Our founding documents say that all people are created equal and born with rights that cannot be taken away—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe that.
But those same documents denied the full humanity of women, Indigenous people, and Black people. From the beginning, we told ourselves two stories at once:
All people are created equal.
But not all people are really people.
We have lived with that double mind for nearly 250 years.
That split doesn’t stay on paper. It shapes our culture, our institutions, and how power is used. The killing of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis is not just a tragic act by one person. It is another sign of what happens when a system learns to treat some lives as less valuable. Cruelty practiced on one group never stays contained. It spreads.
What a Cognitive Split Does to Us
Psychologists are clear about this: living with deeply conflicting values comes at a cost.
A cognitive split:
- Increases stress and anxiety
- Weakens self-trust and moral clarity
- Encourages cynicism and disengagement
- Fuels anger and blame
- Drains life of meaning
When our values say one thing but our systems and behaviors say another, the human mind struggles to hold itself together. Over time, people either numb out, lash out, or give up believing their choices matter.
Human beings need coherence to flourish. Meaning requires alignment between what we claim to believe and how we live.
Turning Around Is Painful—and Necessary
Every wisdom tradition in the world names this truth: healing requires turning around.
It means taking in hard information.
Facing what we don’t want to see.
And doing the slow work of integrating our values into everyday life.
This work is painful.
In the Christian scriptures, this process is called baptism—a daily dying to the ways our lives deny our deepest values, and a rising into a more truthful way of living. In Romans 6, Paul calls it a kind of death.
But it is not a death against us.
It is a death for us.
It names the deep, costly, and also joyful work of aligning our inner lives, our public lives, and our shared systems with values that honor the full humanity of all people—including ourselves.
That work is spiritual.
It is psychological.
It is about our collective values as a nation.
And right now, it is urgent.