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The question is not which team you belong to. The question is what part of you is driving.
Before you answer, pause. Loyalty feels noble. But what we are loyal to will ultimately determine what drives us. In times that feel chaotic, the difference between reflex and reflection may shape far more than we realize.
As you read this, there is a good chance you are trying to figure out what team I’m loyal to. You may not be doing it consciously, but somewhere in the background, you are scanning for clues. Do I sound like someone who watches the same news you watch? Do I echo the same talking points you hear at dinner tables, in sermons, on podcasts, or scrolling through your feed? Are my words going to confirm your worldview or threaten it?
To me, that instinct is not good or bad. It is as human as breathing. It is a reflex built into our neurobiology.
Embedded in each of us is what I call the Automatic Brain (AB). It is ancient, efficient, and relentlessly protective. Long before political parties, denominations, or cultural movements existed, this part of us evolved to detect threat and trigger what most of us know as the fight-or-flight response. It does not analyze nuance. It reacts. It categorizes. It protects. And it is just as dominant in our daily lives today as it was thousands of years ago.
Today, one of the ways it protects us is by attaching to a team.
We may call it a party, a movement, a belief system, a tradition, a community, or simply “how I was raised.” The label matters less than the function. The team provides belonging. It provides identity. It provides the comfort of knowing who is with us and who is against us. And over time, it quietly begins to ask for loyalty.
And comfort, to the AB, means safety.
Over time, the AB quietly organizes our experiences. From childhood forward, we absorb moments of comparison: when we felt small or strong, included or excluded, affirmed or dismissed. Those impressions accumulate. We become sensitive to status, to being one-up or feeling less than. So when we attach ourselves to a group that reassures us we are on the “right” side, something inside settles. More informed. More virtuous. More patriotic. More enlightened. More faithful. Being part of the stronger team feels protective.
The AB is equally wary of what it does not recognize. New ideas and unexpected perspectives rarely register as interesting at first. They register as threat. Before we examine them, they can feel dangerous simply because they disrupt what is familiar.
And perhaps most powerful of all is the instinct not to lose security.
Early in life, belonging meant protection. To be accepted — to be liked — was to be safe. That wiring does not disappear with age. So when we question the convictions of those who shaped us, our families, our communities, our traditions, it can feel less like intellectual disagreement and more like risking acceptance. It can feel like stepping outside the protective circle.
The AB does not like risking status, certainty, or belonging. So it builds fortresses around whatever it believes will secure being liked and accepted. Loyalty becomes the currency of safety.
So when we say, “These are crazy times,” we may very well be describing the headlines. But we may also be describing something happening inside of us. We are watching millions of Automatic Brains colliding, each one convinced it is simply defending what is right, good, and necessary.
That collision does not always look like shouting. Sometimes it looks like quiet certainty. Sometimes it looks like a refusal to even consider an alternative perspective. Sometimes it shows up as a subtle tightening in the chest when a value we hold dear is questioned. The reaction is fast, and yes, automatic. The reasoning comes later.
I catch my own AB when a headline tightens my chest before I’ve even finished reading it. The surge comes first. The reflection comes later.
And here is where self-honesty becomes essential.
If you are like me, it is easy to recognize the primitive reflex on “the other side.” It is much harder to recognize it in ourselves. When someone across the aisle, across the pew, or across the cultural divide overreacts, we see their bias clearly. We may even label it ignorance or arrogance. Yet when we react in the same way by dismissing, caricaturing, or refusing to listen, we justify it. We tell ourselves we are not being tribal; we are being principled. We stick to our guns. We dig our heels in.
There is a difference between conviction and reflex. But to the AB, that difference does not matter. Only safety and protection do.
When it feels threatened by the possibility of being one-upped, by the discomfort of the unfamiliar, or by the risk of losing connection with our tribe, it moves quickly. It urges us to defend, to counterattack, to retreat into certainty. And because it is so efficient, we often mistake that speed for clarity.
We confuse intensity with truth.
Over time, something subtle begins to happen. Winning becomes more important than understanding. Loyalty to the group begins to outweigh loyalty to facts. Once loyalty becomes identity, questioning the team feels like betrayal. Calling out bad behavior on “our side” feels disloyal, while highlighting flaws on “their side” feels righteous. Discernment starts to look like weakness.
None of this requires evil intent. It only requires fear.
Fear of being wrong.
Fear of being judged.
Fear of being excluded.
Fear of losing belonging.
The AB does not wake up seeking to divide the country, fracture families, or erode institutions. It wakes up seeking personal safety. But when fear is mistaken for truth, agreement becomes synonymous with goodness, and goodness becomes synonymous with belonging. That is when division feels justified.
When we expose fear as a reflex, not a revelation, something shifts. Authentic safety no longer depends on uniform agreement. It rests on integrity.
That is where the other part of us enters the room.
I call it the Mind, not simply the thinking brain, but the reflective, transcendent part of us that can step outside the reflex. The Mind is where conscience lives. It is where humility takes root. It is where we can hold conviction without hostility and strength without aggression.
If the Automatic Brain is wired for protection, the Mind is oriented toward truth.
The AB reacts to protect. The Mind pauses to discern.
The AB seeks safety in agreement. The Mind seeks peace through inner strength and self-control.
The Mind has the capacity to ask a question the AB rarely tolerates. What if I am wrong? What if I am reacting? What if fear is speaking louder than truth?
Operating from the Mind in this climate does not mean abandoning your values. It does not mean pretending that all ideas are equal or that all actions are acceptable. It means separating your identity from your position. It means being able to say, “I still believe this, and I am willing to examine it.” It means acknowledging when someone outside your team makes a valid point without feeling that you have betrayed your own.
That is not weakness. That is disciplined courage.
Self-discipline is the willingness to interrupt the surge of reaction. Self-honesty is the courage to admit that the surge exists.
When those two qualities work together, something profound shifts. We can listen without rehearsing a rebuttal. We can disagree without dehumanizing. We can critique our own side without fearing exile. We can hold conviction without needing domination.
This is not easy work. It runs against our wiring. But it is deeply human work.
The question is not merely which team you belong to.
The question is what part of you is driving.
If the AB is driving, every disagreement feels existential. Every critique feels like an attack. Every headline feels like proof that the world is either saved or doomed.
If the Mind is driving, you can still care deeply. You can still vote, worship, advocate, speak, and act. But you do so from clarity rather than reflex, from strength rather than fear, from conviction rather than insecurity.
You do not need to change teams.
You need to change drivers. Because what you are loyal to will ultimately determine what drives you.
Because when fear drives, division feels justified. When reflection drives, division is exposed for what it often is: a collision of unexamined reflexes.
And in times that feel unstable, that internal shift from fear to discernment, from reflex to reflection, may be the most stabilizing act available to us.
Not just for our country.
Not just for our families.
Not just for our communities.
But for the integrity of our own soul.
Related: Someone Else’s Light Doesn’t Dim Yours — Unless You Let It