The Society We Deserve

For the past few weeks, I have been telling you about the argument of my new book: that we haven’t lost our values, we’ve lost each other; that morality is cooperation, so trust must be rebuilt through relationship; that evidence about groups must come from experience with groups. This week I want to talk about…

Last week I made a claim: America’s crisis is not a failure of values but a failure of relationships between groups. This week I want to go one layer deeper, because the two are more connected than we usually think. Ask people across cultures and traditions what makes a person good, and remarkably similar answers…

Years ago, my brother-in-law — a farmer — was badly injured in an accident just before harvest. What happened next is the reason I believe what I believe. More than thirty farming families showed up with combines, trucks, and food. They finished in one day what would have taken one farmer weeks. Nobody was paid.…

Everywhere I go, I hear the same anxiety. People are worried about polarization. About loneliness. About whether democracy itself can hold. I hear it from pastors and farmers, from software engineers and retired schoolteachers, from progressives and conservatives, from Christians, Muslims, Jews, and people of no religion at all. And at nearly every gathering, someone…