The Center Will Not Hold

Since 2011, American society has collectively become a dumber and sadder society. The widespread adoption of the iPhone, coupled with social media apps that entice the most destructive aspects of human nature, are the most likely candidates to blame for our current state of ire. 

Our contemporary discourse has become corrosive as we have become trapped in what feels like a political zero sum game, imprisoned by the speed of communication. 

We are not biologically designed for the world we find ourselves in. Of the 210,000 years of homo sapien occupation on our 4.5 billion-year-old planet, 99.9% of that tenure has been spent in a hunter-gatherer state. 

University of Kansas Psychologist Dr. Stephen Ilardi refers to depression as a disease of civilization, along with the likes of diabetes, allergies and obesity. Essentially, the further our species moves away from a life that prioritizes the features of hunter-gather living, the sadder and sicker we become. For a healthier existence, we need to build lives that prioritize time outside, feature physical activity, are in the presence of loved ones, and orient our minds around non-ruminative thinking patterns. 

Psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge in her book about the cultural trends of Gen Z, “iGen” offers data to support Ilardi’s findings. Twenge finds, based on decades of generational research, that in-person socialization and sports and exercise are the most protective activities that young people can engage in, in terms of their mental health. 

So what does mental health have to do with our corrosive discourse?

It is because life is about habits of mind. The wonderful American writer and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.”

We are what we think about.

When we spend our days ruminating in an echo chamber of bad ideas, no wonder the result is a decrease in the state of our mental health. 

I believe that we are living in the dark ages of too much information. We are in desperate need to acquire and teach new skills to find good information, and engage our brains to sort, analyze, and process the flood of information that comes at us minute to minute.

Our need for a healthier discourse and way of mental operating could not be more imperative. We need to understand big problems, understand how technology is commodifying our attention for profit, and how our current habits of information consumption are leading us astray. In an age when we have access to any and all the information in the world, the result has been a narrowing of the mind.

America is an experiment in governance that is unparalleled in human history. Not only is it a democracy, but it is a multi-cultural and racial democracy that requires the cultivation and curation of diverse viewpoints, experiences, and an understanding of humans in their distinct circumstances. 

How do we capture the complexity of our country, and its citizens?

I believe embracing nuance is the best way forward. 

In our modern media landscape, where most people consume their news, nuance is not being practiced. 

The architecture of social media has created a national landscape of silos and echo chambers which exacerbate division. The result is us versus them thinking, right versus wrong, and most dangerously, good versus evil.

As our attention spans diminish, so does our ability to solve our biggest challenges. A commitment to scholarship, the essential foundation of our educational institutions, is under threat. We are losing our ability to deeply focus, which is necessary to do profound work.

This is true in both progressive and conservative communities, where mirrors of intolerance abound. Books are banned or eliminated from curriculum in both directions. Toni Morrison and Mark Twain, both shapers of what we understand to be this American experiment, have become too distressing to teach and learn. 

How weak we are, that we cannot entertain an idea that makes us uncomfortable? Education is not intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. In a democracy, where the people are allowed to govern themselves, dialogue is going to be messy, and we better be prepared for it. 

Our self-righteousness has become intellectually constraining, and we will find our center when we find our humility. 

The Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that placed striving for reason as the priority for an often unreasonable and emotional animal at the center, is the inheritance of our educational institutions and we should swiftly adhere to the purpose of its’ aims. We must act in service of seeking truth through the scientific method. If we do not recommit to placing this frame at the center of American education, at every level, we will lose our democracy, if we haven’t already.