I wanted to write about how our politics and the media incentives that steer them radicalize people into hating each other, how the violence we witnessed this week feels like the inevitable result of a toxic social discourse. But we all know that already.
Here's what I can't shake: The division we see in the media isn't how most of us actually live. But right now, we're all staring at the same tragedy.
Moments like this bring opportunity – a rare window to slow down, examine our present reality, and ask different questions. Most of modern society exists in fragments, media bubbles, but every now and then we’re united in a belief that we’re not where we want to be. We're all looking at the same wreckage and asking how we got here.
The window won't stay open long. We have maybe three weeks before this gets absorbed into the next news cycle, before we collectively shrug and retreat to our corners. So what do we do with this brief moment of shared awareness?
Where I'm landing right now:
1. The people who can hold complexity will matter more than ever. We’ve seen enough to know that this “us vs. them” mentality is destructive. It’s easy to entrench in our little camps; being a bridge-builder is hard. But it’s worth the work. The future belongs to people who can sit with contradictions, who can see the human underneath the political position.
2. The media diet conversation isn't optional anymore. We have to talk about the media problem — again, and again, and again — until people realize that taking back control over what comes in and what they believe is a basic life skill. There's nothing less impressive than being told how to think and simply parroting your party's talking points anytime politics comes up.
3. This stuff is genuinely hard on the nervous system. We need to take care of ourselves. It's hard (even numbing) to grapple with the endless stream of violence, outrage, and distraction charging through our phones every day. We're not built to process this much tragedy, this much anger, this much stimulation. We have to stay grounded to be useful. This note from Axios was an eye-opener.
But here's what I keep asking myself: What does it actually take to turn down the temperature without just avoiding the hard conversations? How do we honor the gravity of this moment and the reality that most of us still manage to coexist peacefully? And maybe most importantly, what kind of person do I need to be in the weeks ahead?
It's rare that we're all collectively brought to a stop, where the events of a day or week grab us all by the collar and ask us to wake up.
Most of the time, we're all living in different realities, consuming different information, focused on different problems.
But right now, we're all staring at the same thing and feeling some version of the same unease.
This is one of those moments that can really matter. Let's not waste it.
If not us, who?
j