The hypernormalisation of us versus them

Jeanette Peterson
The Art of Mindful Disruption
7 min readAug 14, 2024

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All lives matter! Every man, woman and child is special in our uniqueness. We are all needed, just like each piece of a jigsaw puzzle is needed to complete the full picture.

This might seem like a sweeping and yet benign statement, when in reality the simplicity of what I am suggesting may indeed be what is lacking in the world today. We have managed to overcomplicate everything and are now waging war on every opinion that differs from our own.

How do you fit into the puzzle? Have you through social and cultural conditioning accidently fallen into the war of us versus them?

It may be a bitter pill to swallow, so buckle in because this ride could get bumpy. You might be triggered by many things I am about to shed some light on. Rest assured though, I can only see these things because I accidentally did every one of them myself. So if you start tripping over the next words in this article, I am feeling your pain. We are in this together.

There are many reasons why we have on-mass, in the Western world, conformed to the hypernormalisation of us versus them. Yet, I can comfortably say that it is not all your fault, because it has occurred by design and not an accident at all. By design, I mean intentionally implemented over many years by totalitarian colonial governments funded by mega-corporations that have well and truly led us all up the garden path.

Now, let’s be clear, this is no conspiracy theory, as your well-propagandised mind might be thinking. Colonial History of Western Settlements is not difficult to uncover, because we now have more than ever before in history, access to a plethora of information at our fingertips than we have ever had before. A repeating pattern has unfolded and academics and writers have now studied this very phenomenon on a large scale.

Yet if you are still getting your information from mainstream media, the news on TV, or any entertainment TV for that matter, whether it be streaming or otherwise, newspapers or much of social media, you are unfortunately likely reading corporatised propaganda that is designed to keep you fixed on a narrative that suits the interests of very few.

It’s a simple premise really. When people are divided they are much easier to manage in smaller groups. Even better, when people are divided so much that they attack the other smaller groups, we then become the perpetrators of our own demise. The last 400 years, likely even longer, have been a non-stop war of divide and conquer, and we are literally doing it to ourselves.

There is so much division in the world that we are literally attacking each other for every difference we are propagandised to, just like good little sheep. Keeping us busy and distracted, whilst mega-corporations have taken over our governments and privatised everything, and I am not kidding. It might surprise you to discover how deep this problem goes.

Here is a list of some of the ways Western society is now divided:-

  • gender
  • race
  • religion
  • skin colour
  • education
  • financial status
  • sexuality
  • belief systems
  • political alignment

You will likely know them all, because, in a bizarre yet ironic twist in the West, we literally have laws in place to supposedly protect us from being discriminated against in all these ways. Yet, we are so divided that our own us versus them campaigns are doing the very thing these white-washed discrimination laws are supposed to protect us from.

How is this possible? you might be thinking.

Totalitarianism and Capitalism masquerading as Democracy. Every Western democracy is the same. Stolen land, pretending that there was nobody there when settlers arrived, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and white supremacy. Sounds harsh I know, but just because it is a hard pill to swallow doesn’t make it go away by burying your head in the sand. In fact, that’s exactly what those who are lapping up the land and money want you to do.

I myself, as painful as it is to admit am English. I was born in what you could call the head office of colonisation itself. I then emigrated to Australia as a child with my parents making me a settler, literally no better than the Zionist settlers that have been committing apartheid in Palestine for almost 100 years. The English settlement of Australia approximately 240 years ago intentionally falsely declared Australia Terra nullius and continues to attempt to wipe out more than 5 million aboriginal Australians, who we know were here on arrival of the British.

So if you are wondering why Australia and every other British settler colony won’t recognise Palestine, it’s pretty simple really. If they recognise Palestine as a state, it will put every Western country in a shit load of hot water, exposing every British colony in a repeating pattern of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Imagine what this would mean considering that ICC and ICJ have already declared war crimes against Israel for the very same thing that is happening in Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand. Remembering that it was the British government who gave Palestine to Israel without the consent of Palestine.

If these facts surprise you, I would suggest that you widen your scope of history and begin to read it for yourself. The real history that is, not what you were taught through the propaganda of your education. All this information is readily available. When you start to join the dots things become very clear.

This however is a double-edged sword if you live in a Western Country and creates quite a conundrum for us all.

Welcome to the world of hypernormalisation!

I do however believe there is a way forward. Yet pretending that we haven’t all played a part is not going to help. We need to heal, unite and build a way forward together in unity.

Divided we fall and united we stand, words we all likely know well. Yet we are not putting these words into action on mass. It is going to take us all to change course, yet all it takes is for us to reach a tipping point of unity and many of us can feel that we are getting very close. Once we reach the tipping point, the rest will be history so to speak. The tipping point analysis is well-documented and easy to read about.

So I ask you, Do you feel needed in this world?

It may surprise you to find out that many people don’t feel needed or useful in this world at all. So if you feel like you are waking up every day to an endless loop of Groundhog Day you are not alone at all.

You are most certainly needed. Like I said in the beginning, all lives matter!

Once we accept that we have globally normalised a full-scale divide-and-conquer war on everything in a constant battle of us versus them, we can begin to move forward. It’s not complicated, in fact, it is a whole lot easier than the powers that be, want you to think. By simply changing our own actions and interactions, one person and one interaction at a time, we will suddenly stop our participation in divide and conquer. With a mix of self-reflection, kindness, forgiveness and understanding we can move forward in Unity together.

If we could learn to think in these terms we could quite literally reduce the huge impacts in society of loneliness, suicide and disconnection all at the same time. People united are not only more powerful but are supported in their uniqueness.

Let’s face it, whether we all want to admit it or not, we are innately hard-wired to need to be needed and loved. I see this longing for love and the benefits to everyone of being in some way of service to others, coming from a deep place of yearning, within us all.

When we see or hear of loneliness, there is almost no person whose heart wouldn’t break. It is likely perceived as the single worst thing that could happen to you as a human being. We are simply not designed to be alone. Here, I am not talking about a time in your life when you are focused on a personal endeavour when it suits you to be single. I mean lifelong single-hood particularly when moving through significant transitions in life and into old age.

After taking care of my elderly mother until she passed, I became acutely aware of the perils of being single in old age. I had seen it many times before, however, when facing it head-on with my mother it hit home hard. I did not want to face the decisions of aging alone if I could avoid it.

I recall when I talked to my mum about it, ironically she couldn’t see her loneliness, because I had filled that gap for her, putting my life on hold for 8 years to be that one person for my mother, until the day she died.

My mother would say to me ‘Don’t bother with men, they are more trouble than they are worth, we’ve got each other’ But I knew I wouldn’t always have my mother and felt a deep yearning for connection.

Don’t get me wrong, the failed attempts at relationships during this time were hard, but I adored my mother and was committed to putting her first to the end. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

There are not 8 billion of us here for no reason. Every one of us has an important piece in the jigsaw puzzle of humanity.

Today, you are needed more than ever before. The future generations of humanity and the entire planet we all call home, are relying on us to get this right.

It starts today with you, one person and one interaction at a time.

You’ve got this.

Much love to you all.

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Jeanette Peterson
The Art of Mindful Disruption

I am a Mindfulness writer and transformation strategist who empowers people to be great through the expansion of an inward journey.