People’s gratitude abilities generally fall on a scale between 1 and 10. All we can try do is be better than a 5.

It is difficult for us to separate ourselves from our current circumstance enough to make wise decisions. It is like being on the beach trying to understand what the coast line looks like.

Discourse is the flashlight that lets us cut through the fog of uncertainty.

There is pretty good consensus around what a great future looks like. The lack of consensus is around how we get there. Communism is an example of a not great way to get there. People become zealots about the ways to get there.

Your idea is like a boxer you manage. If the goal is to have the best boxer you would want to vet the boxer and make sure he’s tried and tested. If you truly believed in his abilities you would invite others to challenge your boxer. You wouldn’t take offense if someone tried to challenge your boxer. If you did it would be clear that you don’t have high conviction in your boxer.

The best conversations are between peoples higher minds. You almost have to whisper metaphorically (avoid overtly political / controversial terms) to not rouse the primitive mind. As soon as it wakes up it will derail the conversation.

There are two axes in discourse: decency and agreement. People usually just focus on agreement. Respectful disagreement is okay.

People behave differently when they’re behind screens (e.g. social media) because their primitive mind can forget they’re dealing with other humans.

Political issues light up a different part of our brains. We are hardwired to react to political issues differently. It was life or death back then.

Political tribalism is the most prevalent tribalism right now. A white racist person likes a conservative black person over a woke white person right now.

The new book is a book about politics but not about the horizontal axis (left vs right) it’s about the vertical axis (high rung vs low rung)

There are liberal games and power (totalitarian) games. The former creates some base rules so individuals can enjoy person liberties (e.g. don’t kill, don’t steal, free speech, etc.). These policies must be accompanied by liberal culture otherwise the system doesn’t work. If cancel culture exists but the first amendment exists, the society isn’t truly liberal.

Liberalism is the ideal that America was built on. Conservatives and progressives are both liberal at their core. Marxists don’t believe in liberalism. They think it’s power games in disguise. But they believe in modernity (reason, truth, science). Post modernists don’t even believe in that layer.

American cancel culture uses a soft cudgel (social ostracizing, cancelling) which is equally effective in the short term relative to the hard cudgel (what Maoists used—murder, imprisonment) but it relies on fear. And when the fear disappears, it falls apart.

Awareness without courage isn’t that useful.

In a properly-functioning liberal society, the thought curve should mirror the speech curve. People should be speaking what they believe. That isn’t happening today.