This week has been utterly trying on so many fronts. I actually had to unplug myself from Twitter for a couple of days because the negativity of it is just so overwhelming that it swamps everything else in my world.
I have a wonderful job that provides me with fulfilling work. I have a wonderful family, including a mystery baby coming by November. (We’re not finding out the gender, but I hope it’s a dinosaur.) I have an amazing, energetic five-year-old son who’s bright, funny, and incredibly loving.
And yet, I’m kept awake at night by the doom and gloom around us. By wondering when and how all this chaos will end. By sadness about the tribalism that’s absolutely poisoned so many people in the last two years.
By rule, I’m a famed hater of nut-picking. This has been around for decades, but it’s been elevated to an Olympic sport in the era of Twitter. Nut-picking is taking the worst people on a side, and using them to define that side. Such as this guy:
Or this person:
The tribalism of the last five years has been a constant weight on my spirit. I’ve lived since 2016 under the assumption that at some point, people I am close to would decide that they were done with me because we disagreed.
Social media is perfectly engineered to drive us apart as much as it pulls us together. When Facebook’s algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling and in the ecosystem, it’s not going to provide you content to challenge your worldview. It’s going to provide you more statements that you agree with. They want you to give the thumbs-up to Elizabeth Warren denouncing Ted Cruz, or Ted Cruz denouncing Elizabeth Warren. They want you to give an angry face to someone venting about the The Worst Person of the Moment. What you tell Facebook or Twitter is the content you want, they are more than happy to hook you up to a fire-hose full of it.
I think this is driving politics to become our new American religion. As people have less and less of things outside themselves to concentrate on — humility, decency, introspection, self-improvement — they get sucked deeper and deeper into the tribalism that becomes an increasing force in our world. They sacrifice the unique, miraculous worldview that all people are created in God’s image and therefore inherently created with dignity and value. They replace it with the worldview that people that don’t agree with them are The Other, worthy only of exclusion from polite society.
This is a worldview as old as humanity itself. This defined tribal life thousands of years ago, because the person in the tribe causing trouble could lead to the death of everyone. But this programming is ill-suited to Twitter, because Kevin from Manchester, UK isn’t a threat, but the Internet makes it feel like he’s in our backyard, imperiling our very lives.
The greatness of Christianity, Western culture and the Enlightenment is that it fought against this programming by replacing the concept of The Other with The Same, replacing enmity with dignity. But this is slipping. Our culture can only hold this back with great effort, effort that our elites and our media don’t seem to be interested in providing any more. The more they can denounce The Other for Unright Thoughts and get a segment on CNN, the happier they are. And then all of their followers share it on Facebook and get a nice little dopamine hit for Proving Their Correctness. Everything gets driven into dichotomy — Black and White, Right and Wrong, Good and Evil.
And now science has been dragged along with it. Scientific statements cannot be discussed if the Wrong People might like it.
This was the whole reason I created this Substack in the first place. I live to think about serious ideas, tease them apart, think about all of the implications, without regard to Who Might Like It or Who Might Be Offended. It’s why I called this Seeking Truth.
So when New York City passes a vaccine mandate to enter restaurants or gyms, I think it will lead more people to be convinced to get the shot. But I also think about the 72 percent of black residents under age 44 who will now be excluded from participating in society due to being unvaccinated. When the current administration floats a trial balloon about restricting interstate travel for the unvaccinated, I think it might encourage more partnership between nearby states. But I also think about guards on the Poplar Street Bridge checking your vaccine card before going from Missouri to Illinois, or a Berlin Wall down State Street in Bristol, the only town in America that is in two states at once.
This is why all of this weighs on my heart so much. I strive for harmony, the joy in humanity, and to acknowledge the inherent dignity in everyone, rich or poor, black or white, vaccinated and unvaccinated. This is what liberty is about — being free to lead your own life and make your own decisions, not have your decisions dictated to you by The Mob or The Right People.
What a beautiful essay. I feel exactly the same way. As a Christian, my duty is to love whomever is in front of me... regardless of religion, vaccine status, race, age, etc. You have done a great service to the universe by writing this... a little missile of light sent into the darkness. Thank you!