DISCONNECTION & POLARIZATION Metacrisis Salon #8 - Cleaned Transcript February 21, 2026 - Lightning Lofts, Brooklyn, NY This one predates Mike the pigeon, so it comes from a single room recording rather than a passed mic. Cleaned and condensed: filler trimmed, crosstalk smoothed, the shape of the night kept intact. Not verbatim, and it ends at the break, before the breakout rooms. dearcrisis.com/salon/8-disconnection-polarization ==================================================================== 1. Welcome Hope: Welcome to Metacrisis Salon number eight. Show of hands for who is new here. The ratio is changing. Rachel has been to more than one, so we have a veteran in the room. For context, Ben started this as an event series, not alone, with Jess, Vincent, Matt and a few others who are in this room. They founded it to break down what the metacrisis means and how it relates to us making sense of things together, and bit by bit we are developing it into a community. Tonight we are trying something more personal, sending you out into breakout rooms after the conversations. Bathrooms are straight back that way, and there will be a break after the two presentations. If you took food and have not paid Ben yet, send him ten dollars, because that is how the food gets paid for. Hands up if you helped cook. And if you have not joined the WhatsApp community yet, that is where people talk about what is happening between salons. Both QR codes are up. 2. Why the format keeps changing Ben: This started as an information series. We brought people together and gave ten-minute presentations, because we thought what we needed was more information. Over time we realized information is abundant and free. There are endless YouTube videos and podcasts. What is actually unique here is coming together, getting to know your peers, and gathering as ordinary people who are maybe having a hard time. Thinking about the state of the world is a challenging internal experience, so giving people a space to have deeper and harder conversations on a semi-regular basis was the point. Every salon runs a different format. Tonight I will take ten minutes to introduce the topic, then Emily and Shia will share their expertise. After that you can step out if your back hurts or you have somewhere to be, or you can stay for real breakout rooms in the rooms of this house. It is a 17-person community living house with nine rooms on this floor, and the facilitators are volunteers who came early to help cook. Thank you for spending a Saturday evening on something like this. There is food and there are snacks in the back. 3. Ben · Framing the divide Ben: We live in a time, and I think both sides agree on this, where you wake up and have no idea what the news will be. My friend Tom Chi described the strategy this way: fragment people, keep them unsure what happens next. If you are losing at chess, you throw things into the fire. You make random moves, you surprise people, you confuse them. Confused people become fragmented, and fragmented people make poor decisions. They get reactive. They stop being able to analyze a situation and work out what to do. In the United States the right and the left are more divided than ever, and the data supports it, it is not just a feeling. It is tearing families apart. It is also removing our ability to relate to people who have grievances a lot like ours, because our sense of collective power has fractured. These salons are an excuse for me to learn a topic, so I read Don't Think of an Elephant, which Daniel recommended, to understand how the right built such compelling frames. The most interesting idea in it is that if you think of America as a family, the left is the nurturing mother and the right is the strict father. Put on those two lenses and things make more sense. One side says we need to be more caring, more nurturing, everyone is a human. The other says we need rules, borders, discipline, the rule of law. It is a simple way to understand why a group thinks one way or the other without laying judgment on top of it. I made these infographics with AI, and I will post the deck in the community chat afterward. I have found a new way of reading a book: instead of reading it, I make infographics, and it helps me synthesize what is in it. As the book went on, though, it turned into a how-to guide for talking to conservatives. The argument is that the right frames an issue, and when you rebut it with facts you reinforce their frame and make it stronger. So the advice becomes: lead with your values, do not repeat their frame back, use your own language, declare the policy you think works. And somewhere in there I realized the whole book was not about understanding the other side. It was about overpowering their frame. Which made me think of Tim Urban's self-help book for societies. He draws a ladder, and I was probably up near the top in my level of conviction about most of my beliefs. When you are only trying to convince the other person that you are right, you dig your heels in and refuse to learn what you do not yet know, or to see things with nuance. The way to find out where you actually are is to have more detailed, nuanced conversations. He also describes the primitive mind and the higher mind, which is roughly Kahneman's system one and system two. There is a part of us that gets triggered and angry, opens the internet, and asks how we got here. The systems we have built leverage our dopamine and our outrage, which we covered in an earlier salon, and they pull us down into being angrier and more reactive all the time, which removes our ability to think and discuss. The byproduct, on the right and the left both, is what he calls the golem: an amalgamation of primitive minds, reactive and angry. And angry people who are not thinking clearly can be pointed in any direction you like. So it benefits anyone seeking power to keep us outraged, and reasonable debate starts to disappear. What we can do is nurture the other side of ourselves. The goal is not to silence dissent. It is to work out how people with different politics can still talk in a way that moves the world forward, instead of being pushed further from resolving anything. And this matters beyond the United States, because we live in a deeply interdependent world. There is a phrase about having God-like technology, medieval institutions and paleolithic emotions. The combination creates a wisdom gap where we are essentially a toddler with a remote-controlled fleet of predator drones, or nuclear weapons at this point. When a society gets angrier, it is not only that we cannot talk to each other. We become more attracted to violence and destruction. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that under 36% of the next generation believe their future will be better than the present, a massive trust divide between the haves and have-nots, up to 63% worried about discrimination, and 62% of people unable to tell what is real and what is fake. The byproduct is that it starts to feel acceptable to attack people online, to spread disinformation to counter the bad actors over there, to commit violence, to damage property. I have had the thought myself: this system is so unfair, why not burn it all down. That is not a good thing. And this sits on top of everything else: a late stage of capitalism heading toward financial overshoot, 37 trillion dollars of debt in this country, geopolitical shifts like the conversations about Greenland, insecurity between the US and China, supply chain fragility where one thing going wrong in one place shakes out everything, and if war comes to Taiwan we do not have cars because that is where most of the world's semiconductors are made. Add the gradual erosion of the social contract, environmental degradation, rising technological risk, inequality, polarization, and the limits of how much energy we can pull out of the earth sustainably. These are all interconnected and they amplify each other. Which is why these salons exist. When you start reading about this and it mirrors your inner world and you are stressed and do not know what to do, one of the ways to face it is to bring people together and admit we are not sure what comes next. And the prerequisite for solving any of it is being able to talk to people, no matter how different they are or where they come from. Which is why we have two experts here tonight. The first is Emily, from Braver Angels. I googled organizations working on depolarization and cold-emailed them, which got me to Joey, who introduced me to Emily. Both of them are here. 4. Emily Graham · Braver Angels Emily: I do not like that man. I must get to know him. That quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and it gets at the spirit of Braver Angels. Thank you all for coming out on a Saturday night, and thank you, Ben, for bringing us here. First, let us define polarization, and specifically a term called affective polarization, which relates to our emotions and attitudes, because that is what Braver Angels is trying to reach. Over the last few decades, according to a 2019 Annual Review of Political Science, our feelings toward our own party have stayed about the same or even improved. Our views of the other party have gotten much worse. It is not about the issues. It is about how we regard fellow Americans who differ from us politically. They are other, alien, incomprehensible, strangers, unlikeable and untrustworthy, and morally compromised. Affective polarization is particularly dangerous because people become willing to do anything to defeat the other party. We also become unwilling to admit faults on our own side. We see our side as incredibly diverse, and the other side as all the same. Braver Angels runs several skills workshops, and the list is on the back of your Rules of Engagement handout. The activity we are about to do comes from the first one we recommend, Depolarizing Within, which helps us see how our own biases shape our perspective. The handout is called Recognizing Your Inner Polarizer. We are going to get to know our inner polarizers, and then learn to disagree better without being negative. Disagree Better is also the name of one of our workshops. This requires personal reflection. It may bring up uncomfortable feelings, and that is normal. We will not ask you to share your answers, and you do not have to take it at all. Read the questions, circle the closest answer, and go with your first reaction, because that is usually the truest read on how you actually feel. 5. The Braver Angels way Emily: Really looking at your own polarization can be tough. I find it unsettling even. The good news is that studies show we have much more in common than we think, and that is where Braver Angels comes in. Our mission is to bring people together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic. Our rule is to have red and blue leaders at every level of the organization. Having said that, we admit we currently have more blues than reds, and we are actively seeking more red participation through initiatives like the We the People Forum and the Red Caucus. This slide comes from a presentation by one of our founders, Bill Doherty. He has been in couples and family counseling for over forty years and trains therapists to do that work, and he used techniques from his practice to build the methods Braver Angels uses to bring people together. There are three areas to the Braver Angels way. As individuals, we try to understand the other side's point of view, even if we do not agree with it. In our communities, we engage the people we disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together. In politics, we support principles that bring us together rather than divide us. Take a minute with the handout in front of you and its nineteen suggestions, and think about which one would be easiest for you in your own conversations, and which would be hardest. 6. Q&A with Emily Q: What is your reach, and how are you reaching people? We have alliances across the country and members in other countries as well. Not every state has an alliance, but every state has members and has held events. We reach people through a podcast, a lot of work in print media, and ambassadors who are more experienced than I am and go on talk shows. Honestly, word of mouth is probably the best channel we have, and we are hoping to reach further. Q: What practical results has the organization actually produced? Two things. The first is a citizen-led solutions initiative, run in partnership with the Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress. If there is an issue in your local community, even a hyperlocal one, and in one case it was an argument about a stop sign, we have a format that brings people together to address it and reach a compromise as a multi-partisan group. The second is something I have watched happen to a lot of our members. Many people are losing contact with friends and family over this division, and they do not know how to talk to them anymore. Our workshops are helping people re-establish those connections and find ways to communicate with people they care about. I think that is a very important effect. Q: I have leaned left my whole life. A friend of mine was killed in Vietnam and the reasons given were not about preserving democracy. I think America was founded on slavery and genocide, so how do I talk to a patriotic person about the 250th anniversary? And I am at odds with the left over Israel and Palestine, where I see tremendous hypocrisy. It sounds like you are having trouble reconciling the way you feel with how to communicate with people whose views you cannot tolerate. My best advice is to keep listening, keep questioning, and keep trying to understand the other side better. Even if you can never agree with it, even if you find it repugnant, the more we try to understand it the better we can at least communicate. We have a workshop called Skills for Disagreeing Better that might help. Q: Can I add something? I had a shift here on Thursday night. I have been having a reaction to things I have read and heard, and then someone sang these beautiful Syrian songs, and I felt myself move in a moment from fear and worry to being struck by the beauty of the Arabic language. It is an amazing feeling, is it not, to notice that shift happening in yourself. Thank you for your questions. They were great. Joey McFadden: I am the blue co-chair of the New York City Alliance, which is the local chapter, and we have our own website alongside the national one. We have events coming up, including a community immigration forum on the 24th, and in April a panel of like-minded organizations. 7. Shia Levitt · Complicating the narratives Shia: In a democracy there has to be healthy conflict. That is a necessary and normal part of a pluralistic democracy, where not everyone thinks the same. Start with the perception gap quiz that Emily alluded to, from More in Common. They asked Democrats and Republicans what they think the other side believes on a given issue. Republicans think 55% of Democrats hold extreme positions. Democrats think 55% of Republicans do. When you actually ask people what they think, the real number is closer to 30 or 33%. On some specific issues the gap runs to 33 points. What we imagine the other side to be is a caricature, pushed much further out than the reality. The essay behind a lot of this is Complicating the Narratives, and it came out of the Solutions Journalism Network. Solutions journalism is a move away from problem-focused reporting. We turn on the news and feel like crap, powerless, demoralized, depressed, subjected to a barrage of negativity with no mention of how anyone could respond or be resilient. There is a growing movement of journalists learning this instead. It is rigorous. It is not fluff, and it is not advocacy. It is evidence-based: what can we learn from how other places addressed a problem, what worked, and what did not. 8. Terrible conversations and healthier ones Shia: If you roughly divide conversations into terrible and non-terrible, here is the map. In a terrible conversation the emotions are completely polarized: one person feels excited making their point, and the other feels awful, and then it reverses. In a healthier conversation the emotional register is all over the map. There is more push and pull, more nuance, less oversimplifying. If you have ever had a conversation where you are talking past someone, you say your point, they say theirs, and you think we keep repeating ourselves and nobody is hearing anybody, that is the terrible kind. The important lesson from the essay is that the brain behaves differently in charged interactions. It is impossible to feel curious while you are also feeling threatened. In that hypervigilant state we feel an involuntary need to defend our side and attack the other, and the anxiety renders us immune to new information. That is exactly what is happening when two people are just restating their positions. And this matters because the future is not going to be the left convincing the right, or the right convincing the left. It is going to be everyone equally allowed to be here, needing to work together on shared challenges. 9. The four pillars Shia: The method has four pillars. Listen differently. Embrace complexity and nuance, and move past flattened binaries like pro versus con or left versus right. Dig deeper to uncover motivations and the experiences that shaped someone's view, not just their outer position. And counter confirmation bias. The outer layer is people's positions. The inner layer is their underlying values and needs. Asking what someone feels about Israel and Palestine gets you the outer layer. Asking what experiences shaped that view, what their family history is, who in their family has been hurt, gets you somewhere you can actually build empathy. And the first part of bridging is being able to see a person as something other than one flattened, caricatured identity. So a big ingredient is simply meeting and knowing people through other identities first. In this room you are meeting each other as fellow New Yorkers who are interested in something. A gardening club, a church choir, a bowling league, all of it builds community where your identity is not first and foremost your politics. Joining the things that interest you in your own community is a genuinely simple thing that moves us in the right direction. 10. Looping Shia: Before the technique, a question for the room. When and where do you find it hard to listen? From the room: when I am being personally attacked. When other people support violence, or are supporting something threatening. When there is a power imbalance and they know it and they are using it. When someone spews out a lot of words and leaves no space, so the only way to be heard is to talk over it. When I already know what this person is going to say because they always say the same thing. When someone expects respect from me without reciprocating it. When they are hearing and not listening, just waiting for their turn, which we all do. When I am at my own capacity, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or thinking about everything else I have to do. And when I have already made my point and can hear there is no way I will convince them, so I have run out of capacity to listen and to respond. So, looping. It is an interview strategy for journalists, but it works in personal relationships. First, you listen to understand what someone is saying, which means you are not thinking about your own points. Then you offer your understanding back: what I hear you saying is, let me make sure I have you right. And you do not repeat their words. You say it in your own words, rephrased and synthesized, because parroting is the kid who says "I was listening, you said clean the bathroom." Then you observe the reaction. Does that sound right? Is that what you meant? They might add the part they forgot, or tell you that you filtered it through your own bias or life experience. And once you have it right, you ask them to tell you more. That last one sounds like the silliest nothing of a question. What it actually says is: I am not bored, I am interested, I want to hear more. So looping does two things at once. You get what they said right, and you show them that you cared to get it right. Q: This reminds me of nonviolent communication, except there you reflect back exactly what you heard, and here you rephrase it in your own words. Exactly. In NVC people are talking about how they feel, so precision matters more. Here it is better to rephrase in your own words. And people have told me it was cathartic, that nobody had ever taken their trauma and said it back in a way that gave them insight into their own thinking. Q: In the workshop I did, the phrasing was "did I get you?" rather than "did I get it right?" Did I get you. I like that. 11. Where to get your facts Shia: Please do not give up on establishing basic shared facts. They exist, they are knowable, and they are checkable, including social media posts and video. A few places I would recommend. The News Literacy Project is a K through 12 organization but is worth following generally, because it posts about false claims circulating on both sides. Ad Fontes Media has a genuinely good interactive chart that maps outlets on two axes, left to right and, crucially, reliability from fact-based down to unreliable. I liked AllSides for a long time and still like the people who run it; it shows you a story from the left, center and right side by side, and Tangle does something similar, as does Ground News. The catch with AllSides is that it does not rank credibility, so organizations that publish false statements sit alongside fact-based ones. Then the Institute for Nonprofit News: go to findyournews.org and look up an independent local news site for anywhere you like. Independent media and public radio really need support right now, so if you are in a position to pay for news, please do. And the BBC or other outlets that sit outside US partisan politics are useful precisely because they are outside it. One more resource I love: the Dignity Index. It is an eight-point scale running from contempt to dignity, and you can listen to how anyone talks and place them on it. It is good for holding your elected officials accountable, and your friends and colleagues, and yourself. Are you leading with dignity, or with contempt, or somewhere in between? There are a lot more resources at dignity.us. 12. Shia's own work, and the two loops Shia: My organization enlists college journalism students and trains them in this depolarization strategy, in solutions journalism, and in community-responsive journalism, which means going to a community and asking what they need and how we can help meet their information needs, rather than deciding for them what news they should have. Then we help those student journalists get published. My motivation, and probably the thing driving my whole career: the free flow of information from diverse and varied sources is essential to a functioning democracy. In a democracy where people do not all think the same, how do we come together across our differences to address shared challenges? Journalism, libraries and film fill in the gaps in our understanding of the forces shaping our world, so we know more than just how a policy affects us. We might advocate for something because it matters to our own family or community, without knowing it lands very differently on someone else. Jen Brandel shared a framework I keep coming back to, the two loops model of systems change. One loop is declining, and there are people doing hospice care on it. Another loop is rising, and there are people planting the seeds of whatever comes next. We may or may not be in a period of systems collapse. We do not know how this ends. Ben: You came to the right place to talk about collapse. Shia: The part I find inspiring is that right now, in this moment of stress and uncertainty, there are all these people connecting and building and planting. Without that larger picture you can be paralyzed by distress. With it, things like Join or Die, and this salon, and people meeting as a community to build a stronger social fabric, are what let me get up and be excited about the day, despite the overwhelming lack of excitement about everything else. Quickly, the four pillars of solutions journalism. It covers a response to a problem and how that response works. It provides evidence of impact, including the ways it did not work. It states its limitations, because the point is never that everyone should copy one place. And it carries insights or lessons that would help someone trying the same response somewhere else. Things inspiring me right now: the film Join or Die, which Ben is bringing here, about Robert Putnam, who wrote Bowling Alone. The single biggest indicator of the health of a local democracy is club involvement of any kind. Watch it, and watch it with other people. There is a good Join or Die substack, and I would visit newcivicfuture.org. And there are other organizations doing adjacent work: Living Room Conversations, the Listen First Project, Disagree Better. Braver Angels should have been on that slide and I am sorry it is not. 13. Q&A with Shia Q: What about the paradox of tolerance, the tolerance of intolerance? The framework I find most helpful splits bridging two ways. There is intentional bridging, which is what Braver Angels does, deliberately bringing reds and blues together. And there is unintentional bridging, which is just being in clubs and civic life. Within each of those, there is healthy bridging and toxic bridging. You do not want to be doing the kind of bridging where it is neo-Nazis and not-neo-Nazis. That is not what this is. It is not talking with people acting in bad faith who are trying to hurt you. It is talking to your neighbor who has absorbed some propaganda and who may have something real that happened to their family underneath the blame. So you have to think for yourself about where that line is, and know that a lot of what comes across as toxic is misinformed. We are all going to have different comfort levels here. Not all of us are going to do what Daryl Davis does. That is hard, and it is not everybody. 14. Break Hope: We are running a little behind, so before anyone moves, here is what happens next. If you want to go deeper and put this into practice, stay, because we are coming back for breakout rooms and exercises. If you are heading out, thank you, and please return your dishes up here. Bathrooms are through there and there are two more out the door. It is 8:36 now, so be back in the room at 8:45. One last thing before people leave. If you are comfortable, put your right hand on the back of the person next to you. Now, quietly, let us take a few breaths together and feel their breath alongside yours. Keep your eyes closed a moment longer and just feel how special it is to be in a space with other people who are trying to learn and understand each other better. And if you are comfortable, give them a little wave on the back to say thank you for coming.