Two Thoughts from 2020

Bo Brusco | December 31, 2020

In a matter of hours, a new year will begin. If you have spent any time on the internet recently, you’ve likely inferred that 2020 will not be remembered favorably by the majority of people. While we could reminisce on this year’s ups and downs, I would prefer to briefly share with you two thoughts that have really sunk their teeth into me during 2020’s unpleasant duration. 

Thought #1: The modern designs of our social systems divide us.  

“Both the physical and the electronic isolation from people we disagree with allow the forces of confirmation bias, groupthink, and tribalism to push us still further apart.”

- The Coddling of the American Mind, p. 131, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (2019).

If you have only suspected or merely felt that we are more divided now than ever, Pew Research can, unfortunately, corroborate your intuition. I have written at length about it multiple times in my apparently-never-ending series on Tribalism, but the above quote from The Coddling of the American Mind, succinctly summarizes how we have become so dichotomous as a people. Basically, most of us find ourselves physically surrounded by like-minded people, and when we log in to the cyber world, we enter an echo chamber specifically designed to confirm all of our biases. As a result, we become increasingly certain that our worldview is unequivocally correct. 

Thought #2: Certainty impedes our ability to empathize with our fellow countrymen. 

“And we have seen, too, that certainty can be a moral catastrophe waiting to happen. [...] If imagination is what enables us to conceive of and enjoy stories other than our own, and if empathy is the act of taking other people’s stories seriously, certainty deadens or destroys both qualities.”

- Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, p. 164, by Kathryn Schulz (2010).

The most nocuous symptom of our extreme division is our inability to empathize with others, especially those with whom we disagree. As Schulz suggests in the above quote, certainty destroys empathy, and perhaps this is why we have witnessed so much inhumanity this year. Our echo chambers have produced gratuitous amounts of certainty to the point that practicing compassion for those who don’t share our same worldview has become nearly impossible.

To 2021: Life is Not a Battle Between Good and Evil People

2020 was not a story of a battle between “good” and “evil” people; it was the story of one people’s struggle to understand themselves. To tolerate each other and to respectfully disagree. To listen and not assume and accuse. To see human beings and not political affiliations. To find a shared reality and work together towards a common goal. 2020 was indeed a tragedy, but not just because of the loss of life, but the loss of civility and compassion.

These two thoughts have stayed with me through every historical moment of 2020. I share them with you because I hope that by being cognizant of these two observations, we can reflect on how we behaved this past year and understand how we can be better in 2021.