It’s been almost a year since I last posted. I went dark, I admit, because the passion and purpose of my professional life–supporting constructive dialog among diverse stakeholders about sustainable development—felt increasingly irrelevant and impotent in the face of rising divisiveness and anger.
I tried to stay energized and engaged, but I was unable to sustain the red-hot, almost fanatical passion that fuels those at the extremes of the left and right. I was burning out, and that worried me even more, because not engaging, not protesting, not looking for solutions was the equivalent of consenting to the unfolding chaos, and, if I was burning out, so, likely, were others, and if we all stopped paying attention, really bad things would likely happen. New polls confirm widespread fatigue with the tribalism that insulates and fuels those at the extremes.
The term for us is the “exhausted majority.”
That we are a majority is both alarming and encouraging.
People at the extreme left and extreme right dominate public dialog despite being a minority–between 14 to 33 percent of people fall into these categories, depending on who and how they are counted. Those of us in the majority don’t agree on many things, but we are less tribal, fed up with polarization, willing to compromise, and believe that our similarities are greater than our differences.
Fortunately, I can now see glimmers of a narrative that might engage this majority and coalesce us into a new center with sufficient political power to steer development and construct a thriving and sustainable future. I’ll discuss that next.