The Two Bunny Problem

In a deeply divided world, we're all telling the same story. And we're all getting it wrong.

Growing up, my cousin Jay was my favorite summertime playmate. His family lived in Florida with a swimming pool and a ski boat, and I spent entire summers with them. We rode bikes and went to the movies and shared the sort of idyllic childhood that people are talking about when they fantasize about how great America used to be.

When we were kids, we didn’t know about politics, and what it meant to have different views about those things. We just knew we were family.

As adults, Jay and I got even closer. He and his family moved to Atlanta, and I was close to his daughters. When he went through a divorce, he lived in my carriage house, and we made pizza at night. We vacationed together, taking his daughters on lake trips and teaching them to snow ski. During most of those years, I was a single working woman with a decrepit house and few practical skills, and Jay was my default support system. If anything in my life broke down, at any time, I could call Jay, and he would drive across town to fix it.

By then, we knew we didn’t vote the same, but it didn’t change our love for each other. I was even useful sometimes; when his sister married someone from Washington State, the bridgegroom’s family was blinking and distressed in a sea of Southerners, and Jay recruited me to go talk to them. “They’re liberals,” he said. “Go make them feel comfortable.”

One Saturday night, my DVR broke down, and Jay drove across town and sat on the floor of my living room with a screwdriver, trying to explain to me how memory boards worked.

I said to him, “I bet you’re looking forward to when I get married, and you don’t have to do this kind of stuff for me anymore.”

He laughed, “Knowing you, you’re going to end up married to some hippie with no practical skills at all, and this will still be my job.”

Well, Jay was half right. I did in fact, marry a hippie with no practical skills, but it’s not his job any more. Jay and I haven’t spoken in years.

I suspect you know why.

Facebook unfriendings started around the time of Sandy Hook, and escalated during 2016, when Jay’s sister posted her kid chanting obscenities about Hillary Clinton.

Jay is a good man, but a wall has come up between us, and I admit, I haven’t figured out how to scale it.

The Two Bunny Problem

In my favorite children’s sermon, the pastor holds up two bunnies. One bunny is new and shiny and perfect; the other one is worn and filled with holes. The pastor says to the children, Which bunny do you think God loves more? And of course it’s a trick question, because God loves all bunnies equally.

Gay bunnies and rich bunnies and poor bunnies and rural bunnies; no matter which way you voted, no matter who you are, God loves all bunnies the same. That’s the sermon. But it’s more complicated than that lately, right?

Because these days it feels mostly like one bunny is predator, and the other bunny is prey. You look at the other bunny and you think, this bunny is trying to hurt me.

So often I think to myself when looking at the news, everyone who voted for this person must be a monster. Everyone who voted for this person must be my enemy. I must defeat them.

But guess what? This story I’m telling isn’t true. Science proves it isn’t true.

The Bunny Brain

Kurt Gray, Ph.D., is Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. His work focuses on why we’re so far apart, and how to heal.

You don’t need me to tell you how divided we are, not just me and Jay, but all the mes, and all the Jays. We are heartbreakingly divided, each of us convinced the other one is trying to destroy the country. In his book Outraged! Dr. Gray calls this the destruction narrative, the idea that people who are different than us are primarily predators seeking to destroy us.

But anthropological and biological research shows that human beings were, first and foremost, not predators trying to destroy each other… but prey, trying to protect themselves.

The destruction narrative, this bunny is trying to hurt me, is a universal story — but it is not anthropologically true.

For the vast majority of human history, humans were under constant attack from outside forces. Weak in body, easily outrun, walking around with our chest and lungs exposed for a large cat or hungry bear to easily puncture with tooth or claw, the story of early humanity is not I am Sheena hear me roar it is dear God what just roa—

As a result of this constant threat, humans evolved with a “prey” brain, meaning, our brain is designed to be constantly scanning the horizon expecting to be eaten. And per Dr. Gray, even though the world and our place in it has changed, our brains have not: we still look at the world around us and see mostly threats.

Do you get what I’m saying here?

Every bunny is just scared of being eaten.

See, what Dr. Gray’s analysis shows, is that what we see as a destruction narrative, that bunny is trying to eat me, is actually a protection narrative.

Every bunny is simply trying to save itself.

When it comes to bunnies, we’ve got the story wrong.

I Think We’re Gonna Need A Better Story

Dr. Gray’s work recognizes that the other bunny isn’t a predator trying to kill you. It’s a bunny with a blind spot, or a bunny protecting its den, or a bunny with its back against the wall. It’s not a bad bunny. It’s a good bunny in a bad place.

I’ve promised that this year we are going to tell a different story, a truer story, a better story. And one of the ways that starts is by understanding your adversary. And I think it’s time we stop seeing the other bunnies as adversaries, and recognize them for what they are: people like us, just doing their best to survive.

I understand if this is hard to accept. It’s hard for me to accept, too. That story about the other guy is deeply rooted. But I want to tell you one more thing about Jay.

Near the very end of her life, Jay called my Mom, and asked if he could take her to lunch. In the final stages of cancer that had spread to her brain and shattered her bones, Mom was incredibly wobbly both physically and mentally, and you never knew what was going to happen, out in public, but Jay was insistent. He had something to say to her, and he wanted to say it.

“It’s between me and Aunt Betty,” he said.

So he picked her up, and he carefully escorted her out to his car. I’’ll take good care of her, he promised. I watched my phone all afternoon, fearing disaster, and then Mom came home crying.

In the best possible way.

Jay wanted to tell her something, she reported to me. He wanted to tell her that when he was growing up, he saw what she and Dad did for me and Marc. He saw how they invested in our education, and how much they focused on making us work hard, and learn. He saw how much they sacrificed for us.

“That’s how I wanted to raise my daughters,” he said to her. And he did. Jay had two daughters, and he worked multiple jobs to send them to private schools, just like Mom and Dad had done for Marc and me.

“I wanted to give my kids the same life you gave yours,” he said to Mom. “Everything I’ve done as a father has been wanting my kids to have the childhood that your kids had. And I just wanted to thank you for that.”

It was the last lunch date of Mom’s life. I also truly believe it was the most beautiful gift anyone gave to her, in the closing weeks of her life.

It was an act of incredible kindness and grace and love. And I will never ever forget it.

Jay is smart, and loving, and committed to raising kickass STEM-star girls. Jay stands by his family, and he tends to people who are suffering. Jay has lots of practical skills. I want Jay on my side, and I want Jay in my story, in my life.

Also, there’s a more practical side to this. To our dismay, the world is split in two. And if we see everyone on the other side as the enemy, well… that is way too many enemies for a healthy world. I think we’re gonna have to figure out how to start seeing some of the bunnies not as adversaries but as bunnies, just like us.

Now: I hear your protest. Are you not paying attention to what is going on in the world? There are terrible things happening! How can you claim there are no bad guys?!?!

I agree with you. There are terrible things going on in the world. But that’s the point, right? There are really powerful forces of destruction going on right now.

And I don’t want to focus my wrath on bunnies who are lost and confused, who are just trying to protect themselves, who are struggling with blind spots and bad narratives.

I want to go after the one who’s causing all the suffering and confusion.

I want to set my sights on a more worthy adversary.

I don’t want to live in a world where all the bunnies are going after each other, so I’m going to stop fighting with all the bunnies.

Put the bunnies aside for a moment. Take a deep breath and say, the bunnies are not the source of the problem.

If we want to tell a better story, it starts with finding a better adversary.

I want to take on a Big Bad.

Don’t you?