 I went on a news fast by which I mean I didn't look at the news or read the news or anything for about half a year, partly because I wanted to write my book, but also because I felt like it was kind of poisoning my mind because all of the news was inviting me into hating somebody, into outrage and indignation and kind of one adrenaline jolt after another, and so I wanted to kind of, yeah, like go on a fast or quit cold turkey for a while and see what happened. So everything that's happened in the last year, I've only heard about it secondhand, whatever Donald Trump said and did or the me too thing or anything like that. I just kind of got wind of it when people read me something or said, hey, so and so said this, and having stepped back a little bit from the fray of the media, from the cyclone of news, I got a little bit of, yeah, I got a bit more perspective on it and it's kind of disturbing and now I'm kind of stepping back in, but just seeing the level of hate and the level of war thinking and the level of polarization and the dehumanization of the enemy of the other side. So I've written this book, it's on, I'm not going to tell you what it's on, because I'll tell you why I won't tell you right now what it's on, not because it's any big secret, but because it is one of those issues that triggers the us versus them mentality. And I find that it doesn't matter what issue I'm speaking about. If I say something that's a little bit unorthodox, that makes it hard to peg, okay, hon, what are you saying here? I haven't heard that before. So the first impulse that comes up is, well, what side are you on? In a war, the most important question is what side are you on? That's what you have to figure out first, are you a friend or an enemy? Are you on team good, i.e. my team, or are you on team evil, the other team? And if you don't easily fit into one of the two sides, then you're the object of suspicion and hostility. And in fact, I find that in a war situation, the enemy is not as detested as the pacifist, because the enemy at least validates your own identity. Like who am I? We build identities from the stories that surround us, and the story of us versus them tells us who we are. I'm an American, I'm on the side of freedom, and they are the Russians, or they are the terrorists, or they are somebody else. So I know who I am through having an enemy. At least that's how it works in a war mentality, which is pervasive in our culture. So if you question that categorization of self and other, if you say, yeah, maybe the whole premises of the war are faulty, and we should question the things that are driving us to fight somebody, then you're questioning someone's identity. And yeah, so anyway, I'm seeing, this is something that's really been up for me as I've kind of started re-engaging with the news, and just seeing, and it's this weird, there's like this disconnect between what I'm seeing on the media and what I'm seeing on social media too, not just the news media, this more and more suspicion and hostility and hatred and us versus them and polarization. But on the other hand, in actual daily life, maybe it's my imagination, but I think people are getting friendlier. I think people are getting more polite. I think people are getting more human, more empathic. I notice it at TSA. The TSA officials are friendlier than they used to be. It's like everybody kind of knows this is all bullshit. We don't really believe in these rituals that we're doing, but you've got to do your job, and I've got to play my part and submit to this humiliation ritual that you have to go through in order to board an airplane so that everybody feels safe. But we don't really believe in it, it seems. It's like this kind of camaraderie of, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all stuck in this game, but we don't really believe in it anymore. And what do we believe in these notions of, I mean, I use the word interbeing, but the understanding that you're a reflection of me, that I'm not really separate from you, that any judgment I have on you is actually something about myself and maybe I got to take ownership of it. I can't say that this is the new ethos, but these ideas are infiltrating and leading people, I think, to just pause for a moment sometimes before letting loose with condemnation.