It's David Hoffman filmmaker talking to you about something that really does upset me and you're about to see a clip where I went to a guy who I consider an expert at this we have in this country.

And I think in a lot of countries in the world, certainly in the democracies a partisan divide there were two groups who seemingly hate each other.

That the woman stop each other.

They want me.

I don't want to use, were killed.

But it's like that.

It's just like this.

I remember a time back in 1969 when the country was fractured over the Vietnam War 50 50 where families broke up and wouldn't have dinner with each other.

Friends didn't talk to each other.

It was really on ugly time.

I was making films at that time.

I was interviewing people at that time, and I was hearing terrible stories.

America e pluribus Unum.

The many become one.

Well, we weren't one, and I feel that now if you look at the comments so many.

But not all are anger filled, rage filled, belittling the other guy almost like we're in a war and the country can't sustain it.

So I asked Bill Shireman, one of my close colleagues, and the guy that I worked for on several occasions.

Bill is an expert at this subject.

I mean, he specializes in dealing in bringing together people who hate each other.

Seemingly, he's done it spectacularly in the environmental movement, where he's brought corporations with eco warriors into the same room, and they end up most of the time talking to each other.

So I'm honored to be doing this interview you're about to see with Bill Sharman, and you know why I did it?

Because I'm really upset about this and I'd like to help so built.

I have thousands of subscribers telling me they're very unhappy with the split in the country.

The anger, the almost the heat, the hate for one side or the other.

What do you feel is going on before I ask you what to do about it?

What do you feel is going on?

But hate cells, hate cells, it comes down to that.

We do not hate each other as much as we think we do.

But hate is such a compelling way to draw clicks and draw audience that, uh, that is what the media focuses on.

That is what politics focuses on, and that is what advertisers pay for.

So that, fundamentally, is the problem that we're facing really on.

Lee.

About 15% of people on the left and 15% of people on the right actually hate each other.

They have dehumanized each other.

They have denied the humanity in one another because they are warriors and they have decided that that is the enemy.

And they're the good guys.

And the battle is on.

And those are the voices that we're hearing.

And we on Lee hear those voices because they sell advertisements.

I was in the offices of a senior executive at at one of the big you know, social media companies yesterday, and she distilled down what they do into this.

We sell ads.

That's what we do now.

She's got a conscience.

She wants to do good, but she's in a company that sells ads.

And so that's why I hate works.

So we need thio change the system so that I really love connection, hope, collaboration, work.

I really appreciate what you've said.

Um, my audience is very upset about this.

They don't like it.

Okay?

I have my opinion, but it seems as though some of my subscribers are turning everything into politics.

I could be talking about a hot dog stand and they make a political statement.

I could be talking about a piece of bluegrass music, and it has a political connotation.

Are you experiencing this?

Everything becoming political.

Everything has become political.

And this is by design, but not intent.

The design is the algorithm that attracts maximum eyeballs attached to unconscious brains.

Uh, that's the algorithm of sales, and that algorithm has detected with nobody, you know, mentally running it.

It's just a group of, you know, of bits and bytes.

Uh, that, uh when when we hate, we are motivated because we want to kill, we want to act.

And so we're scanning all these inputs that we're getting and our brains are being triggered scientifically by the power of this algorithm to look for and detect signs of hate directed toward us.

Everything we listen to when we're on social media and increasingly on traditional media, everything we listen to our brains, they're saying, Okay, I'm looking for the hate And as soon as I get the hate, I'm gonna know who I can kill.

And that's the danger.

And that's what I'm gonna do.

That's the fundamental problem.

Here's the issue.

I could easily turn what you've said into blaming them.

Blame Google.

Yeah, but am Facebook not blame me if I'm a participant in this.

Don't I have responsibility isn't.

How do you feel about that?

I mean, um, I an innocent, ignorant bystander in this.

What I try to do is I try and cross the partisan divide in every comment I make and thousands of people write me their appreciation for that.

I'm trying to do that.

I'm trying to beat the system.

Um, is it therefore there isn't my fault.

This gets to the root of it and back brains control 99.9999% of what we do.

What we think are four brains are conscious.

Brains are cerebral cortex.

Here is the only point at which were conscious and aware and making conscious choices.

We need to slow down our lives enough to give our four brains a chance to correct our back brains on this.

Now, the reality is that we have an inborn concern about the other Games comes from two million years of living in tribes where we had our 50 people that were our community, and that community was a diverse community.

Among those 50 people there were the artists and the merchants and the cooks and the mothers and caretakers and the invalid tze and those in need and so on.

It was a whole community that together and, ah, we looked outside and we said There's another tribe That tribe is a danger to us potentially that's the other and, ah, and and we worried about the other.

So that happens automatically.

That is a back brain function, and it is stunning how quickly we other.

So here's, you know something that Professor John Powell, my colleague at UC Berkeley High School of Business, has really studied and is brilliant about it.

We have a choice toe, other or or to belong.

We have a choice to bridge or break.

This is the terms that he that he uses when we look at, let's say, Facebook, Google, big corporations, big government progressives, conservatives Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton.

Every word that I just said created a another write is either Ma, this is me either either us or this is them.

And we do this automatically before we even know it.

The trick for us is to consciously, um, focus on belonging, not uttering but belonging to recognize that we all belong.

That these 50 people that were in our tribe for two million years each of those people is different from us because that's how you have a community.

Everybody has a role.

Everybody has a specialty.

There's singers and dancers.

All the ones that I talked about.

We have now other to each of them.

And we've gathered together with people who are just like us.

So instead of having a diverse community of 50 in our tribe, that together is a hole that has all aspects of life included in it, we now have concentrated silos of just warrior progressives, just warrior conservatives.

Just evangelicals just, you know, the spiritual left just engineers just you know, software designers just mopped whatever.

We've separated ourselves into dysfunctional tribes of seems.

And that's just a function of our back brain misfiring in a very different kind of culture.

So what we need to do we need to bring ourselves together?

That means we need to bridge the divide.

Now, fortunately, about one out of five of us are natural Bridgers.

You know, one out of three or so really not.

Probably more like one out of 10.

But we see it in politics now that one out of three are breakers.

They are warriors, they divide us.

And those are the groups that the media, advertisers and politicians talk to.

They're speaking directly to them and they speak to them in the in the terms that caused them to break from each other.

And they do that because they wanna win elections.

If your politicians, they want to sell advertising, if you are media and they want to sell products and service is if you are a kn advertiser, so that's why they're doing it.

What they're not speaking to are the bridgers in the middle of this, 20% that are essentially left out of the media.

These air people who don't respond to hate and don't respond to division, they respond to hope and collaboration, and their natural tendency is to associate to come together to bring people together.

They are the social and business entrepreneurs.

Those folks are our missing link.

They are the ones that connect the left and the right, and there are millions of us, but we need to find each other.

That was absolutely wonderful for me, Bill, because on I'm a one of these people who wants to increase the size of my community to feel the togetherness rather than the separated nous on my block.

I mean, people disagree with each other within my block.

Everybody disagrees really about something about the dog barking or the car parked wrong.

But I feel this is my community, and I'm part of that 20%.

And I'm working hard on my YouTube channel to increase the size of that community each week.

So I really want to thank you for this.

We're going to get questions.

Would you mind if I ask you again after we've got some questions from people what they're asking you to talk about?

Would you go further with this?

I would love to talk to the folks that you're engaging with and have a conversation about this.

I've got plenty to learn, but I speak with so many people who hate each other from all of these different divisions.

And it is frightening to me.

And frankly, it is both highly motivating and completely depressing.

You know what we're engaged in right now?

I feel we are in such danger right now from the degree of hate that we have.

I don't look at this so much analytically.

I do certainly look at it analytically, but this worries me and anything I can do to help people connect with one another.

I'm there.

I'm in.