Staying Human in the Face of Difference: A 9/11 Reflection on Regulation and Peace

When someone disagrees with you—especially on identity, values, or emotionally charged topics—your nervous system doesn’t just hear a difference of opinion. It may register a threat: to your safety, your belonging, or your very sense of self.

This can activate the body’s survival response:

    •    Fight – argue, dominate

    •    Flight – avoid, shut down

    •    Freeze – go numb, dissociate

    •    Fawn – over-accommodate, self-abandon

Who hasn’t felt this? We have too.

Once dysregulated, you’re no longer in dialogue with the other person’s ideas—you’re in dialogue with your own biology. The disagreement itself isn’t inherently dangerous, but to a nervous system under threat, it can feel like a battlefield.

In that state, the brain is not wired for listening—it’s wired for protection. It:

    •    Filters out nuance

    •    Clings to certainty

    •    Casts others as threats

    •    Reduces complexity to simple labels

But when the body is regulated—when breath flows, shoulders soften, presence returns—something shifts.

    •    We can feel discomfort without collapse.

    •    We can hold contradiction without defensiveness.

    •    We can stay rooted without needing to be right.

Regulation is what lets us disagree without disconnecting.

It makes space for truth without shutting down.

To regulate is not to retreat from the heat of the moment—

but to bring a steadier flame.

On this day of remembrance, as we grieve the lives lost and hold the collective ache of history, we also cling to hope. Hope that our nervous systems—and our society—can learn to hold difference without division.

At THE FOURS, we believe in the beauty of nonviolence—not just in action, but in conversation, posture, and presence. We’ve built our work around the idea that regulation is a form of peacekeeping, and that when the body feels safe, the heart has room to listen.

This is our offering:

To help create a world where disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection.

Where truth can be spoken without triggering violence.

And where even in our difference, we can stay in relationship.

To close, we’d like to share a quote from the great Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, written in 1967. His words are hauntingly timely in light of recent events—

“In the guilt and confusion confronting our society, violence only adds to the chaos. It deepens the brutality of the oppressor and increases the bitterness of the oppressed. Violence is the antithesis of creativity and wholeness. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil. With a majestic sense of spiritual power, it seeks to elevate truth, beauty and goodness to the throne.”

King reminds us: “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.”

We would be wise to listen.

Sincerely,

C.G., Founder of The Fours