From Zealotry to Unity
Deprogramming Division in a Fractured World
“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”
– Bertrand Russell¹
In an age where digital echo chambers amplify outrage and headlines thrive on spectacle, humanity’s cooperative nature is being fractured. Communities once grounded in shared purpose have splintered into ideological camps defined by hostility rather than dialogue. What was once conviction has, in many cases, hardened into zealotry.
Let us explore the psychological pathways that transform passion into extremism, and how media and institutional narratives perpetuate this process. It’s important that we are aware of the problem, but we must also employ practical strategies for rebuilding trust, empathy, and collective intelligence within our communities and cultures to help remedy the situation we find ourselves in today. True progress requires reclaiming our evolutionary heritage of cooperation, founded on mutual respect.
The Pathogenesis of Zealotry: When Passion Becomes Poison
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
– Winston Churchill²
Zealotry arises through a psychological intensification of otherwise noble emotions. Passion becomes toxic when fear fuses with moral certainty, transforming devotion into dogma. At its foundation, zeal is an affective phenomenon combining deep loyalty with anger toward perceived threats to one’s values or identity.³ Studies on fanaticism demonstrate that fragile identities often seek refuge in rigid beliefs that serve as psychological armor against uncertainty.⁴
When an individual’s sense of self fuses with an ideology, dissent is no longer disagreement but heresy.⁵ This process, known as identity fusion, explains how ordinary individuals can justify exclusion, persecution, or coercion in the name of moral virtue.⁶ Once zeal hardens into zealotry, reason yields to conviction. Dehumanization of dissenters follows, accompanied by moral rationalization of harm.⁷ Historical examples abound: the Salem Witch Trials, where fear and persecution replaced reason, or the Crusades, in which moral absolutism justified slaughter.
This same structure reappears today within what may be called the “biosecurity faith.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, belief in vaccines transitioned from rational trust in medicine into a form of sacred orthodoxy. Social and political personalities, aided by institutional media, presented compliance as a moral obligation and skepticism as a sin. The mechanisms were precise. Public identities merged with the act of vaccination, creating moral identity through medical conformity. Masks, vaccine cards, and slogans served as ritual tokens of faith. Those who questioned mandates were dismissed as heretics. In Attorney, Aaron Siri’s new book, Vaccines, Amen, Siri explains how society drifted into a quasi-religious crusade against dissent, elevating pharmaceutical compliance to an emblem of virtue while silencing legitimate scientific inquiry.
The result was epistemic closure. “Trust the science” replaced “discuss the science.” Public health, originally a tool for well-being, was transformed into an instrument of conformity and moral signaling. Such zeal is not born of reason but of fear, insecurity, and institutional manipulation.
Media’s Role: The Manufacture and Monetization of Division
“The political media is biased, but not toward the Left or Right
so much as toward loud, outrageous, colorful, confrontational.”
– Ezra Klein⁹
Modern media systems thrive on polarization. Social media algorithms maximize engagement by amplifying emotionally charged content, as outrage and fear tend to increase user retention and advertising revenue.¹⁰ The logic of profit now dictates the structure of public discourse.
Platforms once imagined as forums for democratic exchange have become engines of emotional manipulation. The Social Dilemma (2020) documents how social media corporations exploit neurological reward cycles, using recommendation systems that intensify tribal identification and discourage reflective thought. Audiences are fragmented into moral camps, each convinced of its superior virtue.¹¹
During the pandemic, these mechanisms were deployed with extraordinary precision. News outlets synchronized messaging around rigid narratives that framed scientific uncertainty as moral treachery. Censorship became both policy and performance, rewarding ideological purity over investigative integrity. Health journalism shifted from inquiry to enforcement. Algorithmic shadow-banning silenced whistleblowers and researchers who presented inconvenient data. The consequence was not simply misinformation from the propagandists, but the emotional colonization of the public consciousness.
Breaking this cycle requires both cognitive hygiene and economic realignment. Consumers must withdraw attention from platforms that reward division and support independent journalism committed to pluralism. The migration toward platforms like Substack that do not suppress free speech represents a step toward aligning incentives with truth tellers, rather than carefully curated feeds with algorithms designed to popularize extreme ideologies that elicit fear, personal attacks, and outrage.¹²
Critical media literacy, however, demands more than new platforms. It entails cultivating awareness of psychological manipulation and resisting the reflexive moral certainty that sustains digital zealotry. Only by refusing to feed the outrage economy can society reclaim authentic dialogue.
Overcoming Divisive Traps: The Discipline of Humanization
“Life is the love that reaches out, building bridges across gulfs of uncertainty
to touch hands, hearts, and souls in the experience of union.”
– Peter Seymour¹³
Division dissolves through deliberate acts of humanization. When we encounter ideological opponents, the goal is not to win but to understand. Dialogue rooted in respect acknowledges that each position, however flawed, arises from legitimate human concerns.¹⁴ Genuine conversation requires psychological safety and emotional regulation, conditions that the current informational environment undermines.¹⁵
Bridge-building begins when individuals recognize shared motives behind opposing narratives. In the vaccine debate, for instance, both sides are motivated by concern for safety—one fears disease, the other fears coercion or harm from untested interventions. This recognition humanizes both positions and allows truth to emerge through cooperation rather than combat.¹⁶
Golden bridge strategies allow individuals to modify views without humiliation, preserving dignity while fostering resolution.¹⁷ Community dialogue projects, interdisciplinary working groups, and long-term collaboration across ideological boundaries demonstrate that restoration is possible once emotional de-escalation begins.¹⁸
The Art of Deprogramming: Reclaiming Autonomy of Thought
“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it.
And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt¹⁹
Deprogramming from systemic fanaticism requires patience, repetition, and institutional courage. Techniques drawn from deradicalization programs reveal that cognitive rigidity diminishes when individuals are engaged respectfully, not condemned.²⁰
Practical methods include temporary withdrawal from digital echo chambers, prolonged exposure to diverse perspectives, and civic education that emphasizes critical reasoning over conformity.²¹ Local dialogue groups, health freedom forums, and community deliberation initiatives can reestablish trust where mass media has dismantled it. Such measures transform deprogramming from a countercultural gesture into a civic virtue.
Cooperative Living and the Renewal of Sanity
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”
– Henry Ford²²
Human societies evolved not only through aggression but through cooperation. Our survival has always depended on dialogue, reciprocity, and shared purpose. The re-humanization of discourse requires restoring these traits in civic institutions and in daily life.
Interfaith and interdisciplinary cooperation offer pathways toward reconciliation. Diverse traditions have achieved harmony not by erasing difference but by acknowledging interdependence. Respectful debate deepens conviction without descending into hostility. In this sense, diversity becomes not a threat but a healthy and robust reservoir of wisdom.²³
Conscious recognition of our shared humanity transforms harmony from abstraction into practice.
Peace, like conflict, is a learned behavior.
The future of civilization depends on which pattern we choose to reinforce.
Reclaiming Reason from Institutionalized Zeal
By tracing the evolution of zealotry from ancient crusades to the digital age, we uncover a persistent pattern: institutions sanctify their authority, suppress dissent, and label it virtue. The modern faith in institutional science, reinforced by media and corporate profit, fits this historical rhythm. Liberation begins with recognition. To question institutional dogma is not to reject science but to rescue it from sanctification.
The task before humanity is to deprogram fear-based conformity and restore cooperation as civilization’s highest discipline. When individuals choose reflection over reaction, dialogue over denunciation, and empathy over zeal, the machinery of division loses its fuel. The redemption of mankind, still waits within our capacity to cooperate and to have the courage to share our light in the shadows and darkness of the human psyche.
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Resources for Further Reading
Russell, Bertrand. The Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916.
Churchill, Winston. Quote attributed to various speeches and writings.
“Religious zeal as an affective phenomenon” - PMC, PubMed Central
“Fear, Fanaticism, and Fragile Identities” - PMC, PubMed Central
“What’s so bad about fanaticism?” - PhilArchive
“The Freshness of Fanaticism: The Abolitionist Defense of Zealotry” - Cambridge University Press
“When Zeal Becomes Zealotry” - Medium
Shane O’Mara. “Zealots, extremists, ideologues, and fanatics (ZEIFs)”
Klein, Ezra. Why We’re Polarized, 2020.
“The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review” - Taylor & Francis Online
“How tech platforms fuel U.S. political polarization” - Brookings Institution
“How Social Media Is Changing Conflict” - Thomas Zeitzoff
Seymour, Peter. Quote from spiritual writings on unity and connection.
“Peace Building in Post-Conflict Societies” - George Mason University
“Eight Keys to Bridging Our Differences” - Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley
“What motivates bridge building across pernicious group divides” - Frontiers in Social Psychology
“The Third Side: Bridge Building Strategies” - Beyond Intractability
“Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies” - Karuna Center for Peacebuilding
Roosevelt, Eleanor. From various speeches on peace and social justice, 1940s-1950s.
“The Lost Art of Peacemaking” - Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue
Ripley, Amanda. High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, 2021.
Ford, Henry. Quote from industrial leadership writings, early 1900s.
Vanier, Jean. From writings on the L’Arche community and human dignity.