America: September 2025
Commentary on one facet of the moral landscape of this moment
Prior to the start of September 2025, I've seen about 30+ human beings be burned alive, hit by a sniper, targeted by drone strikes, or otherwise brutally murdered — complete with other human beings laugh about their demise. All this across the last 2 years or so, many in HD or high quality film.
All of it is wrong and bad, including what happened this week - that's what I believe in.
Furthermore, I believe the ire should be directed at that which says1 only certain lives matter or deserve dignity, and others are discardable; all of the orphaned children and the parents losing their children early, it's all horrible and it is acceptable to feel like it simply shouldn't happen.
We can re-normalize that it's safe to say it is all bad and none of it should happen — that it is even tenable to hold that position. Because holding that level of moral conviction and plainness is under duress right now. I wonder, dear reader, do you even feel comfortable voicing that anywhere — and perhaps most of all, “online”? For fear of backlash, or threats?
We don't have to listen to voices that say otherwise, voices intent on compelling the celebration of the violent and unnecessary ending of a person's life. It is a choice that can be made.
As for myself, I've lost 3 people in my immediate family this year, and they were all difficult in different ways. I think the foundation of a shared morality is vital, and acknowledging the immensity of loss is one way to do that.
That said, there are reasons, voices, industries, and actors who benefit from the disharmony, and who seek to amplify an inequality in the value of lives, and the impact of loss. There are external actors who specifically wish Americans to be divided and hate each other, as well.
In this country, in particular, the fullness of acknowledging the pain of others — which ultimately binds our human experiences together, unalterably — is under attack, and many people feel desperate right now. They feel desperate because they are unseen, and their group has suffered a loss, and they feel threatened about their ability to exist, be free, be loved, and be welcomed.
I'll say it again: very powerful influences want you to validate this sense of being threatened.
Perhaps the world at large, and this country in specific, is scared to reach out and take a stand to comfort each other because they know doing so makes them a target for some: “weak,” defending the “wrong side,” or even seen as being disrespectful in some capacity (for valid or invalid reasons). So it is safer only saying what a particular community has coded as acceptable to say. Or safer to throw rage and vitriol at whatever is identified as "other side," the bad guys' team.
But it doesn't have to be like that. We don't have to play that game. Yet, to actually do this, it will require more than simply demanding the understanding or respect that has been denied whichever group you identify with — and not waiting until "the other" says they are sorry, first.
It will take courage, and it will require intentional selection.
Taking hostages when negotiating against the shared dignity of other human beings
Holding moral hostages here isn't going to change anything; it is the current norm. It is how we got here.
One can choose to can stand up and choose otherwise first, however. You can "reach across the aisle" and reject:
that which wants to blame and seek revenge, and
compels the belief that some groups or some lives really are worthless —
or that some generalization of a large group of people justifies their dehumanization,
that treating them like monsters is right;
that the sins of so many other people are righteously transferred onto a particular subject for punishment.
I am more discontented with the efforts at play which further cultivate an environment where this kind of seeing each other and showing up for each other becomes a target; that which profits from fomenting the hate, and celebrates the "winning" of one side and the "losing" of another.
This is a road to nowhere.
Mourning and Tuning Out
I don't have a lot to say for people who don't want to mourn a loss; it's their choice. (More below on gut reactions.)
But if you are committed to not engaging at the human level, or committed to ignorance or neglect around the loss, then you are opting out2 of the moral reality of what is happening.
Once again, there have never been such machinery and profit motives behind you choosing to tune out, opt out, and disengage. But that's what it is.
This is the moment in history we live in, and as underprepared as we may be, here we are.
A philosophical deep dive on choice
This second half of the essay takes a slightly different tone, which is why I moved it here to the blog rather than my original “Facebook Post” setup.
Choice: infinite reasons for justifying the acceptance of the dehumanization of others (or yourself)
In this life, you will be presented with infinite reasons and justifications for why the dehumanization of other people may be legitimate. Many of them will be true, valid, and relevant to you. But you will have to choose something beyond that, regardless of those reasons. Pragmatically, you may have to defend yourself, you may have to take difficult actions, and all of those things that are a part of being in this world, as it is; this is no paradise or utopia.
But you will have to choose that people matter, and that loss matters. No one else will do it for you but yourself; and the choice does matter. I am here exhorting you and the world that the choice matters3.
We live in a world that in many ways treats the cost of doing business, metaphorically or literally, as legitimizing of the exploitation of others. It will be you (sorting out with yourself and whatever you believe in), as to how much of that you can handle, manage to process, or just exactly what that means or entails. But only you can positively affirm and enact in this world that people matter, and that dehumanizing others is not the choice you want to make.
Why? Because all of the pressures and reasons will be available for you to select why that is tenable, right, feels good, vindicated, or otherwise a good option to make.
Nothing will ultimately make the fullness of the choice easier, because truly pursuing the choice necessitates you earnestly and soberly look at the heart and soul of yourself and others. It requires your inquiry into the human condition. It is much easier to gesture at the choice and believing you are in fact moral, understanding, compassionate, just, benevolent, or even righteous in one's own judgement.
Yet that is not actually what making the choice is; it is the illusion of the choice, and it is part of the trap and snare that affords comfortable bubbles; it makes it compelling for others around you to also buy into the same incompleteness. Echo chambers form clusterings of people mutually supporting each other, enabling that it's ok to draw the line somewhere, and that it's ok to stop caring; that it’s ok to cease pursuing your more complete understanding of the human condition, the human experience.
There will never be an exhaustion of the supply — there is no capacity — of reasons and justifications to this ceasing; the opportunity for weaponized despair, apathy, or nihilism will persist as long as you draw breath. There will always have some justification ready at hand for why another human being doesn’t need to matter. What’s more, there is absolutely not a uniformity of reasons each person, in their own life, has thrown at them; our lived experiences are not all the same. There are larger and smaller amounts of suffering, pain, loss, hurt, hardship, privilege, and everything else — the lived experience is not uniform. But the choice is the same, and enacting the choice costs differently for different people.
Curiously, it is still the same choice; this is a paradox, and it is unfair, even4. I admit, I comment on this nonchalantly here. But I'm not interested in presenting a false equality, nor diagnosing why the paradox is so; I'm trying to illustrate the context of what we're all collectively dealing with.
(Tha) Crossroads:
So, what are you going to do? You can feel what you want — I'm personally a believer that everyone's raw emotional reactions are valid, even if they are unpleasant and unforgiving; they may speak to certain pains, complications, or whatever unfairness of life and the human experience that they've endured. But the feeling and potential expression of that reaction is not the same as the choice of what you ultimately do about it.
Nor is that reaction independent of the reality that words matter, and trust is hard to build. I wish it wasn't that complicated, but it is, and we don't have time to pretend like it is simpler.5 If you want to contribute to people believing that you believe they matter, you have to act like they matter. Otherwise, their doubt is legitimized.
This is where the fate of many things hangs in the balance. I don't have massive call to action or manifesto about this here, but I think this is what we are really dealing with; this is part of our collective zeitgeist as Americans, and America (for good or ill) as a center stage of global affairs.6
At its core, it's about what you will choose, and how much you are willing to be earnest about the ills of the world, how much you seek to expand your model and comprehension of how the human condition, and how it is embodied uniquely by people other than yourself.
How much do you really want to know, or see, or feel, or understand?
I think we can celebrate each other in striving to know, understand, or love more. I see this as oppositional to the forces that want to lubricate your dismissal, alienation, or forsaking of human beings.
Particularly, when those forces want you to do this forsaking of others for no actual legitimate need or reason, but because it garners them more power and you less power, stability, or clarity. This is one of the oldest games7 we humans have been playing with (or on) each other.
Build towards futures that center dignity and account for dehumanizing forces
To close on a particularly personal sentiment, I think we actually do have “bigger” (or at least more complex) problems to deal with than endlessly fluctuating about the value of other people, or that showing up and affirming rather than dehumanizing others is “a good thing to do.”
But more about that elsewhere. It is clear that it will not simply be a matter of achieving this “perfection” of valuing others lives more universally as a prerequisite for performing the doing, making, or building of paths to the future. We are forced to make choices now, from one state of affairs within this imperfect world, towards another state of affairs.
Yet I would strongly suggest that as we do such building, it is vital to keep in mind that we should seek to make it easier, more tenable, and more celebrated to meaningfully value the lives, experiences, and dignity of human beings.
Because, you can be very well assured, there will be plenty of countervailing winds, endlessly blowing, which left unaddressed will shatter and sunder whatever other paths, structures, or bridges we may fashion.
So construct what you are building with the sturdiness and environmentally-aware savvy to withstand those winds.
I’m not citing anything here specifically, as the point of this essay is to intentionally abstract out specific context and talk about general principles, and the inherent choices around what those principles mean for morality. I am ok with criticism that I am not decrying a particular atrocity here; there are many, and what is horrible and dehumanizing is horrible and dehumanizing. But I have aimed at a specific target here, and I hope I have hit it. I’m up for talking personally if you have specific questions and think we have a relationship where I can meaningfully engage those topics with you.
There is a much more confrontational way to say this. I have had discussions about moral softness in the last 36 hours that fit here very much. Maybe there is a time and place for that to be fully written out, but I don’t think it’s today.
Do you see why?
The choice is the same for everyone to make, but it is definitively not being made in a uniform embodiment, lived experience, culture, and so on. Feel free to share your philosophical takes, disputes, or adjacent ideas in the comments.
It is a process I am wrestling with as I write more publicly, especially around topics like this. But I live in an era where there is much pressure and training, whether for the general public or for academia, to flatten and reduce problems to one or two essential atoms and crank up the salience, brightness, or contrast around them; this is seen as impactful and good practice, good for grants, and good for clicks. But the problems I want to tackle require something different (sometimes).
Even as its legitimacy and respect has “taken some hits” of late.
Forthcoming essay on the game I want to play, and I want to encourage more folks to play.