s in both major political parties.
The H²s and the A²s make up all the members of the Democrats, Republicans, independents, socialists, environmentalists, right-wingers, radical leftists and every other political group.
If you know what to look for, they are pretty easy to recognize. The A²s include those who are any of the following: Bush-haters, Obama-loathers, racists, bigoted about religious or secular beliefs, promoters of violence in modern America, etc.
Republicans like to point out the Angry & Afraid people in the Democratic Party and act as if they speak for the whole party, and the Democrats do the same thing when attacking Republicans.
A Self-Defeating Hybrid
An interesting hybrid also exists, which is likewise problematic. Historically, too many Democrats have combined Afraid and Helpful, while too often Republicans have been Angry and Hopeful.
Unfortunately, the internal conflict and the philosophical and operational inconsistencies of these amalgams basically cancel out the good they could do to truly promote freedom and make a difference for good.
The world needs more hopeful and helpful people, and the future of our freedom and prosperity depends on it.
The strong emotions of anger and fear too frequently block the path to progress.
However, before we can fully understand the differences between these two major Parties of the A²s and the H²s, and the application of this construct, we need to understand the eight meanings of freedom.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
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Interesting analogy. A squared and H squared. I think it should be good to note that we all have a little bit of both in each of us. It is a noble purpose in life for us to shun out the A’s and try to live the H’s