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Is there such a thing as institutional racism and does it exist in America today? Yes, and of course. So what should be done? One option is to debate openly and honestly the data and different perspectives; another is to try to win only by force. The former might win some converts; the latter likely leads only to backlash.
There is a deep and corrosive tribal impulse to act as if “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But sometimes the enemy of your enemy is just a jackass.
That’s when the little ladies in a couple of churches erupted. They weren’t mad at Moore; they were mad at me for opposing him. “If you aren’t for Moore, you’re for the Democrat,” they asserted. No, I wasn’t, I explained. (I was—and am—for better long-term choices than what this race offered.)
We need to have the courage to admit that sometimes both options stink. But we’re increasingly beholden to an us-versus-them paradigm. We need to see that there’s a better way.
I believe deeply in the kind of character development that can result from people living in close proximity while freely exchanging ideas and pursuing truth together.
happens precisely because people are engaged, not coerced. Cultures are changed for the better only when individuals are persuaded and transformed, not beaten into silence.
Abraham Lincoln, while arguing in 1859 that America was not living up to her ideals, did not begin by rejecting Thomas Jefferson because of the gulf between his principles and his practices. Instead, he called the nation to align its practices with the third president’s stated principles.
But the exceptional thing about America is not that we indulged slavery—slavery has been a feature of human societies since the beginning of time—but that we abolished it, and precisely because it was unreconcilable with our principles. Jonah
abolition, not slavery, was the unprecedented thing.
The establishment of Jim Crow and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan made clear that racism was a cancer far from eradicated.
Talking begins with recognizing our blind spots.
When we understand these different starting points, it’s easier to empathize with political opponents, even if we still passionately disagree with their policy preferences. Understanding each other better doesn’t mean that we stop debating and join hands around the campfire—but it does help us to talk, having
When we start from the assumption that our opponents are like us—decent folks who want what’s best but who start from a different place—we are more likely to be respectful and to have a conversation that’s productive.
Political opponents are now on the prowl for opportunities to mock or silence their opponents—as if the really important dividing line in life is between Republicans and Democrats.
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, refused to allow his children to have an iPad: “We limit how much technology our kids use,” he told the New York Times. “We think it’s too dangerous for them.”1 Last year, I started asking tech billionaires and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs if they allow their kids unfettered access to smartphones. “Hell, no,” one responded. “We know how powerful those things are.”
One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century is to pause and think carefully about the technology that promises (or is it threatens?) to transform the ways we live—and the ways we understand ourselves.
We pretend that our screens serve us, but most of us will admit—when we’re being honest—that our screens are dictating the relationship.
We’re likelier to spend our time seeking validation from digital “friends” than to spend time with flesh-and-blood friends.
We’ve become addicted to distraction.
Survey data suggest that there has been significantly less real sex in the United States since 2007, when the introduction of the iPhone
Among 18- to 39-year-olds, almost half (46 percent) admit to having looked at pornography as recently as “yesterday,”
experts believe young men’s “sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents.
We don’t yet know how many, but there’s a wave of young men suffering from porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED), a condition in which they can only become aroused watching porn; a real woman in the flesh is not enough.13
Sexual technologies are promoting the belief that we can get all the benefits of genuine intimacy without committing to a real person. That’s a poisonous lie.
Next to great sex, one of the best things in life is good sleep. But our digital tools are messing with this too.
Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even e-readers emit blue light—which means they’re acting like roosters at every swipe.
“insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time,”
there always comes a time when everyone “escapes” into their phones. If he doesn’t have a phone, he feels as if he’s the only one in the room “who doesn’t have a friend.”
Hiding behind phones is a familiar experience for adults, too.
We use phones to look busy at uncomfortable parties or in awk...
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The frequency of shared meals has been progressively collapsing for half a century.
“alone together, each in their own rooms, each on a networked computer or mobile device.
We go online because we are busy but end up spending more time with technology and le...
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just as the introduction of writing changed our neural circuitry, the internet, too, is changing the wiring inside our heads.
Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.”
attention span, focus, and work habits had changed as he spent more and more time online.
People don’t read the same way in the internet age. We skim. That’s especially true of the content we see on screens,
We regularly use our phones to escape the inconveniences and doldrums of our own lives, here and now.
dissociation, which is when people separate the details of an event from their awareness
not because we’re traumatized but because we’re bored.
the more you use Facebook over time, the more likely you are to experience negative physical health, negative mental health, and negative life satisfaction,” writes
the more time one spends on social media, “the greater the association with anxiety symptoms and the greater likelihood of an anxiety disorder,”
who (seem to) travel more than you do, who (seem to) have a bigger house and a nicer car than you do, whose kids (seem to) behave better than yours.
Skype can take a bit of the sting out of missing another Little League game, but there’s no substitute for a place and a people to call home.
Tragically, Americans are losing their real families while chasing images on smartphones that often turn out to be nothing at all. We abandon real places and neglect real people—and for what?
The undermining of local tribes never ends up being worth it, as the substitute virtual tribes we eventually join are generally much better at being against things than being for things. The end result is aching loneliness.
That’s when he discovers, to his shock, that he’s missed a year of life: his dog has died, his marriage is in trouble, and his kids have grown into people he doesn’t really know. Alarmed, he tries to get rid of the remote, but it keeps reappearing in his hand. He wants to destroy it, but he can’t. Worse, the remote starts automatically fast-forwarding based on his previous preferences. Even if he wanted to slow down and enjoy the small moments of life, his remote is now programming his patterns. He’s become enslaved to his preferences.
tries to fast-forward through the boring parts of life to get to the stand-alone parts that he thinks will fulfill him. But in real life, much of what you end up appreciating about the hard-to-attain moments is the work required to get there.
We don’t primarily lack technology, we primarily lack wisdom. We lack habits for navigating this digital revolution.
“digital Sabbath” for a big chunk of Sundays—and
